Jack Higgins

I'm a big Jack Higgins fan. Not necessarily of his latest books, but of what I like to think of as his "middle period." Back in 1974 I picked up a copy of a book of his called The Savage Day. I'd never heard of Higgins or the book, but it was published by Fawcett, so I figured I'd give it a try. I liked it a lot, and Higgins went on my list of authors to look for. I read and enjoyed Toll for the Brave, The Last Place God Made, A Prayer for the Dying, Night Judgment at Sinos, Wrath of the Lion and The Sicilian Heritage. One day I picked up A Game for Heroes by someone named "James Graham." I hadn't read more than a couple of pages before I realized that Graham was almost certainly Higgins, and that proved to be the case. So I bought The Wrath of God, The Khufra Run, and The Run to Morning. Every one of them a winner.

This reflection on Higgins was brought on by my re-reading of The Wrath of God, which is now being published under the Higgins name. Higgins' real name is apparently Harry Patterson, and he's published under that name, too, as well as "Hugh Marlowe." As it turns out, I'd read one of the Marlowe books back in the middle '60s but hadn't been particularly impressed. I haven't been impressed with a lot of Higgins' work since The Eagle Has Landed, for that matter, but I still read one of his newer books now and then. They're not a patch on the ones I've mentioned, though.

The Cutting Room -- Laurence Klavan

I mentioned a while back that I'd checked Laurence Klavan's The Cutting Room out of the library. I finally got around to reading it, and it wasn't bad. It involves “trivial people.” That is, people who devote their lives to trivia, in this case, movie trivia. You may recognize some of the characteristics of the trivial people. Roy Milano, the narrator, for example, resorts to reciting movie trivia to himself (or even aloud) in moments of stress, of which he has many, considering all the dead bodies he discovers in the course of the narrative. Roy considers himself a bit different from other trivial people because he was once married, which, as he puts it, means that for a brief period, “I had sex with someone other than myself.” (Let me say right here that I identified with plenty of the characteristics of the trivial people.) The McGuffin in the tale is the lost “director’s cut” of The Magnificent Ambersons, and there are plenty of interesting characters, some of them intended to remind you of movie stars and others that you’ve heard of. There's lots of trivia and some laughs, but you'll probably figure out who done it before Roy does. But then he's an amateur. This book is not for people who like to see the guilty punished, by the way. Some are, but some aren't. I thought the climax was a bit of a cliche, but I still plan to read the sequel.

Valentines

What's up with Valentines? I went to my personal Valentine supplier (Wal-Mart) yesterday, and I discovered that practically every single Valentine card for sale is "personalized." I went over to the next aisle and looked at the birthday cards. Same thing. It's next to impossible to find just a plain card. I mean, they've even got cards that say, "To my great grandnephew." Don't they know that "personalization" like that is really about as impersonal as you can get? Or maybe it's just me.

It's also hard to find a card that's not so sugary that diabetics have to touch them with rubber gloves. Stuff like "Wifey dear/my life was drear/till I met you/and twixt we two/a great love grew." Who sends cards like that? Or maybe I'm just a crochety old fart.

In the Bleeck Midwinter

Rara-avis, the hardboiled list, is devoting this month to the novels of Ross Thomas, who also published as Oliver Bleeck. Since one or two of you might not be on rara-avis, I thought I'd reprint my thoughts on The Procane Chronicle here.

I’ve never been disappointed when re-reading Ross Thomas. Practically every page of The Procane Chronicle has a passage or two that made me stop reading in simple admiration of the writing. The descriptions, the names, the action scenes, the dialogue. Man, Ross Thomas could write, no matter which name he was using.

In The Procane Chronicle, Philip St. Ives, the professional go-between, is hired to make the payment for and recover the journals of a professional thief, Abner Procane. After a false start, during the course of which St. Ives discovers the dead body of Bright Bobby Boykin, the exchange is made. But that’s just the beginning. I loved every bit of it.

This is the St. Ives book that was made into a movie. The first mistake was casting Charles Bronson as St. Ives. Bronson was wrong in every way for the part. Maybe the moviemakers figured that out or maybe Philip was considered a sissy name or something, because Bronson became Raymond St. Ives. Could be Philip’s brother, I guess. The name’s not the only thing that was changed, either. The setting was moved from New York and Washington to L.A., and of course the plot was pretty much done away with and another one was substituted. I’ve never been able to figure out why that happens. The book’s plot is a pretty darned good one. Why buy the book and then dump the perfectly serviceable plot? Oh, well. One thing I can’t argue with is the casting of Jacqueline Bisset. John Houseman was pretty good, too.

Snowflake and Snow Crystal Photos

Snowflake and Snow Crystal Photos

Incredible stuff, and safe for work, unlike the previous link.

The GoDaddy Model (NSFW)

.: Taxi Driver Movie.com :.

This link, via Art Scott, is Not Safe for Work, or anywhere else. But for those who'd like to see more of the GoDaddy model, it's probably worth the risk.

Charlie Stella/Super Bowl Ads/Weasels

Knucksline Index

Charlie says, "The FedEx/Kinko’s ad was pretty nifty, but it was the godaddy.com add (with the near boob mishap) that was the one that made me smile the most. I just loved it that somebody out there had the balls to challenge the constipated FCC."

Unfortunately, the challenge got yanked. The godaddy ad was supposed to run a second time, but the constipated weasels at Fox pulled it after they got a call from the other weasels, the ones at NFL HQ. The whole sad story is here.

Roadside America - Guide to Uniquely Odd Tourist Attractions

Roadside America - Guide to Uniquely Odd Tourist Attractions

That post I did about the Dairy Queen got me interested in looking around the 'net for Americana. Here's a great site, and be sure to click on the Muffler Men.

Super Bowl Commercials

TubeSpot

OK, so I didn't watch much of the Super Bowl, and I missed most of the commercials. I did see the one with Burt Reynolds, which I thought was pretty funny. And now, if I want to, I can see all the rest, which are linked at the site above.

Thom Bray's PULP MUSEUM

Thom Bray's PULP MUSEUM

Seems that Thom Bray has an idea of what might be a way to sell short fiction on the Internet. This sort of sums it up, I think: "A site--The Pulp Museum-- that concentrates specifically on the short pulp genres: mystery, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, romance, erotica. The model is based on the creation of the buyer's own, customized pulp magazine: in other words, as a reader, you select from a menu of stories in each genre, add them to your shopping cart, and for about the same price as an inexpensive print digest download the stories in your basket to form your very own, personalized digest." He's asking that writers give him the reprint rights to their previously published stories for one year. If he finds out that he can make a profit by selling them, then he'll begin to buy new stories at professional rates and to pay royalties on the reprints. All this is just my summary. Thom lays it all out over the course of several pages. Read it and see what you think.

Lefty Frizzell/Dairy Queen

As I was scrolling through the photo images on Tom Sutpen's blog, I was struck by the one of Lefty Frizzell under the heading "Great Philosophers of the 20th Century #5." Why? Because Lefty was born in Corsicana, Texas, a town with which I have a number of personal connections. For one thing, I taught high school there in 1963-1965, the first teaching job of my long career. I had a number of students there who lived in what was then called an "orphans' home." Probably in these PC times that's not the right name. Anyway, one student whom I remember very well was named Beatrice Vasquez. ("It's pronounced Vas-KWEZ," she said when I used the pronunciation I'd learned in Spanish class.) Miss Vasquez told me proudly that Lefty Frizzell had at one time lived in the home. I can't find any verification of that on any of the websites that have biographies of Frizzell posted on them. They all just say that he was born in Corsicana and that the family soon moved to El Dorado (pronounced, as you Arkansawyers know, "El Do-RAY-do"), Arkansas. Be that as it may, there's a statue of Frizzell in Corsicana now. I've never seen it, but one day maybe I will. (There's a photo of it on David Frizzell's webpage.)

Whenever I think of Corsicana, I think of the Dairy Queen. Sometime in the early 1950s, Corsicana got a Dairy Queen. My family lived thirty miles away, in Mexia, but somehow my father heard about the Corsicana Dairy Queen and got very interested in it. I've always thought that he hoped to be able to get together enough money to buy a DQ franchise for Mexia, but if that was so, the dream never materialized. That franchise went to someone else, and by all accounts he cleaned up with it. At any rate, my father was fascinated by the concept of soft ice cream. On more than one summer evening, we'd all pile in the family car (a 1950 navy-blue Ford, no radio, no heater, and certainly no air-conditioning) and drive to Corsicana for a DQ sundae (my father and I always got hot fudge). Believe me, in those days, a thirty-mile drive wasn't something our family undertook lightly. I can't remember ever having gone to Corsicana for any other reason, and a trip to Waco, about thirty-five miles away, was a major undertaking that called for days of planning. Dallas, ninety miles, required months of preparation. But I digress. To make the trip to the DQ even better than a mere sundae could do, we'd sometimes stop on the outskirts of Corsicana at a filling station whose owner had a monkey that was allowed to roam around at the end of a long chain. A monkey and a DQ sundae, not to mention an hour's round trip in the car. Wow. Great days.

Original image here.

They're Getting Younger all the Time

Times Online - Britain Dragon flies off the shelves for author, 13, in a game of success
By Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
A SCHOOLGIRL has become a publishing sensation after her first novel sold 50,000 copies in six weeks. A second print run for Emma Maree Urquhart’s Dragon Tamers has been ordered.

THE LONG GOODBYE -- The Altman/Brackett Version

Something Old, Nothing New: "Was there ever a recording of the complete title song from Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye? "

Jaime Weinman begins his post on Altman's movie verison of The Long Goodbye with some comments on the title song, but he goes on to talk about Leigh Brackett (and gives a link to some good info on her screenwriting career), the movie's ending, and some other interesting stuff. Check it out.

HAPPY DAYS -- The Reunion

I'm not proud to admit this, but I watched the Happy Days reunion special on ABC last night. Why? I'm not really sure, but one reason is that I found it hard to believe that thirty years have passed since the show first came on the air. It seems like only yesterday to me, which is pretty scary. In fact, I might not have believed it had been thirty years if I hadn't seen the stars of the show as they look now. It's been thirty years, all right. Geez, I'm almost afraid to look in a mirror today.

When the show was on, I didn't see it very often. In those days I taught a night class every semester, usually on the night that Happy Days aired. I must have caught some of it in reruns, though, because I'm familiar with all the characters and a lot of the shtick. I quit watching completely, however, long before Fonzie jumped the shark and before Joanie and Chachi got romantically involved. And I confess that I've never seen a single episode of Joanie Loves Chachi. Which brings up a question: Is it just me, or did those two seem to be avoiding each other last night? They never spoke or even looked at each other. I know that Erin Moran's had some problems since the show was canceled. Maybe that's it.

One of the things I didn't like about the Happy Days was that for me it never really captured what the '50s were like for a teenager, not like American Graffiti did. Although the pilot for Happy Days was made before that movie (and seems to have led to Ron Howard's getting a part in it), I always thought of Happy Days as a sort of watered-down version of the movie. And one thing that irritated me was that sometimes they didn't even bother to get the details right. There was a good example in one of the snippets last night when Ritchie tossed a copy of Irving Shulman's The Amboy Dukes into a drawer. The cover was clearly not anything from the 1950s. Probably a '60s or '70s reprint.

And of course the show jumped the shark long before that famous episode. It went off the track when it softened Fonzie and made him cuddly.

Still, I watched the whole two-hour reunion and found myself growing nostalgic for the show. Maybe I'll catch a rerun one of these days.

J. P. Richardson -- The Big Bopper

The Day the Music Died

HoustonChronicle.com - 46 years after crash, 'Big Bopper's' legend alive: "Feb. 3, 2005, 6:42AM
Long after 'day the music died,' the Big Bopper's legend lives on
Rock 'n' roll's 1st tragedy claimed the star from Beaumont 46 years ago today
By RON FRANSCELL
Beaumont Enterprise

Chronicle File
J.P. 'Jape' Richardson's flamboyant alter ego, 'The Big Bopper,' used a prop phone in his act. The Texan songwriter was 28 when he died.
CLEAR LAKE, IOWA - The plane crash that took the lives of J.P. 'Big Bopper' Richardson, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens is one of rock music's pivotal moments, more significant than an electrified Dylan or that little show at Woodstock.

Why?

After the crash in Clear Lake on Feb. 3, 1959, rock 'n' roll changed. Singer Don McLean immortalized the moment as 'the day the music died' in his pop-dirge American Pie. But it was Holly, Valens, the Bopper and their pilot who died. The music (and the audience) merely changed forever."

The whole article's worth a read if you can get to it without having to register. This is another one of those days that I remember all too well.

OK, It's Official

HoustonChronicle.com - Kinky Friedman enters governor's race With poll: "Feb. 2, 2005, 3:20PM
Kinky Friedman entering race for governor
Associated Press

Some 13 months before the established political parties select their nominees in the state primary elections, Friedman and his trademark black cowboy hat and Cuban cigar were entering the political arena Thursday morning for what he's promised will be an unconventional campaign.

'I want the thing to be fun,' he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. 'But you can do something fun and still have it be important.'

The 60-year-old Friedman, whose nearly two dozen books include 'Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned' and whose campaign bumper stickers proclaim 'Why Not Kinky?', chose the grounds outside the Alamo, the symbol of Texas independence, to officially begin his independent campaign."

Lee Goldberg and his brother Todd occasionally have a few unkind words to say about fan fiction. I read them and, for the most part, agree. But today I started thinking (a rare and dangerous thing). Sure enough, in a way I've been plenty guilty of perpetrating fan fiction. For one thing, I've written several Sherlock Holmes stories for various anthologies, and I've written a story about Dickens' Mr. Pickwick and other characters from The Pickwick Papers for Death by Dickens. But the most fun I've had with someone else's character was writing a story called "The Captive Soul" fan Pawn of Chaos, an anthology of stories about Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion. I remember many happy days spent with my nose buried in the tales of Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum, and Elric. Being invited to write my own Elric story was a fan's dream come true. It's also true that I didn't bother to bring much of my own to the table. I was writing an Elric story as much like the ones I'd previously enjoyed as I could, with no doubt a little Robert E. Howard thrown in. It was a pleasure to write, and I can see why fans of a certain TV series or movie or fictional character might be tempted to write their own stories about their favorites. The fact that I was asked to do it (and that I got paid) might make my case a little different, but now I'm wondering just by how much.

January 27, 1969

Everybody remembers where he was and what he was doing at some significant moment in his life. For example, everybody my age remembers where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

As for me, I also remember another day with startling clarity. It was January 27, 1969, when my daughter, Angela Antoinette Crider, was born in St. David's Hospital in Austin, Texas. In those days, in what I now think of as a more genteel and civilized time, fathers weren't allowed into the delivery room. Now, of course, they are, and they later invite friends and family over to the house for the showing of the full-color sound video they made of their children emerging from the womb. While I'm sure that's very enlightening for all concerned, I was quite happy to be shunted off to the waiting room to sit with other nervous fathers-to-be and wait until Angela was born.

So what did I do in the waiting room? I read a book, naturally, and I remember exactly which book it was: File on a Missing Redhead by Lou Cameron. A Gold Medal Book, as you might have guessed.

The other day on Angela's 36th birthday, in a fit of nostalgia, I pulled the book (sure, I still have it) off the shelf and read it again.

It was pretty much as I remembered it. Short, fast, and twisty. The narrator is Frank Talbot, a state trooper, which is kind of unusual when you think about it. He's investigating the murder of a redheaded woman found crammed into the forward trunk of a VW Beetle, and in the course of things he gets involved with the skip-tracing agency for which his former girlfriend (Hazel Collier) works. Hazel, as it turns out, dumped Talbot because he sent her current sweetie to the state pen. There are lots of entertaining details about skip-tracing in the novel (probably all outdated now, what with the Internet), and lots of nice CSI type stuff (also probably outdated). Plenty of procedural details, too. The violence is gruesomely described.

It turns out that the suspected killer of the redhead is being helped out by one of the agency's former workers, who knows all the tricks of the trade. And someone's trying to assassinate Talbot.

All this is wrapped up (maybe at a little too much length) in a surprising way. It even surprised me this time, on my second reading. And the final couple of pages were just great. I remember how much I liked them 36 years ago, and they're still satisfying today. Definitely not what you'd expect.

Cameron went on to create (and write a lot of books for) the Longarm series of adult westerns. I hope it made him rich.

My Adventures in Peru: Chapter Three

As I mentioned in another post, the complete, uncensored story of my adventures in Peru can be found here. However, as there are no photos, I thought some of the idly curious among you might want to see a shot of the plane in which we flew over the Nasca Lines. Judy and I were in the back seat, which was a little more cramped than the middle seat, I think, not that it made much difference. Given my tendency to motion sickness, it's a miracle that I didn't get sick during the plane ride, but I didn't.

How much of a tendency to motion sickness do I have? Good question. Here's how much: I've been known to get sick in high-speed express elevators in New York hotels. I've been known to get sick while floating in the gentle surf off the beach at Galveston Island. But I was determined to survive the plane ride (especially after my little contretemps at the Lima airport).

It's National Gorilla Suit Day!

news from me - ARCHIVES

Are you dressed properly?

Roadside America - Guide to Uniquely Odd Tourist Attractions

Roadside America - Guide to Uniquely Odd Tourist Attractions: "Muffler Men
Fiberglass giants observed."

This is a cool site. Be sure and check out the section on Texas' own Cascade Caverns, and don't miss the Muffler Men!

Andean Adventure

Those of you who have nothing better to do, you can read the entire uncensored account of my trip to Peru, which is now posted on my homepage, here. No pictures, though. You'll just have to imagine how intrepid I looked.

Global Warming?

I don't know. You tell me. I know Michael Crichton doesn't believe in it, but the last science class I took was so long ago that the Periodic Table hanging on the cave wall listed only four elements (Earth, Air, Water, and Fire). I have a feeling that might be a little out of date by now. All I know is that it's not right for a man to have to mow his yard in January. Not even in Alvin, Texas. Not that I'm complaining.

Oldies but Goodies

Someone sent in a comment asking me to recommend some more obscure paperback originals. I have two titles that I always mention. One of Fletcher Flora's The Hot-Shot, which you can pick up on abebooks for a fairly reasonable price. It's not a mystery novel, but it does have some criminous elements. The main thing it has going for it is that Flora was channeling Holden Caulfield when he wrote it. The Hot-Shot is the best pastiche of The Catcher in the Rye that I've ever read. My theory is that Flora was just so knocked out by the voice in that book that he couldn't resist giving it a try. You'll have to judge for yourself how successful he was, but I liked this one quite a bit.

The other title that I like to remind people of is Revenge by Jack Ehrlich. It's also available on abebooks. We're talking Jim Thompson territory here, and if you like The Killer Inside Me, this one should definitely be on your list. A more recent Ehrlich title, Bloody Vengeance, is well worth looking for. It's about a different kind of revenge, but it's a powerful statment. I'm not sure how serious Ehrlich was when he wrote it. You'll have to read it to see what I mean. It's really cheap on abebooks.

As always, remember that my recommendations should be taken with a grain of salt. I have no critical sense. I just know what I like.

Ed Gorman -- Runner in the Dark

You have to wonder why Ed Gorman isn't working for some big-name publisher. I mean, Runner in the Dark was published by iBooks, or at least that's the edition I have. Not that there's anything wrong with iBooks, the company that published my Bogart book, We'll Always Have Murder, but they're not exactly as well known as, say, Knopf. And, just to take one more example, another of Ed's excellent novels, Cage of Night, was published by Borealis Books, a division of White Wolf. What kind of distribution do you think that one got?

As Ed has mentioned on his own blog, he's written in any number of genres: mystery, western, horror, SF. He's a non-bestseller in at leat four fields. What Ed was to modest to say is that he's good in all of them, bestseller or not, and that his books are far better than anything the Big Names place on the New York Times list.

He also mentioned the other day that from time to time he's written "big" suspense novels, the kind that, if there were any justice, would replace James Patterson on the NYT list and a lot of others. (OK, he didn't say that last part. I did.) That's the kind of book Runner in the Dark is. It has just about everything: a "high concept" (crazed killer takes over TV station), big action scenes, a love interest, sex, lots of violence, "insider" details, great characters, length, even the "ticking clock." The cover blurb says that the novel is "In the tradition of great suspense novels by Michael Connelly and Harlan Coben," as if those two writers were anything alike. And as if an Ed Gorman book could ever be like a book by anyone else.

And maybe that's the trouble. Runner in the Dark isn't like anybody else's big bestselling suspense novel. It's a little too quirky, a little too edgy. Anybody can die at any time. And does. The next time you're looking for a book that will keep you turning the pages way past your bedtime, check this one out.

ed gorman & company: Sarah Weiman's First Bad Review

ed gorman & company: Sarah Weiman's First Bad Review: "Sarah Weiman's First Bad Review

Sarah Weinman got a less than wonderful review on a piece of fiction she wrote. She talks about it on her blog today. Not surpisingly, she doesn't like the feeling a tepid review leaves her with. It's her first negative review and she wonders how her readers felt about their own first bad reviews. It's an honest and well-written reaction something all writers go through."

Ed goes on to explain his reaction to his first bad review. I have to say that I felt pretty much the same way, and that I still feel pretty much the same way when I get a bad review these days. But after a day or so I forget about it. What the heck, it's only one person's opinion, and certainly I've given books bad reviews before, too.

The thing is that when I started publishing novels, I quit doing negative reviews. I know how they make me feel, and I decided that I didn't want to make anybody feel that way. So for the most part, I talk only about the books I like and mention the others only in private communications. Now and then I might slip, but I really do try to keep my comments on the positive side. That hasn't stopped reviewers from saying bad things about me, however. Probably my favorite good review, the one that sticks with me, is from Kirkus. Usually the Kirkus reviewer hates my work, but he (or she, or whoever) really, really loved BLOOD MARKS. But he (or she, or whoever) couldn't resist getting in a nasty remark, so the review, and out-and-out rave, begins this way: "Crider, the author of two mediocre series . . . ." Sometimes you just can't win.

HARRY WHITTINGTON

HARRY WHITTINGTON BIO PAGE: "I signed, in 1964, to do a 60,000-word novel a month for a publisher under his house names. I was paid $1000. On the first of each month. I wrote one of these novels a month for 39 months."

Maybe I've linked this before, or maybe someone else has. Anyway, it's well worth reading four or five times if you're a Harry Whittington fan, which I am.

What I'd really like to know is more about that quotation above with the link. Who was the publisher, and does anyone know what these novels were? Since there are 39 of them, I'd love to have a chance to read them all.

Banjo Jones Reads Paris Hilton's Book

THE BRAZOSPORT NEWS

So you don't have to.

Andrew Klavan

OK, the other day I started to post something about Andrew Klavan, but I got sidetracked and wrote about blurbs instead. Today I plan to stick to the subject.

As I mentioned earlier, I started reading Klavan's books when he was writing as "Keith Peterson," and I liked them a lot. I've always felt that Klavan's True Crime, which came out some years after the Keith Peterson name had been retired, was basically a Keith Peterson novel. It had practically the same cast of characters that the Peterson novels did; they just had different names. But I'm digressing again. Let's face it: I can't help myself.

Anyway, little did I know when I was reading the Peterson books that Klavan had already won an Edgar for a paperback called Mrs. White, which was published by Dell under the name "Margaret Tracy." Apparently Tracy was a collborative named used by Andrew and Laurence Klavan, who I'm assuming is Andrew's brother. As a matter of fact, I just picked up Laurence Klavan's The Cutting Room at the library yesterday. OK, that's a digression, too. Or maybe it's two digressions. I apologize.

But here's another one. "Keith Peterson" also won a "Best Paperback" Edgar for The Rain. I wonder if Klavan's the only person to win Edgars under two different names, neither of them his own.

Back to Andrew Klavan as himself. I've read most of his books under that name. My favorite is The Uncanny, which is sort of a modern version of the English ghost story. I'm a sucker for ghost stories, and I really liked this book. It's a lot more than a ghost story, though, and I think the way it's put together is truly ingenious. (Be warned, however, that I've talked to several people who didn't like The Uncanny at all. Including my wife.)

What I've been reading lately is Klavan's two newest novels, Dynamite Road and Shotgun Alley. These books have it all: larger-than-life characters (and a few that aren't), humor, sex, violence, an amped-up style that I find amusing and effective, a narrative perspective borrowed from The Great Gatsby (and very well handled, I might add), several over-arching soap-opera plots involving all the main characters that continue from book to book (and seem far from being resolved in the second one), and just about anything else you (or at least I) could want in a book.

My wife, who's a big fan of some of Klavan's earlier novels (not The Uncanny, however) isn't especially fond of these new series novels, but I'm hoping they'll continue for several more years.

A Collection of Sherlock Holmes Pastiches

BBC - Cult Presents: Sherlock Holmes

The link above is from Incoming Signals, and it leads to a new BBC collection of Holmes stories by Kim Newman, among others. Newman's The Night Mayor is a minor classic in my book, and his stories are always fun. You can choose to read the stories of to listen to them.

Ed Gorman on Robert B. Parker

ed gorman & company

I agree with this post wholeheartedly. I'm still willing to read anything Parker publishes.

Blurbs

I'm reading Andrew Klavan's Shotgun Alley, and I was going to write a post about how much I've enjoyed Klavan's books in general, but as usual I got sidetracked. It happened when I remembered that I started reading Klavan when he began writing a series of books under the name "Keith Peterson." The first book in the series was The Trapdoor, and for some reason I was sent a copy of the galley and asked for a blurb. I was glad to write one, since I liked the book a lot, but I don't think the blurb was ever used, probably because, let's face it, a blurb from me doesn't mean as much as one from some writer with a Big Name. And, of course, Klavan went on to become a Big Name himself, even if Keith Peterson didn't (though the Peterson name sold a ton of books, I think).

This thought led to another one, about the mysteries I've been asked to blurb for writers who went on to become much bigger names than I ever did. For example, Mary Willis Walker sent me a copy of the ARC of her second book, The Red Scream, and asked for a blurb. I liked the book a lot, but I told her that the editor probably wouldn't use my blurb. I was right. The blurb never appeared. The book did just fine without it and went on to win an Edgar.

I also received the galley of Carolyn Hart's first mystery novel. Once again, I provided a very positive blurb. Once again, it wasn't used. And once again, the author's reputation went on eclipse mine by a long way.

Finally, Debbie Crombie asked me for a blurb for her first novel. This time the editor actually used it, and of course Debbie's books have sold zillions since then.

What's the moral of all this? There isn't one. Unless it's that my blurbs, whether they're used or not, are good luck. But I don't really believe that. We happen to be talking about some very talented people here, and it's a certainty that their books would have gone on to have great success without my endorsement. And I've blurbed other novels that haven't done quite so well.

What did I get out of doing the blurbs? Well, I still have all those galleys, some of them signed. Maybe they're worth something, not that I'd ever sell them.

Ed Gorman

ed gorman & company

Looks like Ed Gorman has a new blog location. It should be available at the link above, and I know you'll want to check it out to see what Ed has to say.

Johnny Carson, R.I.P.

Johnny Carson was once asked what he'd like for his epitaph.

His answer: "I'll be right back."

Sadly, that won't be the case. Someone on Dateline last night said, "Steve Allen invented late night television, Jack Parr refined it, and Johnny Carson defined it." I think that about sums it up. I don't have any good Johnny Carson stories. I just know that I watched him for many years and always enjoyed the show. What more can you ask?

Fantastic Universe, September 1957

This is the issue of Fantastic Universe that I mentioned in the post below. Is that a great Virgil Finlay cover, or what?

Happy 99th Birthday, Robert E. Howard

Over at Rough Edges, James Reasoner mentions that Saturday was the 99th anniversary of Robert E. Howard's birth, which reminds me that I'd been intending to say a couple of things about a collection titled The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, published in trade paperback by Ballantine in 2003. This is a reprint of the much more expensive hardcover published in 2002 by Wandering Star, and it's an attempt to give us Howard's stories as they were originally published, in the order of their publication. It's pretty clear from the editorial commentary that the people who put this collection together don't approve of editorial meddling, and that they really, really disapprove of the Conan pastiches that were written by the likes of L. Sprague de Camp and many others.

So I have to say right at the start that my first acquaintance with Conan came from those very pastiches, which I encountered in the SF digests back in the 1950s. The very first one I recall reading was in a 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe, which had a great cover of a flying demon carrying a helpless babe in his arms. The story was written by de Camp and Bjorn Nyberg, and I thought it was great. I later went on to read as many of the original stores as I could find, as well as the pastiches. I might have found Conan without ever having read de Camp's take on him, but then again, who knows? At any rate, I've always felt I owed de Camp something, but the editors of The Coming of Conan would almost certainly not agree.

Be that as it may, last week I started reading through the stories in this recent collection, beginning with "The Phoenix on the Sword." The collection includes not only the first published version, from Weird Tales, but also the unrevised first submitted draft. I'm a fan, not not enough of one to read the draft, so my comments apply only to the published story.

The thing that amazed me was how many "rules" of storytelling Howard violated. Most of the story is "told" rather than "shown," with a lot of it being nothing but exposition accomplished by having characters tell each other all kinds of things that they already know. There's also a shameless use of coincidence and an equally shameless deus ex machina. Not that any of that stuff matters. What redeems the whole thing is the great action scene. When Conan starts swinging his sword and ax, heads will roll!

The next two stories in the book were rejected by Weird Tales, and I can see why. The endings of both of them (like the ending of "The Phoenix on the Sword," in fact) are supposed to be at least shocking, if not surprising, and they're just not. (Maybe that's me, because I've read too many similar stories, and the endings would have been more effective 70 or so years ago.)

Howard didn't let a little thing like rejection bother him, and the fourth story in the book, "The Tower of the Elephant," though it has plenty of coincidence, is a much better story than the preceding ones, and the fifth, "The Scarlet Citadel" also has some wonderful stuff in it. I'm not as fond of the sixth story, "The Queen of the Black Coast," as some people are (again, the gimmick seems too predictable), but I like it quite a bit. I remember that when I first read it, many years ago, that it was one of my favorites. Hey, I was young and wildly romantic. What can I say?

There are seven more stories in this collection, and I plan to read them all sooner or later, along with those in The Bloody Crown of Conan, which I ordered not long ago. You might be asking, "But Bill, don't you already have the Ace collections, with the pastiches included? And don't you have the Berkley collections with the original Weird Tales versions and no pastiches? And don't you have the Ace Double with Conan the Conquerer? And haven't you read those all before?"

My answer is, "Yes. And your point is?"

Vince Keenan

Tonight I watched IFC's Ultimate Film Fanatic to see if blogger Vince Keenan (who claims he dreams in Technicolor, SurroundSound, and letterbox format) could capture the title for the Northwest Region. Well, not quite, but he sure came close. In the program's opening round I knew the answers to every question. Except for two, both of which were based on movies I haven't seen, Natural Born Killers and Bride of Chucky. Vince got both those answers right. Then he won the debate with a guy named Tony, who got another chance and beat the other contestant. It came down to who was the most obsessed with movies, as judged by a "panel of experts" that included Tatum O'Neal. I thought Vince had the first round sewed up with a explanation of his blog, but the panel thought Tony's collection of lobby cards from Mexican horror movies was a topper. The second round also went to Tony, thanks to his notebook containing his reviews of horror movies that he'd been doing since he was about eight years old.

So Tony won the $5000 and the big-screen plasma TV. I would have liked to see the "obsession round" go for the third item, just to see what the guys came up with. I'll bet Vince would've crushed Tony, but it wasn't to be. Still, when it comes to knowledge of movies, I think Vince was the clear winner. I'm sorry he didn't win it all.

What color is the other one?

This is the headline from today's Houston Chronicle (page A21) that prompted my question:

"Marine has Red, White and Blue Ball"

Important Safety Tip!

Always carry a pocket handkerchief!

I learned this from two episodes of The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu, the TV series I mention below. If you ever have to deal with (A) deadly poison gas ["The Death Ship of Dr. Fu Manchu"] or (B) virulent plague germs ["The Prisoner of Dr. Fu Manchu"], simply take the handkerchief from your pocket and use it to cover your nose and mouth. You'll be entirely safe and unaffected.

The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu

So I went to The Dollar Tree the other day and bought some more DVDs, one of which has four episodes of The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu, a TV series I'd never heard of. And no wonder. I've watched all four shows, and they're pretty bad. I mean that in a good way, of course.

Each show opens with Dr. Fu Manchu playing chess with an unseen opponent while the narrator intones the following lines: "Black and white. Life and death. Good and evil. Two sides of a chess game. Two forces in the universe. One magnificent. The other sinister. It is said that the devil plays for men's souls. So does Dr. Fu Manchu. Satan himself. Evil incarnate."

Each show concludes with a scene of the evil doctor (Glen Gordon) walking to the chessboard, picking up a couple of pieces and throwing them onto the board in resignation, as he's once again been defeated by Sir Dennis Nayland Smith (Lester Matthews), Dr. John Petrie (Clark Howat), and Dr. Petrie's nurse, Betty Leonard (Carla Balenda).

The other members of the cast are Dr. Fu Manchu's dwarfish assistant, Kolb (John George), and the main reason to watch the show, Karamaneh (Laurette Luez). Kolb made a career of playing characters referred to in the credits as Shorty, Hunchback, Dwarf Beggar, Pygmy in Rescue Party, The Gnome, and Midget. Luez was the star of the classic Prehistoric Women, and she played opposite Bomba the Jungle Boy in African Treasure. And she was in Jungle Gents with the Bowery Boys. As if that wasn't enough for a great career, she also played the wicked Felina in Marty Robbins' Ballad of a Gunfighter. She doesn't do a lot in the Fu Manchu series, but shes certainly nice to look at, as always.

Sample show: "Dr. Fu Manchu's Master Plan" is about how Hitler didn't really kill himself at the end of WWII, and how old Fu has a plastic surgeon give him a new face. Why Hitler needs a new face is a puzzle, since apparently he's has been living in an immense underground cavern on an island in the South Seas where everybody knows who he is anyway. Be that as it may, Fu gives him a new face, kidnaping Dr. Petrie to look after him after killing the original surgeon. They sail back to the island on a submarine (that's shown only above the water), where Hitler has this device that will explode when you put it next to atomic bombs. It's apparently nothing more than a remote-controlled bomb, but Hitler thinks it's a big deal. He's going to put it next to all WMD that the U.S. has stockpiled and blow them up (too bad GWB didn't stumble on this plan for Iraq). With all its stockpiled WMD destroyed, the U.S. will, of course, be weakened to the point of impotence and a prime target for takeover by the Reds. After which, Hitler is somehow going to move in and take over for himself. And for Fu, naturally. Unfortunately for them, Sir Dennis Nayland Smith foils the plot: "We've found a copy of Hitler's book, and films of his speeches. Betty, I believe that he's alive!" Heck, with clues like that, anybody could have figured it out. Sir Dennis goes to the island, saves Petrie, shoots Hitler (who then blows up the underground cavern with his secret device), and saves the world again.

Well, what can I tell you? You either get a kick out of this kind of thing, or you don't. For me, it was a buck well spent.

Hardluck Stories

The word's in from Dave Zeltserman that the new issue of Hardluck Stories is up and ready for reading. Dave says this may be the best issue yet, which is certainly recommendation enough. Check it out.

CrimeSpree

The January issue of CrimeSpree magazine arrived at my house yesterday. I've read only a couple of things, including Bob Randisi's anti-Bouchercon rant (actually, its more of an anti-Bouchercon attendance rant) and Sarah Weinman's introduction to the novels of Ross Thomas. Unlike Bob, I still register for Bouchercon when I attend, but I do think he makes some good points in his commentary. And I always enjoy reading about Ross Thomas. I hope that Sarah's article will encourage anybody who reads it and hasn't read anything by Thomas to give one of his books a try. I recently re-read The Fourth Durango and posted about it here. And I plan to re-read at least a couple of his books soon, as February is "Bleeck Midwinter" month on rara-avis, the hardboiled discussion list. (Oliver Bleeck is a Thomas pseudonym.)

The Kinkster

CNN.com - Gov. Kinky -- the next leader of Texas? - Jan 18, 2005

Like Jayme Blaschke, I think the Kinkster could be the best governor of Texas in generations. Not that that's saying a whole lot. Can Kinky win? Well, W. Lee O'Daniel did, touring the state with a hillbilly band and the Bible. It would be great to see Kinky making whistlestops with the Texas Jewboys and the Torah. This could be the most entertaining political campaign in Texas in fifty years.

The Dramatist -- Ken Bruen

I read The Dramatist, Ken Bruen's fourth Jack Taylor novel, the other day. Jack is clean and sober in this one, but he's still a walking disaster area. If there's a wrong decision to be made, Jack will make it. If there's a wrong thing to say, Jack will say it. (He listens to good music and reads good books, though.) Another of Jack's problems is that he's not a danger only to himself. He seems to bring disaster to everyone who associates with him. I wouldn't want to be his friend, or even to live in the same city with him. But I do enjoy reading about him, so much so that I didn't wait for the American edition of this book but bought the British pb at Murder by the Book.

Which reminds me that Martha Farrington, the founder and owner of the Murder by the Book will receive a Raven this year from the Mystery Writers of America. This award is given to people who have made a special contribution to the mystery genre or to MWA. I'm sure Martha's getting it because she has one of the oldest and best mystery bookstores in the country, and she (along with her crack staff) has certainly contributed a lot to the careers of any number of mystery writers. Congratulations to Martha and to everyone at Murder by the Book.

Virginia Mayo 

Virginia Mayo

ABC News: Virginia Mayo, '40s and '50s Actress, Dies

Another of the icons of my youth is gone. I remember her from many movies, but of course the one that stands out is White Heat, though I guess most people will remember her from her Technicolor musicals. The article linked above has a great line from a Warner Bros. press release: "At 115 pounds she is potentially as valuable as an acre of land in downtown Los Angeles and at least several times more desirable."

The Rockford Files

Via Incoming Signals, here's a link to The Rockford Files homepage. Just reading those phone messages brings back a lot of memories of what has to be one of the best p.i. series ever on TV.

Chalotte MacLeod, R.I.P.

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) -- The Canadian-born novelist, who moved from the Boston area to Bowdoinham in 1985, died in a Lewiston nursing home.

MacLeod wrote more than 30 mystery novels. Her specialty was the so-called "cozy" mystery, which steered clear of gore, sex, violence and vulgar language.

MacLeod's Peter Shandy series traced the adventures of a college professor. Her other protagonists included a mystery-solving couple from Boston's Beacon Hill.

MacLeod's work won five American Mystery awards and a Nero Wolfe Award.

I know this will play hell with my "street cred" (as if I had any!), but I enjoyed Charlotte's MacLeod's novels quite a bit. They were funny and clever and well-written, which is quite an accomplishment if you ask me. I met Charlotte a number of times and liked her a lot. I remember that when she came to Houston one February, she wanted to know where the sand and cactus were. Because she was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, her last years weren't happy ones, I'm sure. She deseved a lot better.

Michael Avallone

Ed's Place

Ed Gorman has piece about Avallone today, and it's a great story. My own favorite Avo tale is that when he made a list of the Top Ten Private-Eye Novels of All Time, he put two of his own books on it. As I recall, however, he did modestly give Raymond Chandler the #1 position.

Via James Reasoner's Rough Edges, here's a link to a website devoted to Avallone's work. It's called The Mouse Auditorium, and any reader of the Ed Noon novels will know why.

Elvira

The truth is that Elvira and I have a history, of sorts. Ten or twelve years ago, someone gave me one of those stand-up cardboard figures of her that were used to advertise some brand of beer around Halloween. When Elvira showed up at a toy show in Houston a while later, I took the cut-out to be autographed. She had to stand up and lean over the table to do the signing, and she said, "Some of these guys have been waiting all day to see this."

OK, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "That's not much of a history." Maybe not, but it was pretty exciting for me. I lead a sheltered life, after all.

Elvira was a good sport about signing the cut-out, and I liked her on TV when she was introducing horror movies. I thought she was pretty funny. So when I got a DVD called Elvira's Haunted Hills for Christmas, I thought that might be funny, too.

I was wrong. Cassandra Peterson dresses like Elvira, but she steps out of the TV persona to play Elvira as a hot-to-trot entertainer who spends the weekend in a haunted castle. The idea of a movie sending up all those American-International versions of Poe's stories isn't bad. It's the execution that's lacking. The one-liners just aren't funny, and while the Poe spoofing (of just about every famous story Poe wrote, and some of the poems as well) is interesting for a minute or two, it doesn't really work. Which is too bad, since I wanted to like the movie.

I have to say that the production values are better than average (except for the big special effect at the end, but maybe it's supposed to be so bad that it's funny, which it's not). And Elvira's hills, haunted or not, are on prominent display throughout the movie. Even that (or those) isn't enough to save it unless you're a real Elvira fan. I am, so I managed to watch the whole thing, or at least most of it. I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend it to anybody else, however.

ET Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood

Yahoo! News - ET Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood: "Now a team of American scientists note that recent astrophysical discoveries suggest that we should find ourselves in the midst of one or more extraterrestrial civilizations. Moreover, they argue it is a mistake to reject all UFO reports since some evidence for the theoretically-predicted extraterrestrial visitors might just be found there."

This whole article is worth reading. I confess that I know less than nothing about wormholes and superstring theory, but I do think the possibility of extraterrestrial life is fascinating to contemplate.

I've been reading about this guy named Armstrong Williams, who apparently got $240,000 for plugging the administration's "no child left behind" act in his newspaper or magazine column. I want to know where I can go to sell out to the administration. I'd be more than happy to plug any program at all right here in this immensely popular blog, and I'd do it for a lot less than $240,000. Hey, I'd do it for a tenth of that amount. That's right, for a mere $24,000 I'd plug just about anything. If you have government connections, please be sure to let them know about my bargain rates. And my total lack of scruples.

I Married a Witch

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." -- Peter DeVries

Once again Ivan over at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear has mentioned a movie that has a special significance for me. I Married a Witch is the first movie I ever saw on TV. I don't know how old I was at the time, probably nine or ten, but I do know that we didn't have TV at my house. We were visiting my aunt in San Antonio, Texas, where she shared a small apartment with a friend. I don't remember the sleeping arrangements except that I, as the kid, had to sleep in the living room on the couch. Which meant that I got to watch TV after everyone else was in bed. And the late movie that night was I MARRIED A WITCH. I thought it was great, and I fell instantly in love with Veronica Lake, an infatuation that's stood the test of time. I recall a couple of her scenes in the movie better than anything I've seen in the last month or so.

My Adventures in Peru: Chapter Two

One of the things about that Peru that amazed me almost as much as the mountains was the poverty of many of the people. The house above would be classifed as a mansion by a lot of people we saw, many of whom lived in mud houses (sun-dried adobe, if you want to be fancy) with dirt floors and small muddy courtyards. Most of the houses had windows and doors, but some didn't. We passed one so dilapidated that I assumed no one could possibly live there. And a woman stepped through the doorway. I'm sure there are people living in those places who've never known what it means to be warm and comfortable, at least not by the standards I usually apply.

On the way to Nasca, we passed places in the desert that seemed to be nothing more than four walls of mats made of leaves. We thought they might be some kind of animal pens. No, the guide said, people live there, squatters who've come down from the mountains. They have no running water and no electricity, but if they live there for a certain period of time (five or six years, he wasn't sure), they'll have free claim to the land. Someone checks on them now and then to be sure they're actually living there. For some of us, it was like looking out at the landscape of Mars.

One of the most poignant sights I saw in all of Peru was from the window of the train to Machu Picchu as we were leaving Cusco. We passed adobe house after adobe house, and in some of the windows we could see things like a plant or a teddy bear. But in one of them there was a picture of Britney Spears. I wondered how whoever lived in that room could ever have heard of her, much less obtained a picture. To someone living in that house, Britney Spears must seem as far away as the moons of Jupiter.

The Cornell Hurd Band

My son does the sound for Austin's Cornell Hurd Band. He also produced and recorded the band's latest CD. Great stuff if you like country swing, which I do. There are a couple of instrumentals on the CD that I especially like. They're not country. More like country surf, or something. They'd have been monster hits back in the early '60s. Maybe that's why I like 'em.

The Machu Picchu Choo-Choo

This is the train that goes from Cusco to Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu. When we arrived at the platform in Cusco, l located the conductor (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and sang my line, "Pardon me, boy, is this the Machu Pichu Choo-Choo?" A guy who overheard me asked why I'd burst out in song. I told him it had been my lifelong dream to sing that line at that place. He said he was glad he could be there to share the moment.

The movie's in B&W. They colorized the box for the VHS tape.

The Good Humor Man

For some reason I can't seem to post comments over at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, so I'm going to say something here in response to today's post on Jack Carson, which happens to mention The Good Humor Man. When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite movies. I thought I was probably the only person in the world who remembered it, but I'm glad Ivan over at Thrilling Days does, too. Back in 1950 I saw it three times in two days (I sat through two showings back to back and returned to the theater the next day to see it again). When I saw a video of it several years ago, I nabbed it, and I've watched it several times since. It has everything a kid could want: slapstick comedy, a murder mystery, a secret club, Lola Albright, and Captain Marvel. How could I not love it? (George Reeves is in the movie, but he doesn't play Superman. Or Captain Marvel.) Others might find it a quickie, knocked out on the cheap, with a bad script (it's by Roy Huggins and Frank Tashlin) and unfunny humor. Not me. I think I'll watch it again soon.

Beyond the Sea

I've written about Bobby Darin before (here), and I was looking forward to seeing Beyond the Sea, the Kevin Spacey movie about Darin's life. I was a little surprised to discover that it was showing at only one theater within my driving range (45 minutes) for seeing movies, and even at that, it was showing only twice a day. Once I settled into the theater, however, I understood. There were only about 30 people in the audience, and every one of them was over 60. This is not the kind of audience that theater owners are interested in attracting.

I don't know what I expected from the movie, but within the first ten minutes it had reached a height of such delirious goofiness that I was completely captivated. I just sat there with a big silly grin on my face and took it all in. It's the same old story (if you saw Ray, you know what I mean): star rises, star falls, star comes back. But the way it's told is definitely different. It's so different that I can't quite describe it, but it almost works. Even the ending ("Bobby Darin is still swinging"), corny as it is, had me wiping away happy tears.

A lot has been made about the middle-aged Spacey playing a young guy like Darin, but there's even a disarming commentary about that early on. Spacey isn't playing Darin. Spacey is Darin. So there.

The music? Well, I love the music, of course. And Spacey isn't bad at the singing part, not bad at all. He's not "spot on," as some critics have said. If they really think that, they've never really listened to Bobby Darin. But he's good enough.

Beyond the Sea isn't a well-made movie. As I said, it's kind of goofy. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

My Adventures in Peru: Chapter One

On our first night in Lima, Judy and I went out to eat. Our daughter, Angela, and two of her friends came along. We finally decided to eat at a place called Eddy's. It looked nice, and the menu seemed OK. (Not ominous use of word seemed.) We had something called hamacas, a lot like tamales. Drank bottled water. All seemed well. (Note second ominious use of word seemed.)

We were fine that night. The next morning, we weren't. We were very sick, especially me. I spent a bit of time leaning over the toilet and expelling things. After that, however, I seemed fine. (Note third ominious use of word seemed.) We packed our gear and got ready to fly to Cusco.

When we arrived at the Lima airport, there was quite a line at the check-in counter, and it was warm inside the building. I got almost to the counter when a very weird feeling came over me. I said to Judy, "I think I'm going to pass out." The next thing I knew, I heard people calling my name. I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the floor.

Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. One second I was awake, and the next I wasn't. My body shut down completely and instantly.

I got up and stood there for a few seconds. I felt OK, so I picked up my backpack and said, "I'm fine."

I was wrong. The next thing I knew, I heard people calling my name. Wow, I thought. Deja vu. Except that it wasn't. I'd passed out again. And this time I had a lap full of vomit. I felt like a character in a Ken Bruen novel.

A helpful airport guy who could almost speak English hurried over with a wheelchair and rushed me to the restroom, probably to get me out of the sight of the other passengers, who no doubt thought I was Jack Taylor.

I got myself cleaned up and came out (still in the wheelchair) to discover that the airport doctor was waiting for me. He gave me a prescription for some pills and a really nasty-tasting glucose drink. He also advised me not to fly to Cusco.

I told him that I felt fine (which was true) and that I was not staying in Lima. I had to sign a release saying that I was flying "against advice."

As it turned out, I was right. I was fine, and even the flight didn't bother me. By the next day I was completely recovered and ready to do some climbing in the ruins at Saqsaywaman. I figure that if you can clamber around on a mountain at an altitude about 14,000 feet, you're doing OK. I had not a touch of altitude sickness (or sorochi, as it's called). Judy, however, did. But that's another story.

As for Angela and her friends, none of them got sick at all. And Angela ate exactly the same meal that Judy and I had. Go figure.

Llamas!

In response to Jayme Blaschke's demand here's a llama shot. It doesn't include me, but it does feature the lovely Judy. And, as everyone knows, if Judy was there, someone (me) had to be taking the picture. Admittedly the llama is partially obscured by the colorful indios, but it's there, all right.

He's Back!

Bill Crider, intrepid Andean explorer, acclaimed author, and international bon vivant.

Pardon Me, Boys, Is That the Machu Picchu Choo-Choo?

Tomorrow, December 27, Judy and I will be boarding the Proud Bird with the Golden Tail (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and flying off to Peru. We'll be in Lima for a couple of days, then go to Cusco. We'll celebrate New Year's Eve in Aguas Calientes, just down the mountain from Machu Picchu. Then it's back to Cusco and eventually to Nasca to see the Nasca Lines, which, as we all know, were carved by little guys in flying saucers many years ago. On January 5, we'll be landing at Houston's Intercontinental Airport if all goes well.

What this is leading up to is the fact that I won't be blogging until sometime after January 5. I'd like to thank all of you who have dropped by for a look and/or a comment in the past year, and I hope you won't forget me while I'm gone. I promise to post a photo or two when I return but I won't bore you with the whole long tale of the trip. If I get a chance I'll write that up and post it somewhere, maybe on the website. Or, breaking my promise, maybe here. I'll just have to see how it all works out. Have a happy new year's celebration, and check back here around January 6 or 7 for more blogging in 2005.

I'm Not Dreaming. It's a White Christmas.

This is the front of my house on Christmas morning. Nobody in Alvin, Texas, can remember the last white Christmas here. Maybe there's never been one. I've lived in Texas all my life, and this is the first white Christmas I can remember. I suppose we only care about things like that because of Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby, but it's still kind of neat.

The Legendary Star Wars Christmas Special

I'm Just Sayin': The Holy Grail of Crap

Via World o' Crap comes this link to the Star Wars Christmas Special, the one that George Lucas would like to pretend doesn't exist. Being an Old Guy, I saw it when it appeared on TV, never to be repeated. But someone's made a bootleg DVD, and you can see five minutes or so of it here. (Scroll down to the picture to click on.) It seems more like five hours, so you'll get your money's worth.

Martian Manhunter Need Not Apply

E! Online News - Martian Manhunter Need Not Apply

Sad. Maybe the holiday spirit will overwhelm some "hot, young filmmaker."

Joy to the World . . .

. . . All the boys and girls.

As you can tell, the blog and I are filled with goodwill, cheer, and egg nog. We'd like to wish everyone the best of holidays and a 2005 filled with peace, prosperity, and good reading.

"Thought Experiments" by Roger Ebert

"Thought Experiments" by Roger Ebert

I got this link in an e-mail from Cap'n Bob Napier, who got it in turn through others: "(Craig Miller mentioned this on the Timebinders mailing list and indicated that Jeff Copeland pointed it out to him.) --D Gary Grady." Naturally I had to put it in the blog. It's possibly the best article I've read on fandom, and it mentions some names that should be familiar to everybody (Ed Gorman, especially). Wonderful, nostalgic stuff. My eyes got misty reading it. And if there are a few things Ebert gets wrong or misremembers, so what? It's still a great piece.

Update: Art Scott informs me that this piece was originally published as the "Introduction" to Dick Lupoff's The Best of Xero (Tachyon Press), which I should already own. I don't, so I'd better see what I can do about that.

Sci-Fi Lists - Top Science Fiction Books and Films

Sci-Fi Lists - Top Science Fiction Books and Films

I like lists, if only because it's fun to nitpick them. So I found this an interesting site, and I also enjoyed the related site on fantasy.

$39 Million Bank Robbery

My Way News

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - In one of the world's biggest robberies, thieves took the families of two top bankers hostage and forced the bosses to help them steal more than $39 million from the vaults of a Belfast bank's main office, authorities said Tuesday.

It was either the IRA or a guy named Parker. Probably not Dortmunder, though.

Mystery Martian cleans US space buggy

Mystery Martian cleans US space buggy. 22/12/2004. ABC News Online

An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two US rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said.

It said something - or someone - had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night.

The cleaning had boosted the panels' power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per day after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian dirt.

By contrast, the power output of the solar panels of Mars Spirit - on a different part of the Red Planet - had dropped to just 400 watt-hours a day, clogged by the heavy dust.

"These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really great shape," the magazine quoted NASA rover team leader Jim Erickson as saying.

OK, this is weird. Sounds like a great premise for an SF story.

A Little Self Promotion

Jon Breen, the intelligent and perceptive reviewer for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, has this (among other things) to say about Dead Soldiers, my novel from Five Star (available in hardback and soon to be released in trade paperback): "It's an efficiently plotted and highly amusing male cozy. . . ."

So my comment is, "Male cozy"? Have I invented a new subgenre? Will my name go down in mystery history alongside those of Hammett and Chandler and, well, let's not be riduculous.

Jon also mentions Boss Napier, who plays a very minor part in the story and should not be confused with any persons living or dead because any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Interview!

On December 15, Sarah Weinman wrote this on her blog: "Writers interviewing writers is the new black, but that doesn't mean that new entries aren't welcome."

So ever since, I've been waiting for someone to interview me. And waiting. And waiting. Now I'm beginning to think nobody wants to interview me. So I guess I'll have to do it myself. Herewith, the Interview:

The Blog: When did you decide you wanted to become a writer?

Me: I've always wanted to write. In fact, I wrote my first novel at the age of five, a hardboiled tale of violence and revenge called The Velveteen Rabbit Takes Names and Kicks Ass. It would have been a blockbuster, but all the major publishers rejected it. "We don't do fanfic" was the typical turn-down.

The Blog: But you didn't give up.

Me: Oh, no. I went on to write Nancy Drew to an Inside Straight, a boldly sexual tale of Nancy and Ned and a red-hot strip poker game in which Nancy's best friend, the ambigously named "George," is also involved. Naturally the cowardly big-time publishing establishment turned that one down, too. "Fanfic is not acceptable," they said, "much less erotic fanfic."

The Blog: That must have been discouraging.

Me: You bet it was. I almost didn't write Aunt Gertrude Does Detroit. Frank and Joe Hardy are shocked to discover that their aunt is moonlighting as a pole dancer in a seedy dive, where she does a little diving of her own, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

The Blog: Yes. I do. Maybe. And let me guess: fanfic.

Me: Too true. But . . . .

The Blog: I'm sorry, but we've run out of time. Thanks for being our interview subject.

Me (tugging my forelock and digging my toe into the rug): No. . . thank you. Thank you very much.

A Hardluck Writer

A Hardluck Writer

Dave Zeltserman, author of the excellent Fast Lane, has started a blog. Fast Lane was published by a small press, and now Dave is on the verge of getting his new book, Outsourced, bought by a major house. Or so he hopes. He's going to chronicle his experiences in the blog, and it should be interesting reading.