Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Free on Kindle for Three Days
How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths: Shaun Kaufman,Colleen Collins: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: The private eye genre has come a long way, baby, with new subgenres — from teenage PIs to vampire gumshoes to geriatric sleuths — attracting new readers every year. Unfortunately, most writers are not aware of the state-of-the-art developments that shape today’s professional private investigator, which sometimes leave writers floundering with impossible and antiquated devices, characters and methods in stories. Which is why we wrote How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths, whose material we culled from our combined 14 years as private investigators, and also from our teaching online classes and conducting workshops at writers’ conferences about writing private investigators. How to Write a Dick isn’t about how to write a novel, but what you need to know to write an authentic, compelling 21st-century sleuth character or story.R. B. Greaves, R. I. P.
R. B. Greaves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Ronald Bertram Aloysius "R. B." Greaves III (born November 28, 1944, Georgetown, Guyana, died September 27, 2012) is a singer who had chart success in 1969 with the pop single "Take a Letter Maria". A #2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, this single sold one million copies and earned a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. Greaves also had a Top 40 pop hit a year later with "Always Something There to Remind Me". R.B. Greaves passed away in Los Angeles, California on September 27, 2012 at the age of 67.
Happy Birthday to the Peanuts Gang
Readers of This Blog Will Not Be Surprised at the Gator's Presence
Though Jeff Meyerson might be surprised that it was in Brooklyn.
Two People Arrested on Possession of Weapons — And an Alligator
Two People Arrested on Possession of Weapons — And an Alligator
The Persuasive Books of Jane Austen
AbeBooks: The Persuasive Books of Jane Austen: It can be safely said that Jane Austen is one of the best-loved English authors of all time. Born December 16, 1775, Austen made a mark on the literary world with her romantic fiction set among the landed gentry in England. Although she is one of the most popular and well known authors, there is little known about her private life.
Overlooked Movies: Tarzan and the Lost City
The "lost city" of the title is, of course, Opar. Tarzan is in England about to marry Jane, when he has a vision that there's trouble back in Africa. So off he goes to set things right. Some bad guys are looking for the lost city, and if they find it, more people will come to Africa and mess thing up. Not an unusual plot for a Tarzan movie. Jane follows Tarzan back to Africa, which introduces another not unexpected complication.
The movie was filmed in Africa, which is a big improvement over some of the backlot Tarzan movies. The scenery's great. Van Dien (not counting the accent) is just fine, and so is Jane March as Jane. The action's not bad, and while I was a bit bothered by the use of magic at the conclusion, I didn't let it keep me awake at night. Check it out.
Monday, October 01, 2012
Happy Birthday to the Continental Op
"Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me.... - The Barnes & Noble Review: "Peter Collinson" published "Arson Plus" in Black Mask magazine on this day in 1923, introducing a nameless hero called “the Continental Detective.” Soon the hero was “the Continental Op,” and soon Dashiell Hammett was signing his work with his real name.
More at the link.
More at the link.
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
The Long Black Train: Heath Lowrance: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: It's Hell on Wheels. A simpering madman, possessed by dark magic, transforms the night train into a rolling charnel house. And Hawthorne is about to come face-to-face with an evil beyond imagining.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Writing Crime Fiction: Naomi Hirahara,Max Allan Collins,Stephen Gallagher,Dave Zeltserman,Ed Gorman,Paul Levine,Lee Goldberg,Joel Goldman,Vicki Hendricks,Libby Hellman: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Are you a crime fiction writer? Are you a crime fiction reader? If your answer to either question is yes, you've got to have Writing Crime Fiction, the latest book from the award winning authors of the Top Suspense Group!
Happy Birthday to the CD
The CD, At 30, Is Feeling Its Age: Today marks the 30th anniversary of a musical format many of us grew up with: the compact disc. It's been three decades since the first CD went on sale in Japan. The shiny discs came to dominate music industry sales, but their popularity has faded in the digital age they helped unleash. The CD is just the latest musical format to rise and fall in roughly the same 30-year cycle.
There had been compact discs pressed before 1982. But the first CD to officially go on sale was Billy Joel's 52nd Street.
There had been compact discs pressed before 1982. But the first CD to officially go on sale was Billy Joel's 52nd Street.
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Sunday, September 30, 2012
Tom Piccirilli - fundraiser | Indiegogo
As some of you have heard, Tom Piccirilli is about to undergo surgery for a brain tumor. After the surgery will come chemo, radiation, and rehab. This is a frightening thing, as I know all too well. My wife, Judy, had a brain tumor removed 20 years ago. Hers was benign, but the 12-hour surgery and the recovery were nevertheless an experience neither of us would care to repeat. Tom Piccirilli's surgery is more serious, and his recovery will be more difficult. He's a fine writer with a strong voice, as you know if you've read his books or his short stories. I've mentioned some of them here on the blog. If you'd like to help out with a contribution to his fundraiser, here's a link: Tom Piccirilli - fundraiser | Indiegogo. If you can't contribute but can help spread the word, I'm sure it would be appreciated. If you can do both, that would be great.
The Sun Worshippers -- A. S. Fleischman
Gamage is an ex-newspaper reporter who's come to a small southern California town named Thebes near the Salton Sea to write the official biography of Colonel Martinka, the town's wealthiest citizen, a man who made a fortune as a date farmer, but who now seems to be interested in getting rid of his crops and turning into a land developer. The people of the town aren't too thrilled with this idea, especially the publisher of the local newspaper.
Gamage is just interested in the fee he's going to get for the biography, at least at first, but things don't turn out to be what they'd seemed. Martinka's son, Frank, is married to Gamage's old flame, who's very interested in rekindling the romance. Accounts of the past don't square up with each other. Frank is intent on keeping Gamage from meeting his father and mother. Martinka has secrets in his past that nobody's talking about.
Fleischman kept me guessing all the way through, and there are some surprises along the way. This is good reading from a fine storyteller.
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Win a DVD
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is giving away Dark Night of the Scarecrow to one lucky winner. Click the link to go to the blog and get instructions on how to enter the contest.
Free Today for Kindle
Robbers Roost: James Reasoner: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Originally published as Powell's Army: #4 by Terence Duncan Three-fingered Jack and his gang of road agents had a craving for money and a place to spend it. After hijacking an rmy payroll wagon and killing the troopers riding guard, they hightailed it into Virginia City, where anything could be had for the asking by a hardcase with a fat poke. But hot on their trail was hard-hitting trio of undercover agents known as Powell's Army. They knew Montana lived by the law of the gun. And that meant bracing Jack's killer gang before the vigilantes did---to make sure they stretched hemp the legal way!
Thundering out of the past. A trio of deadly enforcers ride the range to adventure with one military misfit. Three men and one red-headed woman unchained lightning in a savage, lawless land, the U.S. army's secret weapon, dispensing their own fiery brand of frontier justice throughout the American west, Violent, untamed, and unpredictable--nothing can stop them.
And You Wondered Why You Paid More for Gasoline the Next Week
The Daily Caller: Upon sobering up and presumably realizing what he had done, Perkins messaged his boss that he would not be able to make it to work due to an unwell relative.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: Queen of the Screwball Mystery: Jeffrey Marks: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: What goes up must come down, and Craig Rice’s meteoric rise to the top of the mystery writing heap by 1946 was rivaled only by her rapid descent into semi-obscurity. Her face once graced the cover of Time magazine, but today her books are found in second hand stores. The mystery surrounding Rice was almost as puzzling as her books. Where was she born? What was her given name? What novels and short stories did she publish? Who did she marry and how many times? How many children did she have? Where did the penname of Craig Rice emanate from? How did she die? In the forty years since her death, the answers to these questions were buried under piles of confusion, lies, and exaggeration. In the 20th century how could these basic questions of a person’s life be so vague?
Jeffrey Marks began a quest to learn the answers. His research took the better part of a decade. He traced Rice’s oeuvre back to original manuscripts to determine authorship. He tracked down relative, friends, and other writers to learn answers on Craig’s name, her heritage, and her descent from superstardom into drinking, mental illness, and trouble with the law.
Irving Adler, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Irving Adler, a former New York City teacher who became a prolific writer of books on math and science for young people after being forced from the classroom during the Red Scare of the early 1950s, died on Saturday in Bennington, Vt. He was 99.
Michael O'Hare, R. I. P.
Airlock Alpha: Michael O'Hare, who played Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair during a single season of "Babylon 5" only to reprise the character a few times in later seasons, has died. He was 60.
Arthur O. Sulzberger, R. I. P.
- NYTimes.com: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who guided The New York Times and its parent company through a long, sometimes turbulent period of expansion and change on a scale not seen since the newspaper’s founding in 1851, died on Saturday at his home in Southampton, N.Y. He was 86.
Looper
It seems that 2074 isn't a happy place (not that 2044 is, either). A boss called The Rainmaker is sending all the old Loopers back to die, and while capturing Bruce, the men sent to get him have killed his wife. So Bruce is going to kill The Rainmaker in 2044 to save his wife's life. Time-travel paradoxes? That's just the beginning. That's also all I'm going to say about the plot. The screenplay has some nice surprises, and it's best to let the movie spring them on you.
Gordon-Levitt has a good time playing a young Bruce Willis, and Willis has a good time playing an old Gordon-Levitt. Emily Blunt shows up for a nice turn, and there's a kid actor named Pierce Gagnon, who's really good. Jeff Daniels is great as the crime boss in 2044. If you like good SF movies or action movies or just plain good movies, give this one a try.
A Kickstarter Project of Interest
Turning Sentences Into Words by Alison Nussbaum — Kickstarter: A bit of hardboiled history will come alive in this collection of short stories by my father, bank-robber-turned-writer Al Nussbaum.
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Chris Economaki, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Chris Economaki, whose gravelly broadcast voice and prolific pen — specifically, his manual Royal typewriter — narrated the rise of auto racing from county-fair dirt tracks to a global multibillion-dollar business, died on Friday in a nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. He was 91.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
One of the Greats
Friday, September 28, 2012
This Day in History
This Day in History — History.com — What Happened Today in History: On this day in 1941, the Boston Red Sox's Ted Williams plays a double-header against the Philadelphia Athletics on the last day of the regular season and gets six hits in eight trips to the plate, to boost his batting average to .406 and become the first player since Bill Terry in 1930 to hit .400. Williams, who spent his entire career with the Sox, played his final game exactly 19 years later, on September 28, 1960, at Boston’s Fenway Park and hit a home run in his last time at bat, for a career total of 521 homeruns.
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To Live and Dine in L. A.
The Raw Story: A US chef was convicted of second degree murder after he admitted to slow-cooking his wife’s body for four days to get rid of the evidence, while claiming she had died accidentally.
J.K’s Rowling New Book Plus 25 More Stories of British Provincial Life
AbeBooks: She’s back. J.K. Rowling’s new novel, The Casual Vacancy, has finally been published but Harry Potter and Hogwarts are nowhere to be seen. Rowling’s first novel for adults takes on the intricacies of English provincial life.
Forgotten Books: Red Dragon -- Wade Curtis (Jerry Pournelle)
There's quite a bit about about sailing in the book, so if you like that sort of thing, you'll get plenty of it. To me it started to seem like padding after a while, but Curtis/Pournelle makes up for it at the end with some really nice chase/pursuit sequences in an experimental plane.
This was a sort of middling book for me. It's okay, and Crane's all right as a character, but there's nothing to make it stand out. It's just as well the Pournelle gave up on spy fiction and turned his hand to SF. He's done a lot better work in that field. I'd recommend this only as a curiosity, and cheap copies can be found easily on the Internet.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
No Comment Department
The Raw Story: Couples who share housework duties run a higher risk of divorce than couples where the woman does most of the chores, a Norwegian study sure to get tongues wagging showed on Thursday.
The divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 percent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
The divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 percent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
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