Hard Cold Whisper Nominated Best Novel in the Spinetingler Awards

 

Hard Cold Whisper has been nominated Best Crime Novel for the Spinetingler Awards.

This is a public voting award…so…go over there and vote for me.

Vivacious Vixens & Blackmail Babes

Ebook is now up at Amazon Kindle. The paperback version, back to back with a collection from Gary Lovisi, will be avaiable in a week or two.

Wildside Press didn’t go for the reprocessed McGinnis and Macquire covers I came up with….so I will publish them here for your eyes:

 

“The Lust Damned” on Kindle and Smashwords

Novella, “The Lust Damned or: Long Island Iced Tea” now up as a Kindle ebook and at SMashwords in several eBook formats. Originally published as “Long Island Iced Tea” in the Prime Books anthology, The Urban Bizarre, and in Hardboiled Magazine #34.

I remember starting this one at the San Diego Writer’s Conference, 2001.

For 99 cents, why not?

Wild Turkey Audio Book Now Available

Want it?

Get it.

Wild Turkey Goes Audio Book

Today signed contract for the audio book version of my 2001 crime noir from Forge, Wild Turkey, with iambik audio, that has put out an audio of  Hard Cold Whsper. They did a great job and hope to do more audio versions of my novels, new or old.

The film version, I am told, with Blue Coach Productions in Los Angeles, is still undereway, has funding, seeks more. I signed the option on that last June, a pivotal month for me — ex-girlfriend goes bonkers and has to hit rehab and the bughouse; my daughter conceived in Ensenada at the beach mansion of Dino DeLaurentiis; CBS goes forward with pilot and spends a lot of money and never gets a chance for one airing, despite the good reviews from focus groups. Seems like last June was only weeks ago…the quickening, as Art Bell used to call it.

Wild Turkey was not an easy sell at Tor/Forge…most my books were from small presses and the novel was short. But my editir, after nine months, sold the publisher on it. Advance was modest. Then my editor left for greener pastuees and I was orphaned. The book sold decent numbers in hardcover but bombed in trade paperback — I always thought a mass market ppbk would have been better. I did a recond book under a pen name but have never dopne another with Tor/Forge, although I certainly plan to in the future.

I wrote Wild Turkey in three weeks (well, the first draft) in May, or June, 1999, sitting in the law library downtown to escape the heat. I liked the isolation. The original title was Affair. The first chapter was meant for a different, more erotic novel but morphed into a crime story or suburbia. The femme fatale was based on someone I did not know but saw all the time around downtown. I lived inside this novel all those 21 days, woke up and went to sleep with it. I have not done it that way with a novel ever since. The story was a god escape for me because the summer, and even the fall/winter, of 1999 was not the best time in my life.

Like my first novel did, I thought Wild Turkey would lead to some big changes in my life. Maybe it still will, when and if the movie version is made and gets out there. Oddly, like with The Naughty Yard in 1994, it came out while I was hanging with the Larry McCaffery grad student and local writers crowd; in both instances, certain amorous encounters happened, more loose and sleazy in 1994, but in 2001 leading to living with a woman for three years. It did serve a turning point as my first book with a commercial publisher (not inclduing the two anthologies I did with Carroll & Graf). Sone people in the small indie press scene said I had sold out; there were the usual petty jealousies and snide remarks from strangers even, but I simply shrugged.  Reviews were mixed — readers either love or hate this book, no in-between.

Wild Turkey will always have a certain soft part in my heart and memory,

 

Audio Book of Hard Cold Whisper

An audio book version of Hard Cold Whisper will be forthcoming from Iambik LLC in Canada.

Hard Cold Whisper

New novel, a crime noir, Hard Cold Whisper, will soon be released by Black Mask.

This great cover design is by Goodloe Byron. who also did the covers for my books Shabbytown and Ourselves or Nothing.

I wrote this one last Labor Day during the 3 Day Novel Contest marathon.  I’ve fixed it up and added more pages since, but about 85 percent of it was indeed composed in those manic 72 hours in a motel room in Tijuana.

The Trouble with Tramps

The Trouble with Tramps is an Orrie Hitt homage/pastiche that you can now get from Black Mask Books or Amazon.

NaNoWriMo: Post-Crime Noir and A Bra Full of Bullets, Yo

Every year I try to do the National Novel Writing Month thang, aka NaNoWriMo, but I always get side-tracked.  Doing 50,000 words in 30 days is nothing, it’s a matter of not letting assignments, deadlines for late books, new book deals, and life get in the way.

It’s a good motiavtor.

So I decided my project this year will be this post-crime noir-y thang I’ve had in my head since summer that I shall call A Bra Full of Bullets (appropriated, apropos, from Hal Dresner’s The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books).

The Round-Bed Chick

The Round-Bed Chick is a novella in the crime noir/sleazecore vein, published exclsuively as an e-book from Olympia Press.  One day I will expand it into a full novel (say 90K words), but that is down the line…for now, this section stands well on its own.

As Amazon Kindle, order here.

As Mobipocket ebook, order here.

From publisher, order here.