Craving the End, CRIMEFACTORY 4, Overlap, Etc.

CRIMEFACTORY issue #4 is live today, so for anybody still hanging onto my Charlie Byrne story "The Blues Before and After" it finally, finally comes to an end like a bad karoke song. Never attempted a serial before (like where would somebody like me swing that?) so now I guess I have, for better or worse. Mr.Rawson and Mr. Ashley? It's been an honor. After talking with Keith late this last week (with of all people this freakin' guy) I now know exactly how the CRIMEFACTORY hombres do it. Ready? Here's the top secret formula: lots of black coffee and strong faith in what they're doing. I'm telling you, this issue of CRIMEFACTORY is so massive, so utterly cool...it's the best one yet by far. As for my Charlie installment in CF4, I'm not spoiling anything but the whole thing (after some gun play) putters out like an awkwardly played piano in an empty room. Of course idiot me (duh) I went and started another story last week and I'm hoping to finish the final draft by Sunday. Looming deadline. Not a Charlie piece but there's some six-degree-Venn Diagram overlap going on. Fringe people from Charlie's world. Bad people. A crime fiction fan's kind of people. And one hero--a seventeen y.o. kid who wants nothing more than to buy a car and get out of New Jersey but good. Got stuck at 2K for a while and couldn't push on through until I changed the voice to 3rd person and then I woke up hours later clocking the 6K count. Now it's slash, slash, slash. After that, meh, I need to get serious on some bigger things.

Friday's Words to Write By: BG

"I don't think people read—there are certainly exceptions. We are still alive and we still read. But I don't think it is the same. I think television and now the computer has changed things. I don't know exactly how. But I am going to go on. As a writer who has passed away sometime ago, Douglas Wolf, once said, "Even if there were only one reader out there, I would still be writing for him or her." I feel the same way." - Barry Gifford

Thursday: Pretty Much

Lots of anger. Not believing this and that in a piece that held so much promise. Want to dump the whole thing in the trash but I won't. Just need a slash here. Maybe an amputation there. Nifty opening that had that rhythm and it needs to go. Bye-bye. Some day in the future there will be an intelligent avatar who you'll be able to feed fledgling fiction to, an intelligent avatar that will say, come on...you're better than that. Until then, h-e-a-d-a-c-h-e-s. Then again it could be this summer cold making me feel rotten. Onward.

Rebels

Yesterday I was overwhelmed by the diamonds floating in the the fiction aisle dross. It seems so many people have so many opinions on what you must-must-must read, what is critical. 9 times out of 10 they're under-read themselves and are pushing merely what they committed to recently. "This book is phenomenal." Really? REALLY? Take a moment, bub. Wasn't her fourth book better and wasn't his take on the classic Cain and Able tale far better than this sugared up Gen Y feed? Huh? (Stammers) "Well, I only read this and blah, blah, blah." Hmm, I don't know. There have been so many let downs. Caught the rebroadcast of Roddick vs McEnroe last night. Johnny Mac still has wicked game which makes me think if I'm cracking my knuckles and I'm going to have to choose a book, make mine a rebel with guts, who can play fearless, who breaks the mold and ain't no pretty boy. Always. Other things. Was without power for a few days here and just got back online last night. 46 hours total. Massive storm...killed some people and I think one on the Bay. I feel bad for people struck by tragedy but I've little sympathy for fools who choose to screw around on the Chesapeake without checking the marine forecast. Heard that the DNR and the Coast Guard received, like, thirty seven-distress calls. Thirty-seven? Do I have to draw you a picture? National Weather Service says violent they mean it, meatheads. Violent in spades.

Friday's Happy Trailers - Rouge, Read

Makes Me Feel Like Riverdancin'

After Christopher Walken who're you going to call for the go-to creepy villain, cop, and edgy character, huh? Best Willem Dafoe flicks for me? TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., WILD AT HEART, BOONDOCK SAINTS, DAYBREAKERS and maybe PLATOON. Maybe. Not a big Ollie Stone fan except for possibly SALVADOR which brings up the clean-up creepy hitter (and a kick-ass vampire slayer too) Jimmy Woods. Man, they grow some strange, talented folk in Appleton, Wisconsin, don't they? Happy Birthday, WD.

Your Ride's Here, Mr. Bill

If you haven't heard, Indiana's favorite son and Crimehound just landed himself a book deal. Way to go, Frank! Details are circulating and I'm sure more news will be coming in the weeks and months ahead. I finally got to meet Frank this past Fall at Bouchercon and like many slugging it out in the trenches I'm thrilled for him. For those uninitiated to Frank's writing let me just say this...wrap cold barbed wire around your deepest heartfelt fear and then slowly squeeze in the rust. Alas, as with Blackmoore before him, now that Frank has been kicked upstairs I'm afraid it's time to leave the blog dog pile on the right. Here's a nice empty liquor box to pack your things. Don't worry, I'll still send people your way now and then. One more thing. Can I have your parking space?

Wednesday Words (and Images) to Write By: Banksy

Everything. Everything that dude does.

Tuesday's Words to Write By: L.G.

"A book is an experience. You’re seducing the reader and bringing them into your imagination and holding them there for as long as they’re reading the book. You construct everything. You construct the sets, the wardrobe, the world. You’re God." - Lee Goldberg

Monday's Words to Write By: R.C.

"Too much detail is bad. You can drown your story in detail; you can absolutely destroy the narrative. Part of the craft—maybe the biggest part—is in learning how much is enough." -Robert Crais

Logging Out, Not

Finished a different kind of story today. Wasn't going to because I had a half-baked plan to charge micro lefts at the cove (wait for the camera to pan all the way "port" to the takeoff point). Forecast looked okay, sunny thigh high. Nothing as gin-clear as Jack's Hawaiian sandbar below but water time is water time even in the mushburgers. True to a lot of plans these days, the trip got shit canned by fates aligned against me. Maybe Wednesday. Maybe. But then again, I did finish the story so there's that. There's that.

Saturday's Words To Write By: D.R.

"Nothing else much matters once you have achieved the hardest thing, which is to act out of conviction. Even if you have been beaten by evil, in the bitterness of defeat the battle has left a trace for the others, and you can go feeling clean. I recognize that I am a minor writer; but this does not affect the depth of my convictions." - Derek Raymond (Robert William Arthur Cook)

This Just In:

Thornhill's mother told police she and her neighbor, who is Jesse Thornhill's landlord, "had been having problems with her son."

I'll say. Get a load of the photo. Jesse has some issues.

Danish "Redneck" Noir

I know most folks who happen by this blog also make the rounds over to Jed Ayres' HARDBOILED WONDERLAND. Jed is a strong-opinioned writer who knows the crime film spectrum like I know good French food. Anyway, I finally got around to watching the Danish noir flick TERRIBLY HAPPY last night on Netflix, and I'm curious to see what he thinks of it. Not everybody's cup of tea, a tad surreal, bleak, and existential. Kierkegaardish? You bet. Danes get a blunt rap on the knuckles from Europe...weak jokes like "Interpol was looking for an escaped convict in Denmark, and sent pictures of the man to the Danish police. The pictures were taken from both sides and the front. After a few days the Danes replied: "We caught the guys on the left and the right but the one in the middle got away". But then again Denmark consistently gets ranked as one of the best places to live and has some of the happiest people on earth. Jakob Cedergren was awesome as the messed-up cop and I haven't had my heart broken by the likes of Lene Maria Christensen since I choked up watching a young Emily Watson in BREAKING THE WAVES. Rainy day movie...and my temperament.

Mr. Hang Dog

"It helps if you dress like a detective. Detectives dress kinda square. If you look like a detective people are gonna think you're packing something."

Hats off to the original Mr. Hang Dog...Happy Birthday, Harry Dean Stanton.

David Z.

About a year or so ago I included David Zeltserman's SMALL CRIMES in my list of must reads, adding comments about Mr. Z's mastery of soul crushing noir and something to the effect of "f*** your darkest hour." A few days ago super-pimp David Cranmer pinged me about Mr. Zeltserman's latest short "King" on BEAT TO A PULP. Get some here.

325 x 10

Talking to myself. 325 x 10 = 3250. Time 180 minutes. The word count goal for today. The clock. 10 pages maybe if I'm lucky. No idea what will happen or what the plot is but if I don't get this idea off my plate I can't move forward. 4 characters scratch in the corners of my head, scenes dangle yet to be fused. No nets. Why do I do this to myself? This is the charge for Monday. UPDATE: Brain blew up at 1632. Forgot to stretch.

Compass Points To....

Today was a wash. Didn't get anything close to done and barely any energy. Seems there's a lot of that going around these days with the fringe dwellers. Of course I should have just stayed away from the news. Damn.

America this is your compass pointing straight to hell.

MM4 T-Minus 16 Days

Swanky new canyon digs there, Don. Total boiler room/swashbuckling creative do or die.

The empire begins on the 25th.

Move forward.

Jersey: Apocalypse Edition

If there is a hell, tucked up in a corner where you are forced to watch the folly of human mental sloth in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a legion of these "action" bobblehead figures are charged with nipping your scab-ravaged flesh with whiny glee.

Wow. Was this even necessary? God, people, enough already with all this MTV Jersey Shore crap. I mean, if someone is willing to make and market something like this why can't I have a bobblehead figure of, say, Führer Christie? What's that? He would crush and splinter my desk? Yeah, I suppose so...plus when I set it on fire Christie might start an unruly grease blaze. God save the Garden State or, at the very least, use the big gun and make it quick.

In Lieu of jumper cables, AEDs, etc.

A great house guest brought me a pound of GORILLA COFFEE a week ago. Outstanding stuff. Just the thing to prime the creative engines for the long neglected projects. Deadlines and teaching seven-year-olds how to hit a tennis ball...meh...these things don't seem so daunting now. Life can be better with certain elements of chemistry. As a former chef I'm pretty picky when it comes to endorsing any food stuff, but the packaging alone, I mean, come on people! Get some here.

HAPPY 4TH...( I guess )

Used to be my favorite holiday, but not so much anymore. Enough said. Is tennis still on? Sweeeeet....

No Mercy

Recently someone, I'm not saying who, poked me with the idea of doing a professional fighter/Charlie Byrne story. At first I thought, nah. Me? But then a recent conversation with a fellow Jersey lug of sorts ( a guy who bet on a few fights when he was a kid) got me thinking. Maybe a tie-in, maybe a quick buck artist, or maybe early Charlie making the moves on his best girl with ties to the scene...hmmm. This song helps the decision process. Before the big E Street sell-out, Nils, remember? Oh well. We love ya'll anyway.

Last Two: Summer Break Reading List

Rounded up the break with these two beauties. Yeah, yeah, yeah... I'm late to the game on Winter's Bone, sorry about that, but give me a break will you? As for Levison...every single hit man novel by comparison pales to this biting satire. Laughed so hard, there were tears in my eyes. Tears.