Ed Lynskey's Blog: Cracked Rearview Mirror

I must spend 10-12 hours a day online, and yet we still get our newspaper delivered. You know, the courier who rifles the bundle from the opened window of his passing car or van. Every morning before dawn, I can hear our tossed newspaper go "plunk" at the end of our driveway. Lately, he's been dead-on at hitting the azalea bed where I have to fish out our newspaper.

I don't know how much longer the dead trees version of newspapers will be with us, the same deal with land mail delivery. Just this past week, I read where the big New Orleans newspaper will cut back their paper version (the online content is still daily) to fewer days per week. So, the traditional newspaper will go the way of the pterodactyl and passenger pigeon. Pity, too.

Which part of the newspaper do you flip to first? It's okay if you say the comics. For me, it's the Sports section. The MLB box scores get a review. The stats are of special interest to me. I take in the sports columns, too. Jason Reid, Tracee Hamilton, Thomas Boswell, Sally Jenkins, and Mike Wise are all top notch sports writers for the WASHINGTON POST. If I have the time, I'll browse the Metro and Style sections. The news I usually get on cable or network TV.

So, happy newspaper reading!

Note: My blogs have slowed down but not discontinued. I like doing them. My writing schedule has expanded, especially the revision stage. I have to run my books through the wringer anywhere from 20-35 times before I give it to my beta (first) reader. So, that's the nutshell reason why.

Memorial Day marks the start of summer in the U.S. So, by June 1st, I like to have my spiffy summer reading list put together. Not that I'll stick to it since I like to skip around on a whim, or whatever piques my interest at the time. Summertime is all about having fun in your leisure anyway. So, without further ado...

Nonfiction. I don't read as much as I'd like to since I write novels. The Carole King biography, A Natural Woman: A Memoir, out this spring looks like a winner. Her music is mellow and upbeat. Earlier, I read Just Kids by Patti Smith, another musician, and liked it. Since I'm a baseball fan, I'll check around for some biographies of star ball players. Or perhaps I'll reread Jim Bouton's classic Ball Four.

Fiction. David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s published this year by Library of America bundles five of his novels. STREET OF NO RETURN I just finished is quite good if vintage noir is your cup of tea. Since my own mob book SKIN IN THE GAME will be out later this year, I'll read Ed Falco's The Family Corleone. John D. MacDonald attracts me for summer reading. Anything pre-Travis McGee is on my radar. The same deal goes for Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series.

Kindle. I've got a bunch of ebooks on my basic Kindle reader. I heard a statistic that only 10% of books on readers' Kindles actually ever get read. Anyway, I hope to do a little better than that. I used to read my Kindle before bedtime, but since I start my writing at 4 A.M., I've had to cut back on my Kindle reading.

So, there's a sampling of my book list. Happy reading to your own summer reading!

When I was a kid, we grew a family garden that produced just about every vegetable you could in our neck of the woods. Garden fresh is special. The next best thing for us these days is a trip to the Farmer's Market. We made the first trip, and it's quite a kick. After eating store-bought produce all winter, the first fresh stuff has an extra zing to the taste buds.

We bought a bag of arugula lettuce for making salads. Salads are a big item in our diet. I'd never tried arugula lettuce before, and I find I like its mustardy flavor. I'm betting a little bit goes a long way in a salad mix. So, we bought a spinner to wash the arugula lettuce, another new experience. Handy gadget.

Strawberries. Divine. Enough said. No, really, I can't get over how delicious they taste. Apples. I know they're not in season, but they're better than the store-bought ones, too. Peaches. Again, not in season, but too good to pass up. Tomatoes. I haven't sampled one. Yet. Cantaloupes. We'll cut it tomorrow, so I can't comment on it.

If I sound like I'm becoming a foodie, I don't think so. But I sure do enjoy eating fresh fruit and vegetables. Add some barbecued chicken, and you've got a feast!

This week we decided to watch the film noir BORDERLINE which can be streamed online for free at YouTube: http://is.gd/vyuyFl.

Shot in 1950, BORDERLINE stars Claire Trevor, Fred MacMurray, and Raymond Burr. Trevor and MacMurray star as undercover narcotics cops out to nail the bad guy Burr. Much of the film takes place in ole Mexico where Trevor and MacMurray are running drugs to the border, and then on to California.

The gimmick is Trevor and MacMurray don't know each other is on the side of the law. If this sounds sort of goofy, well, the film is light-hearted and funny. Trevor and MacMurray play off each other well. She'd already won an Academy Award for KEY LARGO, and he'd been in the brilliant film noir DOUBLE INDEMNITY with Barbara Stanwyck.

There are shootouts and fistfights and some chase scenes. Trevor is cast as a lady copper which is interesting to see for 1950. Get a load of Burr's white suit and shoes. Also, the miniature spy cameras look just like today's cell phones. I've always enjoyed Trevor's acting. MacMurray I've always associated with his TV show, MY THREE SONS which I grew up watching. So, I like him, too.

Enjoyable popcorn fare. James Reasoner over at his blog gave it good marks: http://is.gd/NoI1Tf. Leonard Maltin gives BORDERLINE 2.5 out of 4 stars. I'd rate it more like 3 stars if only because the two leads are personal favorites of mine.

I'd started out the year with the ambitious goal in mind to read 100 books for fun this year. But, as with too many good things in life, I've had to realign my reading goals to fit with my schedule. So, I lowered my number from 100 to 50 books to read in 2012.

The time crunch stems a lot from my writing more of my own novels. That's a good thing, for me at least. The editing process I use takes up long blocks of time. I'm not bragging about how well my books are edited. I'm just saying that's how I write my books. Going through a recounting of what I'm working on is probably boring, so I'll skip it. My freelance work also takes up some time, but not as much as my own writing does.

Of course, I miss doing my leisure reading and haven't given it up. That'd never happen unless I was in a coma, or worse. Right now I'm reading Russell Atwood's EAST OF A and Robert Colby's THE CAPTAIN MUST DIE on my spiffy Kindle. Colby's book is a gem, too. The old Gold Medal authors had something special going on back in the day. So anyways, I'll keep on posting my read books and their comments on Goodreads, just not as many of them.

Happy reading to you and yours!

Yesterday morning I sent off my new crime novel TOPAZ MOON to my publisher. It took me almost three months to finish the edits. By the afternoon, I'd cleared the decks of my freelance work to pull up a crime novel I finished a draft of last year. Today I've gotten through this entire novel, and I believe I can lick it into a tight book. Of course, I also hope I can do it in less time than it took me to complete TOPAZ MOON. For some reason, it gave me a few pesky wrinkles to iron out.

Anyway, I've had to cut back on my social media time. I miss interacting with my twitter pals, but I really need to get this current project put to bed, as well. Meantime, my Mafia novel, SKIN IN THE GAME, still has a Fall release date. So, my novels are what I blogged about for this post. Maybe you'll be looking for them (I had to get in that plug).

Hey, I did also finish reading a great hardboiled Nordic crime novel, HELSINKI WHITE by James Thompson, which is also cool because my wife's folks are Finnish.

Happy reading to you and yours!

Recently, on my Facebook wall, the question came up on how many new words I write per day for my novels. I tried to give a short answer, but then I thought the topic would make for a fun blog post to kick around some more in depth.

The words/day range has changed for me. I've published 10 novels and short story collections. For my first novels, I found 1,500 words made for a solid day's output. If I ever hit 2,500 words, I was in like paradise.

Right at the moment, I've passed the 40,000 word mark in my work-in-progress (WIP), a character-driven crime novel set in Florida. Beyond that much, I can't divulge more because I'm also superstitious to jinx the project. Anyway, I've been averaging about 4,000 works per day. That count comes to about 12 pages in the book.

That's at the top of the range for me. This project is trucking along fast now, and I already know the ending, so the work can progress faster than usual. On the other hand, I hasten to add I'm not running a race or in competition with anybody. So, that's where I am right now, and it feels good and controlled for me.

So, I'll stay the course until this Florida book is finished. Who knows? Maybe you'll want to find it and read it next year.

Happy reading to you and yours!

Are you more of a city cat or a country cat when it comes to your selection of which novels you read? Or does the setting make any difference, at all? A cracking good story is a cracking good story, no matter where it might take place. Several large U.S. cities that have been used as settings make me think twice before I do any outlining for a new crime novel.

So many books I've read are set in NYC, for example. Now, I'll read any Matt Scudder title, even if it's cast in NYC, but that's because Lawrence Block can make me see something different about NYC. Boston also gets a pass from me. My wife's family is from Boston, and my sports hero Ted Williams played his baseball career there, so I love the city. I just can't write yet another novel placed there.

Lately, my crime novels have taken place in fictitious suburbs in Northern Virginia across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. I call them New Yvor City (the posh) and Old Yvor City (the gritty). There's something unique (to me, at least) about dwelling in a suburb. I just haven't been able to get a handle on what it is. Yet.

Happy reading to you and yours!

I got one of the basic Kindles for this Christmas, and dozens of reads later, I'm happy to report that it's been pretty much a gas for me. One feature that delights me is the ability to make the letters to the gnat-sized print size LARGER for reading. My eyes appreciate that a lot. Recently, I read THE RED SCARF, Gil Brewer's noir classic, from the good folks at New Pulp Press. I plowed through RED SCARF in two evenings. A sheer pleasure, I can tell you.

Of late, my reading for fun has tapered off. I'm not sure why that is. I think writing my own novels has overloaded my circuits, and I just want to chill out in the evening without looking at more printed text. The Nats (D.C.'s baseball team) are playing again, so they provide a nice diverson.

The Kindle's weight is light in my hands. It's surprising how heavy even a 250-page book gets while you're holding it to read. After a while, I also learned to read from a Kindle as fast as I can a paper book. So, the Kindle has spoiled me, although I'll never leave paper books for good, I'm certain.

Happy reading to you and yours!

In honor of today's birthday boy, I wrote this blog. I first saw Al Pacino in Serpico at the cinema, and I must say I've enjoyed his early work more his later movies. In not particular order, here are the top five films of his that I've watched.

1. Sea of Love

2. Serpico

3. The Godfather

4. Scent of a Woman

5. Dog Day Afternoon