David Morrell's Blog
June 16, 2015
My Facebook author’s page
Instead of a blog on my website, I post daily comments on my Facebook author’s page, which is devoted to books, movies, and music. We have energetic discussions there. Here’s the ink: https://www.facebook.com/DavidMorrell...
The post My Facebook author’s page appeared first on David Morrell.
June 14, 2014
CATCHING UP
CATCHING UP
June, 2014. An entire year has passed, and I suddenly realize that I haven’t posted a new blog here in all that time. Things have been busy. Thanks to your willingness to follow me to 1854 London, MURDER AS A FINE ART made the New York Times bestseller list and for a while reached #1 among all books sold on the U.S. division of Amazon.
The Associated Press called it “a literary thriller that pushes the envelope of fear.” Library Journal chose it as one of the top five thrillers of 2013. Publishers Weekly called it “an epitome of the intelligent page turner” and chose it as one of the top ten mystery/thrillers of 2013.
Because of my three years of research, I was especially pleased by this review from Entertainment Weekly: “Morrell’s masterful blend of fact and fiction reads like a nineteenth-century novel, evoking 1854 London with such finesse that you’ll hear the hooves clattering on cobblestones, the racket of dustmen, and the shrill call of vendors.”
MURDER AS A FINE ART is now available as a trade paperback. The logo on the new cover READERS PICK GUIDE INSIDE indicates that this edition includes material for home book clubs. There are discussion topics as well as a conversation between me and Victorian professor/Thomas De Quincey biographer, Robert Morrison, along with an essay in which I explain how a near industrial accident (when I worked in factories to pay college tuition) made me choose my approach to writing thrillers. (more after the cover)
[image error]
Many readers contacted me through my website, asking me to write a sequel. Its called INSPECTOR OF THE DEAD, and it’ll be published early next year. Thomas De Quincey and Emily will be back, along with Scotland Yard detectives Ryan and Becker. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert Will make an appearance also.
In addition, I’ve written a De Quincey short story, “Tears of Green,” which is about several terrible deaths that occurred in England’s Lake District when De Quincey lived there as a young man. This short story will probably appear first as an e-book before it’s in print. I’ll post news about it here when it’s released. If my plans work out, there’ll be an afterword that contains numerous photographs of the locations in the story.
In December, my two-part comic-book series, Spider-Man: Frost, was published, but the second issue was mistakenly released in a flawed version with typos, repeated dialogue captions, and other errors. Now that series has been released in a trade paperback collection, Amazing Spider-Man: Peter Parker—the One and Only, which contains the corrected version of the second issue, along with an essay in which I explain the tremendous detail that’s involved in writing a comic book. Next to pages from my script, there are examples of what the artist, legendary Klaus Janson, did with my descriptions.
Marvel Comics asked me to write something else for them, a stand-alone Wolverine issue, which is called Wolverine: Feral, and will be published in August. The key to the character is that he’s part animal and part human, and in my story, he’s forced to decide which he would rather be.
Please remember to visit my EVENTS page on this website, in case I’m coming to your area. Thank you for being a faithful reader. This is my 42nd year as a published author, and as I keep searching for new ways to write action and suspense, I appreciate that you make the journey with me.
The post CATCHING UP appeared first on David Morrell.
March 29, 2013
MURDER AS A FINE ART
In my four decades as an author, from First Blood through The Brotherhood of the Rose and Creepers, I’ve always tried to find new ways to write action and suspense. Readers know that I do my best to surprise them and take them to places they’ve never been.
My latest novel Murder as a Fine Art attempts to make you believe that you’re in 1854 London. It’s a blend of fact with fiction in a harrowing exhumation of the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders, a series of mass killings that rivaled those of Jack the Ripper for terrorizing London and all of England.
My main character also blends fiction and fact. Thomas De Quincey was one of the most fascinating personalities of Victorian England. He was obsessed about the Ratcliffe Highway killings and wrote about them vividly in his classic essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”
De Quincey invented the term “subconscious” and anticipated Freud by a half century. He was the first person to write about drug addiction in his infamous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He inspired Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes.
This forerunner of the greatest detective will lead you into the streets, slums, mansions, and prisons of gaslit London. As a literary luminary battles a brilliant murderer, their lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.
Publishers Weekly gave Murder as a Fine Art a rare starred and boxed review: “Brilliant . . . an epitome of the intelligent page turner.”
Booklist also gave it a starred review, calling it an “exceptional historical mystery . . . riveting [with] page-flipping action, taut atmosphere, and multifaceted characters.”
To see the really cool trailer, click here.
To see the list of cities that I’ll be visiting, click here.
The post MURDER AS A FINE ART appeared first on David Morrell.
COMING ON MAY 7! MURDER AS A FINE ART
In my four decades as an author, from First Blood through The Brotherhood of the Rose and Creepers, I’ve always tried to find new ways to write action and suspense. Readers know that I do my best to surprise them and take them to places they’ve never been.
On May 7, my latest novel Murder as a Fine Art will make you believe that you’re in 1854 London as I blend fiction with fact in a harrowing exhumation of the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders, a series of mass killings that rivaled those of Jack the Ripper for terrorizing London and all of England.
My main character also blends fiction and fact. Thomas De Quincey was one of the most fascinating personalities of Victorian England. He was obsessed about the Ratcliffe Highway killings and wrote about them vividly in his classic essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”
De Quincey invented the term “subconscious” and anticipated Freud by a half century. He was the first person to write about drug addiction in his infamous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He inspired Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes.
This forerunner of the greatest detective will lead you into the streets, slums, mansions, and prisons of gaslit London. As a literary luminary battles a brilliant murderer, their lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.
Publishers Weekly gave Murder as a Fine Art a rare starred and boxed review: “Brilliant . . . an epitome of the intelligent page turner.”
Booklist also gave it a starred review, calling it an “exceptional historical mystery . . . riveting [with] page-flipping action, taut atmosphere, and multifaceted characters.”
To see the really cool trailer, click here.
To see the list of cities that I’ll be visiting, click here.
January 30, 2013
MY ALMOST CAREER IN MUSIC
NEW IN MY POPULAR-ICON SERIES!
FRANK SINATRA: THE ARTIST AND HIS MUSIC
MY ALMOST-CAREER IN MUSIC
Fans of First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose, and my other action/suspense novels might be surprised by the following:
In my youth, before I decided to be a writer, I almost chose a career in music. The rock-and-roll scene made me, like many teenagers, fantasize about being a performer. But unlike many of those teenagers, I realized that if I wanted to be in music, it would help to know something about it.
So I found a classical music composer who was also a teacher, and twice a week I went to him, learning how to play the piano while I also learned the principles of musical theory, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. I played in a dance band and still pitch in when I’m asked, as this photo shows.
My musical training prompted me to write these new e-works.
FRANK SINATRA: THE ARTIST AND HIS MUSIC
Did you know that Frank Sinatra was permanently scarred from birth and never went anywhere without using pancake makeup . . . that in his youth this supposedly self-taught singer took voice lessons from a Metropolitan opera singer . . . that he learned breath control by swimming underwater and mentally singing lyrics?
These are only some of the little-known revelations in this e-work. Based on more than forty years of listening and reading, it provides an in-depth analysis of Sinatra’s music and shows why this troubled high-school dropout came to be justly called the greatest interpretative singer in the recording era. After you read this, you might never listen to Sinatra or any other singer the same way again.
NELSON RIDDLE: THE MAN BEHIND THE MUSIC
Frank Sinatra. Nat “King” Cole. Ella Fitzgerald. Judy Garland. Peggy Lee. Rosemary Cloony. Linda Ronstadt. No matter their various styles, these and other iconic popular singers had one thing in common—much of their best work was arranged by Nelson Riddle, whose fame within the world of arrangers rivaled that of the legends for whom he wrote. Indeed, some critics maintain that, if not for Riddle, Sinatra might not have overcome his mid-career failure and climbed to the superstar status that he eventually attained.
This e-work describes the career of a musical genius, who changed popular music and proved that a great arranger is as important as a great song and a great singer. At its core is the irony that a man whose music is described as “light” and “bright” should have been so bitter and disappointed in his life.
Scribd
MURDER AS A FINE ART
Coming on May 6: MURDER AS A FINE ART, a harrowing thriller about 1854 London and the first media-sensation mass murders. The book features a real-life main character, Thomas De Quincey, the notorious Opium-Eater, who inspired Edgar Allan Poe who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes.
This is an extremely beautiful book. I highly recommend buying the printed edition rather than the e-version.
“A masterpiece—I don’t use that word lightly—a fantastic historical thriller, beautifully written, intricately plotted, and populated with unforgettable characters. It brilliantly recreates the London of gaslit streets, fogs, hansom cabs, and Scotland Yard. If you liked The Alienist, you will absolutely love this book. I was spellbound from the first page to last.
—Douglas Preston, #1 bestselling author of The Monster of Florence
“London 1854, noxious yellow fogs, reeking slums, intrigues in high places, murders most foul, but instead of Sherlock Holmes solving crimes via the fine art of deduction, we have the historical English Opium-Eater himself, Thomas De Quincey. David Morrell fans — and they are Legion — can look forward to celebrating Murder As a Fine Art as one of their favorite author’s strongest and boldest books in years.”
–Dan Simmons, New York Times bestselling author of Drood and The Terror
October 29, 2012
THE PRINT EDITION OF THE NAKED EDGE IS NOW AVAILABLE!
In 2010, with e-books starting to make their mark, I decided to experiment and release a novel that would be an e-book exclusive. It’s called THE NAKED EDGE. A sequel to my 2003 novel THE PROTECTOR, it features the following character:
He calls himself Cavanaugh. No first name, and even “Cavanaugh” isn’t his actual last name. He’s a protector. If you refer to him as a bodyguard, which he regards as a synonym for a thug, you won’t like his reaction. His hatred of bullies compelled him to enlist in Special Forces. Now as a civilian, he runs Global Protective Services, the world’s best security company. His goal? To defend the helpless, to keep predators from their prey.
In the United States alone, more than 100 million people own e-reading devices of various kinds (mostly iPads, Kindles, and Nooks), so you can see why I was interested in experimenting with THE NAKED EDGE as an e-book.
Some of you contacted me to express your preference for printed books only. I have thousands of printed books and completely understand, although you might want to get used to the idea of e-books because one day that’s the only means by which you’ll be able to read an author’s backlist titles.
But that’s another topic. In response to numerous requests, I looked around for a way to release a printed version of THE NAKED EDGE. This is not as easy as it might seem. These days, a big publisher places major emphasis on e-book rights. Because THE NAKED EDGE has already been an e-book for two years, a big publisher wouldn’t be interested.
That left the possibility of a small press, but because I had already experimented with THE NAKED EDGE as an e-book, I decided to experiment further and to become my own small press, releasing the printed version of THE NAKED EDGE under my own imprint. It looks gorgeous.
This is the descriptive text on the back of the novel:
Once Cavanaugh had a boyhood best friend. They played in the woods near their homes, pretending to be soldiers surviving behind enemy lines. Grownup, they belonged to Delta Force and later worked as protectors for the world’s best security company.
Now their lives have taken drastically different paths, pitting them against each other, forcing them to play their boyhood game again, this time to learn who dies.
The survival of a great city hangs in the balance as two friends-turned-enemies hunt each other and discover that there’s a line between predators and prey, a line that’s called The Naked Edge.
From David Morrell, the father of the modern action novel, comes a gripping global thriller that explores the meaning of friendship and the naked edge between love and hate.
For THE NAKED EDGE, I’m keeping the distribution simple. You can buy printed copies from AMAZON here.
Or else, if you want signed copies, you can order them from the following two bookstores with which I’ve had a long-standing relationship. They can handle both domestic and international shipping. Just click on either name to order a copy.
MYSTERIOUS GALAXY POISONED PEN
Or you can phone them at these numbers: Poisoned Pen (480-947-2974) and Mysterious Galaxy (858-268-4747).
In the future, I plan to release printed versions of my out-of-print backlist titles the same way, along with a new collection of short stories. None of these is the sort of thing that big publishers are interested in these days, but in this brave new world for authors who want to do something different, anything is possible.
I hasten to add that MURDER AS A FINE ART will be released the traditional way. On May 7 of next year, one of the biggest publishers—Mulholland Books/Little Brown—will make my new novel available everywhere. Set in 1854 London, MURDER AS A FINE ART’s background involves a series of real-life mass murders that rivaled those of Jack the Ripper for terrorizing London and all of England.
September 26, 2012
My training as a private pilot
My 2009 novel THE SHIMMER is about the mysterious Marfa Lights that have been appearing in west Texas since people first settled in the area in 1889. The lights are very real (I’ve seen them) and were sometimes chased by aircraft when the military had an airbase there in WWII. Because I love doing research and making details as accurate as possible, I knew that, to write these scenes, I’d need some experience as a pilot, so I went to my local airport in Santa Fe and signed up for a few flight lessons. I enjoyed these so much that I took even more lessons and eventually became a private pilot.
Recently, FLIGHT TRAINING MAGAZINE (a publication of AOPA, which stands for Airplane Owners and Pilots Association) did a feature on my training and asked me to offer advice to student pilots. They called it RAMBO PILOT. It shows a nice photograph of me with my Cessna Skyhawk 172 aircraft. You might enjoy reading about what it’s like to learn to be a pilot.I added the article to the BIO page of my website, which is constantly evolving.
Here’s a link to it.
If you’re curious about the Marfa Lights and THE SHIMMER, here’s a link to information about that novel. You’ll see that in THE SHIMMER I call them the Rostov Light, but they are essentially the same as the Marfa Lights, which are described at the bottom of the link.
September 3, 2012
My novels dramatize fear.
My writing tends to dramatize fear, with characters struggling to suppress it or else giving in to it. Sometimes I write about anxiety and panic attacks, a topic I know well because I suffered them twenty-five years ago when my fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from a rare bone cancer.
I describe these attacks in FIREFLIES. From the symptoms I experienced, I didn’t know which was going to kill me first, a heart attack or a stroke, but in the end, anxiety and panic attacks were the culprits.
They rank with depression as major problems for many people. When I speak to grief groups, I often discuss panic attacks because the majority of the audience suffers from them.
Perhaps you suffer from anxiety attacks and don’t know it. Or perhaps you know that you suffer from them but don’t understand the physical mechanism that causes them. In any case, you might find the following comments helpful.
The physical cause of anxiety disorder is an imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood. The ultimate cause is psychological, of course, but the result is the same: some sort of powerful stress affects our breathing. Unaware of what we’re doing, we hold our breath or else hyperventilate or perhaps take only quick small breaths in long sentences. This affects the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide circulating through our bodies. Our bodies sense that something is “off.” Our heart rate increases, causing us to want more oxygen, but our breathing is already not the way it should be, and pretty soon we’re breathing even faster until a reinforcing cycle of rapid heartbeat and rapid breathing is established.
At that point, our bodies are so confused that an adrenaline dump occurs, and we feel we’re in a fight-or-flight situation, even though there isn’t an emergency. As the cycle worsens, our hands and feet turn numb, and often the area around our mouths. Our eyes dilate, causing spatial disorientation, as if everything is far away. Muscles constrict in our chest, as if we’re having a heart attack, while simultaneously we feel dizzy, as if we’re having a stroke. In this ultimate stage, called a panic attack, the only way to stop the cycle occurs when we nearly collapse and our bodies force us to rest.
There’s a helpful book called THE ANXIETY DISEASE, which explains all this in detail. Concentrating on how we breathe can help reduce the onslaught of symptoms. But the true help comes when we realize what is causing the stress and we work to deal with it. Not so easy, but self-knowledge never is. Only when I accepted my son’s death instead of fighting its reality did my symptoms lessen. Again, not so easy.
August 8, 2012
Marilyn Monroe and my cultural-icon series.
Fifty years ago this month, on Aug. 5,1962, Marilyn Monroe’s body was discovered in her Los Angeles home. The circumstances have always been mysterious. Although the medical examiner’s verdict was probable suicide from a barbiturate overdose, President Kennedy and his brother hovered in the background in the days before her death. There was a long gap between when her physician declared that she was dead and when the police were called. The police investigation was shoddy. Conspiracy theories persist that she was murdered to keep her from revealing her affair with President Kennedy.
On the recent anniversary of her death, items appeared everywhere in the media. Newspapers, magazines, and television talk shows featured glowing appraisals of her. It’s difficult to imagine any icon from the early 196Os who continues to be as vivid in popular culture as Marilyn Monroe.
Graham Green once said that an unhappy childhood is a gold mine for a writer. That principle applies to creative people other than writers. As a child, Marilyn was in twelve foster homes as well as an orphanage. One of her guardians programmed her into wanting to become a movie star. Starved for affection, thinking that movie stars received plenty of love, she devoted her life to her career, but although she had the talent and the drive, she couldn’t bear the pressure.
Because the culture of the time saw beautiful women only as objects, Marilyn was forced to pretend that she was simple in order to navigate her way through a sexist labyrinth. As her character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes says, “I can be smart when I want to. But I’ve noticed that most men don’t like that.” Indeed the men in her life didn’t like a lot of things. Her second husband, Joe DiMaggio, beat her, and her third husband, Arthur Miller, emotionally abused her. Severe anxiety attacks led to self-medication.
The poignant life and tragic end of this vulnerable, talented, tormented woman is moving to the point of tears.
For more about this essay, please click here.
While I’m a novelist, I’m also a former professor of American studies. I write essays in what I call my cultural-icon series. MARILYN MONROE: LEGEND AND TRAGEDY is part of that series, which also includes John Wayne: The Westerns and Rambo and Me: The Story behind the Story. Soon I’ll add essays about Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, and Bobby Darin—cultural giants who fascinate me as much as Marilyn does, because of the way these damaged personalities used their troubled childhood to create personas and careers that illuminate American culture.
July 28, 2012
A lot of people ask me about my firearms training.
Readers often ask me about the action-skills training I receive when I write novels like THE PROTECTOR and THE NAKED EDGE. After the Colorado-theater shooting, I was reminded of my firearms training when gun sales increased because people wanted to be ready—“just in case.”
There are good reasons and bad reasons to carry a weapon in the United States. The pros and cons aren’t the subject of these remarks. What I want to talk about is training. When people tell me that they received a concealed-carry license after a day or two of instruction, I’m appalled. Anybody can easily learn how to fire a weapon. It’s not difficult. But there are so many other factors.
A proper concealed-carry course should spend at least a day on the legal use of deadly force. Did the opponent have the means, motive, and opportunity to threaten your life? Did you have absolutely no other option except to shoot? Do you know about grand juries and the sorts of serious questions they ask when someone shoots someone else? Ideally, a proper course would even put you in a grand-jury scenario, requiring you to get an idea of what it’s like to justify your serious actions in a way that convinces people who don’t have experience with guns.
Further, a proper concealed-carry course would provide a minimum of two days in which the class acted out scenarios that may or may not have required the use of deadly force. A man bangs on your door. He’s extremely distraught. He says his car broke down outside and his wife’s in the back seat—she’s pregnant, she needs an ambulance, she needs to get to the hospital! He pushes his way in, saying he needs to use your phone. You tell him to wait outside while you make the call. He shoves you away, demanding to know where the phone is. “Wait outside!” you order him. He knocks you to the floor and lunges past you toward the kitchen, yelling “The phone!” He might be a nutcase. Or he might be telling the truth. If you shoot him, you might be spending the next ten years in jail. Not to mention you might be financially ruined if it turns out the guy was telling the truth and the woman gives birth in the car, but the baby dies, and the woman almost dies also. You’ll be living in a tent by the time the lawsuits are over. But maybe the guy is indeed crazy and dangerous, and you saved the lives of your family and yourself. You need to make a decision in an instant. Good luck. Two days of rehearsal in this kind of scenario are probably not enough.
And then there are the physiological reactions to being in a gunfight. Most gunfights occur within ten feet of the shooters, and in many case, although a lot of shots are fired, the bullets go everywhere, except at the target. A gunfight is chaos and noise and adrenaline. Hearing shuts down. Tunnel vision sets in. Some objects get amazingly large. To replicate that chaos, which is not at all like the movies, this is one valuable scenario I experienced.
I was put through a shooting maze (sometimes called a “shooting house”). Inside a structure, there were various rooms with pop-up targets. Some showed bad guys with guns and grenades. Others showed a businessman with a briefcase or a woman with a baby carriage. One showed a woman being used as a shield by a guy with a gun. But I didn’t know what any of these targets looked like before I entered and confronted them.
My instructor spun me violently five times to the right. Then he spun me with equal violence five times to the left. As dizziness set in, he cursed at me, using the foulest language imaginable. Meanwhile he also pounded my chest and back. He literally threw me into the shooting maze so that I almost fell on the floor.
Mind spinning, heart pounding, lungs heaving, adrenaline flooding, I had 30 seconds to get through the maze and shoot the bad guys but not harm the good ones. I managed to do it, but it wasn’t easy. I personally saw a student empty a 15-round magazine into a target that showed a woman with a baby carriage. The instructor yelled, “She’s got a gun! She’s going to kill you!” The student kept firing. “She isn’t dead!” the instructor yelled. “Shoot her again!”
Having emptied his magazine, the student did a rapid reload and emptied another 15-round magazine into the target of the woman with the baby carriage. He was absolutely certain that he’d shot a bad guy, because the instructor had shouted repeatedly that the target showed a bad guy (the instructor was lying to make a point). It took the student 20 seconds to get his mind straight and to realize what he’d done.
Let’s consider the situation in the Colorado theatre. The place is full of smoke. Theater patrons are stampeding. The loud, action-filled movie adds to the confusion. The shooter is wearing body armor. Does it make sense to use a concealed-carry weapon in this scenario? As more guns go off, who can know the difference between the shooter and the people trying to defend themselves. The phone calls to the police would have said there were multiple shooters, thus adding to the deadly confusion. Well-meaning people with guns would almost certainly have hit bystanders.
It all comes down to adequate training and knowing what’s the right thing to do at the right time. If you decide that a concealed-carry weapon is necessary for you, remember what I said a minute ago. There are few responsibilities greater than carrying a weapon. Does the gun own you, or do you own the gun? There can never be enough training, and it can’t be repeated often enough.
These are some of the topics in my novels THE PROTECTOR and THE NAKED EDGE, which have a long list of the people who were kind enough to teach me the expertise that keeps them alive in their dangerous professions. I’m fascinated by protective agents and the commitment they make to strangers to defend them, even at the possible cost of a defender’s life.
If you think you’d enjoy reading action scenes based on the variety of training I received, please click on the the titles that are highlighted above.
