Kaye Lynne Booth's Blog: Writing to be Read, page 137

The Numbers Killer: A Crime Thriller that keeps readers guessing

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Things aren’t always what they seem, and The Numbers Killer, by Jenifer Ruff is no exception. In this psycholigical thriller mystery, people are are turning up dead and Agent Victoria Roslin is a tough police investigator who must race to catch a killer. The stakes are raised even higher and the clock runs faster when it turns personal and Victoria is targeted. It seems the killer has her number. Can she solve the mystery of how the victims are connected. Can she catch the killer and catch the killer, or will she become the nest victim of the Numbers Killer?

The Numbers Killer is a well-crafted mystery that keeps readers guessing. There’s nothing cozy about this mystery. Ruff keeps the action moving and throws in plenty of surprise twists right down to the last pages. I give  it five quills.

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Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.

The benefits of listening to audio books

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I love listening to audio books. There is no better way, in my experience, to appreciate a good book than listening to it being read aloud by a skilled reader. I listen to approximately four audio books in a six week period, many of which are classic books.

My love of listening to stories started when I was a little girl, although audio books were few and far between then. I remember listening repeatedly to a cassette with four stories about a family’s adventures in the wild west of America which I was given as a birthday present. My father also bought me a couple of LP’s, including Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty, and I listened to these often.

During our music appreciation lessons at school, our teacher played us the audio books of Peter and the Wolf, a symphonic fairy tale for children, which comprises of a narrator telling a story while an orchestra illustrates it. The intention of this composition is to introduce children to the individual instruments of the orchestra and it did its job well for me, as listening to this story is one of my remembered highlights of my childhood and I have never forgotten the names of the various instruments and the sounds they made. If you are interested in listening to this brilliant story, you can find it here:

I also remember listening to the Sparky books at school. This series comprises of Sparky’s magic piano, Sparky’s magic echo, Sparky’s magic baton and Sparky and the talking train.  The magic of these stories is still readily available to me if I sit and conjure up my memories of listening to them as a child. The audio versions of these stories made a huge impact on me as I don’t remember any story that I read myself as vividly.

When my boys were small I searched for, and purchased, all of the Sparky stories and Peter and the wolf as audio books for them. We used to listen to them in the car when we traveled, together with an array of nursery rhyme CD’s. My boys grew to love music and both of them learned to play instruments. Michael still plays the drums and intends to learn the guitar as well.

Audio books are a wonderful way of teaching children to appreciate literature and also grammar. They enable children to learn and understand complex language above their own reading levels and illustrate the benefits in story telling of punctuation, enunciation and emphasis.

Audio books make literature more accessible to children who struggle with reading, giving them an opportunity to enjoy the text without struggle to decipher difficult text. It teaches children new words and phrases, thereby expanding their vocabularies. In addition, in a modern world of shortening concentration spans in children due to television and computer games, audio books teach children to sit and listen.

I used audio books extensively as a tool to help Michael learn to enjoy books and develop a love of reading. When Michael was four years old, I discovered Naxos Audio Books and I bought a significant number of these for Michael. We listened to non-fiction books, including Famous Heroes of the American West, The Vikings and Great Scientists and Their Discoveries, fairy tales, including Grimms’ Fairy Tales and fiction, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, New Treasure Seekers, The Phoenix and the Carpet, Five Children and It, The Children of the New Forest and The Coral Island. Amazingly, Michael loved The Children of the New Forest and The Coral Island and listened to them repeatedly during his bouts of illness.

I received Michael’s school report for the first half of the year recently and the teacher remarked on his excellent vocabulary and above average comprehension skills. I attribute his strength in these areas to all the audio books we listened to and all the reading aloud I did to him and his brother.

Did your children listen to audio books? If yes, did you experience these benefits? Let me know in the comments.

About Robbie Cheadle

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Hello, my name is Robbie, short for Roberta. I am an author with six published children’s picture books in the Sir Chocolate books series for children aged 2 to 9 years old (co-authored with my son, Michael Cheadle), one published middle grade book in the Silly Willy series and one published preteen/young adult fictionalised biography about my mother’s life as a young girl growing up in an English town in Suffolk during World War II called While the Bombs Fell (co-authored with my mother, Elsie Hancy Eaton). All of my children’s book are written under Robbie Cheadle and are published by TSL Publications.

I have recently branched into adult horror and supernatural writing and, in order to clearly differential my children’s books from my adult writing, I plan to publish these books under Roberta Eaton Cheadle. I have two short stories in the horror/supernatural genre included in Dark Visions, a collection of 34 short stories by 27 different authors and edited by award winning author, Dan Alatorre and three short stories included in Death Among Us, an anthology of murder mystery stories edited by award winning author, Stephen Bentley. These short stories are published under Robbie Cheadle.

I have recently published a book of poetry called Open a new door, with fellow South African poet, Kim Blades.

Find Robbie Cheadle

Blog: https://bakeandwrite.co.za/

Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com

Goodreads: Robbie Cheadle – Goodreads

Twitter: BakeandWrite

Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram

Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books

Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s Growing Bookworms segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

The benefits of listing to audio books

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I love listening to audio books. There is no better way, in my experience, to appreciate a good book than listening to it being read aloud by a skilled reader. I listen to approximately four audio books in a six week period, many of which are classic books.

My love of listening to stories started when I was a little girl, although audio books were few and far between then. I remember listening repeatedly to a cassette with four stories about a family’s adventures in the wild west of America which I was given as a birthday present. My father also bought me a couple of LP’s, including Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty, and I listened to these often.

During our music appreciation lessons at school, our teacher played us the audio books of Peter and the Wolf, a symphonic fairy tale for children, which comprises of a narrator telling a story while an orchestra illustrates it. The intention of this composition is to introduce children to the individual instruments of the orchestra and it did its job well for me, as listening to this story is one of my remembered highlights of my childhood and I have never forgotten the names of the various instruments and the sounds they made. If you are interested in listening to this brilliant story, you can find it here:

I also remember listening to the Sparky books at school. This series comprises of Sparky’s magic piano, Sparky’s magic echo, Sparky’s magic baton and Sparky and the talking train.  The magic of these stories is still readily available to me if I sit and conjure up my memories of listening to them as a child. The audio versions of these stories made a huge impact on me as I don’t remember any story that I read myself as vividly.

When my boys were small I searched for, and purchased, all of the Sparky stories and Peter and the wolf as audio books for them. We used to listen to them in the car when we traveled, together with an array of nursery rhyme CD’s. My boys grew to love music and both of them learned to play instruments. Michael still plays the drums and intends to learn the guitar as well.

Audio books are a wonderful way of teaching children to appreciate literature and also grammar. They enable children to learn and understand complex language above their own reading levels and illustrate the benefits in story telling of punctuation, enunciation and emphasis.

Audio books make literature more accessible to children who struggle with reading, giving them an opportunity to enjoy the text without struggle to decipher difficult text. It teaches children new words and phrases, thereby expanding their vocabularies. In addition, in a modern world of shortening concentration spans in children due to television and computer games, audio books teach children to sit and listen.

I used audio books extensively as a tool to help Michael learn to enjoy books and develop a love of reading. When Michael was four years old, I discovered Naxos Audio Books and I bought a significant number of these for Michael. We listened to non-fiction books, including Famous Heroes of the American West, The Vikings and Great Scientists and Their Discoveries, fairy tales, including Grimms’ Fairy Tales and fiction, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, New Treasure Seekers, The Phoenix and the Carpet, Five Children and It, The Children of the New Forest and The Coral Island. Amazingly, Michael loved The Children of the New Forest and The Coral Island and listened to them repeatedly during his bouts of illness.

I received Michael’s school report for the first half of the year recently and the teacher remarked on his excellent vocabulary and above average comprehension skills. I attribute his strength in these areas to all the audio books we listened to and all the reading aloud I did to him and his brother.

Did your children listen to audio books? If yes, did you experience these benefits? Let me know in the comments.

About Robbie Cheadle

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Hello, my name is Robbie, short for Roberta. I am an author with six published children’s picture books in the Sir Chocolate books series for children aged 2 to 9 years old (co-authored with my son, Michael Cheadle), one published middle grade book in the Silly Willy series and one published preteen/young adult fictionalised biography about my mother’s life as a young girl growing up in an English town in Suffolk during World War II called While the Bombs Fell (co-authored with my mother, Elsie Hancy Eaton). All of my children’s book are written under Robbie Cheadle and are published by TSL Publications.

I have recently branched into adult horror and supernatural writing and, in order to clearly differential my children’s books from my adult writing, I plan to publish these books under Roberta Eaton Cheadle. I have two short stories in the horror/supernatural genre included in Dark Visions, a collection of 34 short stories by 27 different authors and edited by award winning author, Dan Alatorre and three short stories included in Death Among Us, an anthology of murder mystery stories edited by award winning author, Stephen Bentley. These short stories are published under Robbie Cheadle.

I have recently published a book of poetry called Open a new door, with fellow South African poet, Kim Blades.

Find Robbie Cheadle

Blog: https://bakeandwrite.co.za/

Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com

Goodreads: Robbie Cheadle – Goodreads

Twitter: BakeandWrite

Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram

Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books

Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s Growing Bookworms segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

Interview with hardboiled crime fiction author Jim Nesbitt

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My guest today has a background in hard hitting journalism and he writes hard-boiled crime fiction in the tradition of Dashiel Hammet, and other famed crime writers. I’m pleased to be interviewing him because he represents a great literary tradition in genre. Please help me welcome, crime fiction novelist Jim Nesbitt.

Kaye: Your writing is classified as hard-boiled fiction, but you have your own style. Can you tell me a little about your style of hard-boiled fiction?

Jim: I’ve always thought of hard-boiled crime fiction as a distinctly American art form. Rooted in realism, cynicism, violence, corruption and a dark view of the American dream, it’s also a tremendously flexible genre. It’s best practitioners — from the founding fathers, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, through Ross Macdonald, James Ellroy and the late and vastly underappreciated James Crumley — use it as a vehicle to comment on contemporary American life and politics, music, culture, the warped psychology of the hardened criminal and the suburban housewife, the tortured dance between men and women and anything else that strikes their fancy. When I decided to try my hand at fiction, I knew it would be hard-boiled crime fiction because it matches my outlook on life and my experience as a journalist as well as the freedom I saw in the books of the very best writers, not that I’m close to being in their class.

As for my style, it’s the result of years of working as a journalist who came up through the ranks at a time when long-format stories that used the narrative style and tradecraft of fiction were the rage, what I learned from reading Hammett, Chandler, Crumley, Ellroy, James Lee Burke and others and the genetics of coming from a long line of hillbilly storytellers. Every writer hopes to develop a unique voice, free from template and artifice. Few do. I write the way I talk — which is a curious mixture of film noir patter and cowboyspeak, with a little Tex-Mex thrown in. No surprise there since I spent quite a few years knocking around the West and the border between Texas and Mexico, used to own horses and am steeped in the dark movies of the 40s and 50s.

I’m also a strong believer in driving a story through snappy and hard-bitten dialogue, sharply defined characters with depth and lots of backstory and such a keen sense of place that it becomes a character unto itself. I spent a lot of time knocking around the West and the West Texas border country and my books are shot through with scenes based on what I saw out there. More than one reviewer has said my books have the soul of a classic Western, with hard-boiled and noirish trappings, and I tend to agree with them. Although they’re set in the late-80s and early 90s, they’re as much contemporary Westerns as they are hard-boiled crime novels.

Kaye: Tell me a little about your main character. Who is Ed Earl Burch?

Jim: Ed Earl’s a bit of an Everyman, a guy who has been knocked around by life. He’s a defrocked Dallas vice and homicide detective, tossed off the force for being a little too willing to beat the hell out of or shoot suspects and for being a terminal smartass who doesn’t know when to shut up. The brass also blames him for the death of his partner, which trebles the guilt he already feels.

Losing his badge robs Ed Earl of his sense of purpose and higher calling and takes away a job he’s really good at — chasing down killers. He’s a manhunter at heart, but without his badge, he retreats into a corner defined by the path from his apartment, to his ratty office and his favorite saloon, chasing down financial fugitives from the savings-and-loan bust of the mid-80s and taking on divorce cases he loathes because he’s in hock to his eyeballs.

What he isn’t is super-smart, like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. He’s tough and shrewd, but dogged more than brilliant. He’s no square-jawed Jack Reacher or other action hero one step removed from a comic book or graphic novel. He’s bearded, balding and has a belly. He’s got wrecked knees, a wounded liver and an empty bank account. He’s an anti-hero who sometimes forgets to live by his personal code — and a bit of a burnout.

In THE BEST LOUSY CHOICE, he starts out as an emotional wreck, plagued by nightmares from his last misadventure captured in THE LAST SECOND CHANCE, where he was almost killed by a psychotic drug lord who believed in Aztec heart sacrifice and had Ed Earl trussed up on a stone altar to carve out his heart. He’s self-medicating with bourbon and Percodan, but finds out that when he’s working, he steadies up and the old cop reflexes return. When he gets asked to look into a suspicious barn fire that killed a prominent West Texas rancher, he leaps at the chance to be a manhunter again, unburdened by the rules and laws he had to live by as a cop. He pays a terrible price both physically and emotionally to do a job he was born to do — as he does in my other books.

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Kaye: You were a journalist chasing all kinds of stories. How much of your true life experiences have found their way into your stories?

Jim: I kind of tipped my hand with my answer to your first question. The scenes in my books are based on what I saw and experienced as a journalist knocking around this great country, particularly the South, the West and West Texas. Chances are, if I’m writing about it, I’ve been there. I fell in love with the stark, harsh and beautiful land of what they call the Trans-Pecos and I used that to create a keen sense of place in all my books. It’s the perfect setting for bloody tales of revenge and redemption. During my years as a journalist, I also met cops, prosecutors, crooks and a few killers so they went into the creative pot. So did my marital misadventures, my taste for bourbon, my love of great saloons and my preference for Colt 1911 semi-automatics.

Kaye: You were a journalist for a good part of your life, and now you are an author, so it seems as if writing is a way of life for you. When did you first know that you wanted to become an author?

Jim: I come from a long line of hillbilly storytellers and remember listening to the stories my uncles, aunts, parents and grandparents told about family, friends and life experiences. As a kid, I always had my nose in a book and started writing my own little stories. When I was in eighth grade, my English teacher, Mary Bailey, took my aside and told me I was a writer. She even called my dad in to tell him the same thing and to encourage me to be a writer. That impressed dad and me, although I took a long intermediate step as a journalist before trying my hand at novels. Call it an apprenticeship that lasted decades.

Kaye: What is the biggest challenge for you in writing crime fiction?

Jim: I still have a demanding day job, so finding the time to write is my biggest challenge. I’m also an older writer and don’t have quite as much energy as I did twenty or twenty-five years ago — can’t stay up until the small hours writing a novel, then turn around and put in a ten to twelve hour day at the office. Have to pace myself and carve out big blocks of time during the weekends to write Ed Earl books.

Kaye: What’s something most readers would never guess about you?

Jim: That I’m an introvert at heart and inherently shy. I’m a big guy with presence and a bit of a showboat in a crowd, but that covers up my introverted innards.

Kaye: Besides writing, what are your favorite things to do?

Jim: Taking long trips on back roads to nowhere with my wife in our 1972 Cutlass Supreme ragtop and smoking a cigar and sipping bourbon while reading a good book.

Kaye: Which author, dead or alive, would you love to have lunch with? Why?

Jim: The late, great James Crumley. I learned a lot about writing through reading his books — DANCING BEAR, BORDERSNAKES, THE WRONG CASE. He taught me to let it rip with frank descriptions of violence, sex, drugs and other forms of wretched excess. His characters, particularly Milo Milodragovitch, are deeply flawed anti-heroes, just like Ed Earl. He was also a man with a taste for deep whiskeys and red meat, so I think a liquid lunch with a porterhouse side dish would be a helluva lot of fun and would teach me a thing or two about writing.

Kaye: How do you build suspense in your stories?

Jim: I really don’t worry too much about building suspense. I think that’s a natural byproduct of driving the story at a relentless pace through dialogue, character and lots of action. I want the reader to think: How is Ed Earl gonna get out of this mess? Who is this new bad hombre and what kind of pain is he going to rain down on ol’ Ed Earl?

Kaye: You’re working on the next Ed Earl Burch novel, The Best Lousy Choice. What can you tell me about that story?

[image error]Jim: Dallas private eye Ed Earl Burch is an emotional wreck, living on the edge of madness, hosing down the nightmares of his last case with bourbon and Percodan, dreading the next onslaught of demons that haunt his days and nights, including a one-eyed dead man who still wants to carve out his heart and eat it.

Burch is also a walking contradiction. Steady and relentless when working a case. Tormented and unbalanced when idle. He’s deeply in debt to a shyster lawyer who forces him to take the type of case he loathes — divorce work, peephole creeping to get dirt on a wayward husband.

Work with no honor. Work that reminds him of how far he’s fallen since he lost the gold shield of a Dallas homicide detective. Work in the stark, harsh badlands of West Texas, the border country where he almost got killed and his nightmares began.

What he longs for is the clarity and sense of purpose he had when he carried that gold shield and chased killers for a living. The adrenaline spike of the showdown. Smoke ‘em or cuff ‘em. Justice served — by his .45 or a judge and jury.

When a rich rancher and war hero is killed in a suspicious barn fire, the rancher’s outlaw cousin hires Burch to investigate a death the county sheriff is reluctant to touch.

Seems a lot of folks had reason for wanting the rancher dead — the local narco who has the sheriff on his payroll; some ruthless Houston developers who want the rancher’s land; maybe his own daughter. Maybe the outlaw cousin who hired Burch.

Thrilled to be a manhunter again, Burch ignores these red flags, forgetting something he once knew by heart.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. And it might just get you killed.

But it’s the best lousy choice Ed Earl Burch is ever going to get.

I want to thank Jim for being my guest here and sharing with us. He has shed some light on what hard-boiled fiction is all about and obviously loves his craft. You can learn more about Jim Nesbitt and his books at the links below.

https://jimnesbittbooks.com Website

https://www.amazon.com/author/jimnesbitt Amazon author page

https://www.facebook.com/edearlburchbooks Facebook author page

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14971688.Jim_Nesbitt Goodreads author page

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-best-lousy-choice/id1468993353 Apple Books E-Book

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-best-lousy-choice Kobo E-Book

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1132276790?ean=2940161430828 Barnes & Noble Nook E-Book

https://spottedmule.wordpress.com/ Blog

Like this post? Let me know in the comments. You can be sure not to miss any of Writing to be Read’s great content by subscribe to e-mail or following on WordPress.

https://twitter.com/EdEarlBurch?lang=en  Twitter author page

“Rose City”: Noir crime fiction at its finest

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Rose City, by Michael Poole takes readers on a stroll down the darker side of small town social structures in a journey well deserving of noir acclaim. This skillfully crafted story will keep the pages turning, as the greed and corruption of Teller County unnfolds before the readers eyes. Rose City is everything a noir novel should be. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the name Michael Poole in noir circles more and more often once the word gets out about his superb noir style and talent.

Cole Quick escaped Teller County once and he thought it was for good. Now he’s returning, following the death of his father, and is quickly reminded of all the reasons he fled this place. When he learns of the gruesome death of his childhood friend, Jimmy, it begins to look like things haven’t really changed much at all. But, there’s more going on in Teller County than what it appears on the surface. Cole takes a walk in the underbelly of Teller County’s drug trade, and finds himself in the middle of Teller County’s social elite. There are dark things happening, corruption, power and greed are behind the heineous events that occurred in Cole’s absence, events that may include Jimmy’s murder and more. The harder he’s pushed,  the more determined Cole becomes to expose those running the show in Teller County for who and what they are, and thwart their corrupt game of greed and power… or die trying.

Cole Quick is a perfectly flawed noir hero, and Rose City is a perfectly dark noir tale. I give it five quills.

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Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Interview with Pulp & Crime Fiction Author Quintin Peterson

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I have the pleasure of conversing with a pleasant guest today, whose love of life shines in his eyes and his smile, author Quintin Peterson. A talented author, whose work keeps classic craft alive in modern times. He writes pulp and crime fiction in many variations, throwing new twists on the classic styles. I can’t wait for you to meet him. So, without further adeau, let’s find out what Quintin Peterson has to share.

Kaye: Tell me about your author’s journey. When did you know you wanted to be a writer? How did you make that dream a reality?

Quintin: I began entertaining my friends and family by telling them amazing stories long before I started writing them. I obtained my first copyright when I was 13. While in high school, I was awarded a National Council of Teachers of English Writing Award, the University of Wisconsin’s Science Fiction Writing Award, and the Wisconsin Junior Academy’s Writing Achievement Award. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, I wrote and performed in two stage plays and received a Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation grant for my play project, Change. I also received a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, for playwriting.

Kaye: What is your favorite thing about writing crime fiction?

Quintin: I gave up creative writing and pursued a 30-year career in law enforcement. I rarely found justice during all the years I worked as a police officer for the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. I suppose it is the reason why writing crime fiction is my dominant obsession: I find justice in my stories.

Kaye: You’ve had both short fiction and novel length works published? Which do you prefer writing? Why?

Quintin: It’s a toss-up, really. I like writing short stories for magazines and anthologies because of the word count limits, but I also like not being constrained by a word count limit for longer fiction.

Kaye: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing short fiction?

Quintin: The most challenging thing about writing short fiction is doing more with less. Writing short fiction for magazines and anthologies also afford me opportunities to experiment with genre-blending. For example, I’ve sold a cop/ghost story, a horror/mystery/noir thriller, science fiction/noir mysteries, and an Arthurian police story.

Kaye: What is the most challenging thing about writing novel length works?

Quintin: The most challenging thing about writing novel length fiction is avoiding the pitfall of being too wordy and doing less with more.

Kaye: Pulp fiction, maybe even more than other genres, must have well developed, larger than life characters. How do your characters develop for you?

Quintin: I create backstories for my characters so that I know them in order to make them seem real, and then pit them against each other in what I endeavor to make compelling stories.

Kaye: Which of your main characters is your favorite? Why?

Quintin: I have two favorite characters: Norman Blalock and Luther Kane, who are cousins and appear in each other’s stories. I like Blalock because people underestimate him. I like Kane because he is a man of action.

[image error]Kaye: Your story “Broken Doll” just came out in Awesome Tales #10. That story is a part of your Private Eye Luther Kane Mystery Series. Would you tell me a little about who Luther Kane is and what makes him a great pulp hero?

Quintin: Luther Kane is a former DC police officer, as well as a former soldier and soldier of fortune who is maimed by a landmine. The loss of his legs does not prevent him from operating upon the same principles he adhered to when he was whole. He rises from his own ashes and walks again on state-of-the-art bionic legs, a miracle of modern science. At the suggestion of his physical therapist Claire Bradley, who taught him to walk again, he takes over his late father’s business, the Intrepid Detective Agency, located atop the other family business he inherited, the Last Stop Liquor Store.

 

Kaye: The Voynich Gambit is book two in your Norman Blalock Mystery Series and it won the Literary Titan Book Award. Tell me a little about that series. Who is Norman Blalock, and what makes him a great pulp hero?

Quintin: In these old-fashioned heist stories, Norman Blalock is a disgraced Howard University history professor who has been working as a special police officer for the Folger Shakespeare Library for decades. No one at the library knows his background and only see him as “an old black security guard.” The first Norman Blalock Mystery is Guarding Shakespeare, followed by The Voynich Gambit. The upcoming third installment is The Shakespeare Redemption. (By the way: I worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library for almost seven years, beginning the same year I retired from the police department, and penned the first two installments while I was employed there.)

Kaye: Who is your favorite villain? Why?

Quintin: Kavitha Netram, the femme fatale Norman Blalock matches wits with in both Guarding Shakespeare and The Voynich Gambit. She returns in The Shakespeare Redemption. She is smart, sexy, and ruthless.

Kaye: What are you working on now? What can readers expect in the future from Quintin Peterson?

Quintin: Right now, I am working on The Shakespeare Redemption. I will continue to write more installments of the Norman Blalock and the Private Eye Luther Kane mysteries, as well as other noir stories. I also plan to write more science fiction and horror thrillers.

Thanks for having me, Kaye. It’s been a pleasure.

I want to thank Quintin Peterson for sharing with me. It’s been enlightening for me and I hope it has for all of you readers, too. You can find out more about Quintin and his books at the links below. (Be sure to visit his Amazon page. You’ll find a large selection of books and short fiction in a wide range of variations upon the genre. Pulp and crime fiction fans may call it a gold mine. Those unfamiliar with the genre should check it out. It’s a fun genre. )

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Quintin-Peterson/e/B002BMCR2E?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1561789921&sr=8-1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quintin.peterson.56

Twitter: https://twitter.com/luther_kane

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quintin-peterson-263b4b8/

Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/26191433-quintin-peterson

Like this post? Let me know in the comments. You can be sure not to miss any of Writing to be Read’s great content by subscribe to e-mail or following on WordPress.

So You Think You Can Dance: Breaking New Ground

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“What’s wrong with kids today?”

            This lament has been uttered by every generation  since Adam and Eve discovered they were pregnant a second time.

            So….what IS wrong with kids these days?

           They feel as if they have no future.  The last few extant generations simply don’t.  Futures come in handy when you feel as though the world will be unrecognizable before you’ve grown up.  As a child of The Mushroom Cloud I know what that feels like, that amputation of the future. It made me really angry.  My friends and I were more likely to commit petty crimes and indulge in drugs.  Without a future, why bother?  Why work hard in school?  Why cultivate disciplines, interests, social connections?  The oceans are rising and will drown your block or your whole neighborhood.  The coolest animals will be extinct.  No elephants, no polar bears.  What kind of future is that?

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            Then I discovered a TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance”.  You can knock me over with what these kids are doing!  Their bodies must be INCREDIBLY strong and flexible.  These kids are doing the impossible!  Has the human race mutated?  Do we have extra joints, super-human muscle memory? Who ARE these people?

            They’re just kids.  Their secret is that they found a passion, something that interested them so much that they said “fuck it” to the absence of the future and decided to live for this thing called Dance.  It was better than being a thug.  Thugs are mean, WAY mean and being mean doesn’t feel very good.  Not as good as practicing B-moves, Krumping, flapping, sapping, tapping, robot-twitching, water-waving, learning your body’s capabilities and stretching them further, further, further!

            This is IT!  Sometimes it’s called ART.  Don’t be embarrassed by the word ART.  It’s cool to do ART.  It’s okay.  Even if it’s gay it doesn’t matter.  Nobody cares about gay any more.  You can be gay, you can change from man to woman or woman to man, nobody cares!  If you want to know where it is, where the cutting edge in creativity can be found these days you can see it on “So You Think You Can Dance”.  The judges aren’t scary.  They aren’t there to cut you down.  They want to show you The Future.  Word up, Bro.  There IS a future.  Nobody can stop it.  It takes some work.  Everything good takes work. Making a future is hard work.  It’s not like it used to be, when the Future was going to happen no matter what.  Now it takes a little faith and a lot of work, but it’s there: you… DO…Have…A…Future.  Do you want it to kick you in the nuts or do you want to dance with it?

            When has anyone given a shit about choreoraphy?  Are you kidding?  Corey-who?  Shazam!  Choreographers are the composers of Dance.  They arrange the time-space-music continuum in which Dance exists.  On the TV show they are not only given credit, they are like stars!  Now I know the work of Tice Diorio, Mia Michaels, Sonya Tayeh, “Nappytab”, Stacey Tookey and Travis Wall.  Choreographers come from the elder population of dancers.  They still dance but they are the keepers of the flame, the mentors of the seventeen through twenty two year old dancers who are living the dreams.

            I’m not sure there is any more difficult art form than what is now appearing as Dance.  It’s not enough to specialize.  You can’t be a ballroom dancer, a hip-hopper or a Broadway hoofer.  One of the messages of So You Think You Can Dance is that you must be trained in ALL the dance styles.  Choreographers wont’ hire you if you don’t know all the styles of dance. Choreographers are the Gate Keepers, the bosses, the ones who hire dancers.  Get tight with the choreographers who work at SYTYCD and you will be employed for years to come. In time, you will become a choreographer.

            The most amazing thing about the dance numbers on this show is their purity.  We’re not seeing arrangements for pop superstars.  We’re not seeing choreography for Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson (RIP).  These dance routines are created for the television audience.  For US!  Sometimes magic happens on that stage.  Those of you who watch the show know what I mean.  In more than a decade this show has lifted the art of Dance so that each season is more amazing than the last.  The mutations continue.  Evolution is visible year to year.  Dancers get more flexible, their muscle memories become more detailed, malleable, imprintable.  This happens in front of our eyes.  Sure, it’s a TV contest show aimed at a teenage demographic.  That’s how things work.  Consider the difference between the egregious karaoke of American Idol and the drama and high art of So You Think You Can Dance.  Big difference, yeah?

            Big big difference.

       

A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good.  His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv. 

 

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Modern Poetry: Confusion

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Modern poetry presents us with many problems. Like: the problem of understanding it. There are no rules to poetry, not any more, not for a century at least. I subscribe to some literary magazines on the internet. I get most of my poetry from The Rumpus and Across The Margin. These literary mags function as curators and critics. Who is there to tell us when something is good in poetry? Are there reviews of poetry? Sure there are! Does anyone read them? I do, out of curiosity. Just as I read poetry that’s being reviewed, out of curiosity and because they are appearing in magazines that I trust. Their very appearance is a critical acclaim. It’s in Rumpus, so it must be good. Etc.

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It really gets down to taste and patience. Poetry is “OUT” in pop culture. It takes too long, requires too much commitment. I haven’t encountered a contemporary poet who inspires me to be a fan, to glue myself to his or her output with enthusiasm.

Other than myself. I’m a big fan of myself. A BIG fan.

When we were in high school we had Poetry Gods. We had e.e.cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, T.S. Eliot, okay, yes, Allen Ginsberg. We had a Movement, we had the Beats and then Hippies. Am I out of touch? Let me know, will you?

Still, poetry thrives. It’s a bigger world, with more people, more poets.

Then there’s SLAM POETRY! The high culture equivalent of hip hop. I don’t know anything about SLAM POETRY except that it’s great fun, the audience is fully involved, the passions are up front, IT’S ALIVE IT’S ALIVE! Go to Youtube and search out Slam poetry and there you have it. The world of performance speech, it has no rules but one: tell a story, suck in the audience. If you don’t you will experience a gloomy traumatic humiliation that you’ll never want to repeat unless you combine the attributes of martyr with poet (not a bad combo, really) and you’re in it for the long haul, you’re there to perfect your art no matter what the price.

Youtube threw up a slam poet named Jesse Parent. The poem he spoke was called “To The Boys Who Will One Day Date My Daughter”. Then, boom! I was off on a delightful two hour marathon of enjoying slam poetry and the only reason it resolved at two hours was because my butt hurt from sitting so long in my malignant chair.

Guess what? The world has changed. I’m old enough to enjoy the backward/shrinking/reverse view of looking through the wrong end of a telescope. e.e. cummings? Allen Ginsberg? Are they hip-hoppers? What do they do?

“You’ve never heard ‘Howl’?”

“Is that a song?”

“No. Probably the most famous poem of modern times.”

“What? Like ‘Niggas In Paris’?”

“Niggas in…uhhhh, I don’t….”

“Daddy! Kanye and Jay-Z.”

I’m already confused. This began as an essay about poetry. “Well, Kanye’s pretty much destroyed himself, and Jay-Z, okay, I can handle Jay-Z, gotta give him some respect.”

“Listen, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll listen to ‘Howl’ if you’ll listen to ‘Niggas in Paris.”

“Deal. But…let me warn you. Ginsberg wasn’t much of an orator…”

(Ginsberg reads: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness etc etc). He sounds as if he’s been drinking Robitussin for two weeks and just took a snort of cocaine to get through the reading. After listening to Jesse Parent for half an hour the desultory delivery of Ginsburg is pathetic. I listen to the words of the poem. I know it’s a classic. I like it. I’m ambivalent about it. It sounds old fashioned. But maybe that’s just poor Allen’s delivery.

Yes. The world has changed.

 

A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good.  His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv. 

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s The Many Faces of Poetry segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

 

 

June: Seeking thrills and chills with thrillers

This month’s genre theme is thrillers, and it has been exciting exploring the many facets of this widely encompassing genre. In a broad sense, a thriller is an adventure or mystery novel, (or movie), that feeds on suspense to get readers’ adrenelin pumping and keep them turning pages, because they have to learn what… happens… next.

Within this context, there are many subgenres of thriller, including spy novels, political thrillers, psychological thrillers.  My review books this month, The Gamma Sequence, by Dan Alatorre and Only Wrong Once, by Jenifer Ruff are both medical thrillers, but they are two very different stories. My interviews this month are with International bestselling novelist Dan Alatorre and my “Chatting with the Pros” author guest is psychological thriller author John Nicholl. The subgenres are many, and sometimes the lines are blurred between thrillers and horror novels, or thrillers and mysteries, or thrillers and crime fiction, but as master thriller author James Patterson said in his book Thrillers: Stories to Keep You Up All Night (2016),

“But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. By definition, if a thriller doesn’t thrill, it’s not doing its job.”

Yes, it’s the excitement we feel when we read a good thriller, the sudden rush of adrenaline when catastrophy strikes and it seems there is no way out for the hero(es), or the anticipation that makes us jump in our seat when the villian attacks even though we saw it coming, these are the feelings that keep thriller readers coming back for more. Good thrillers are usually fast paced to keep the action moving and keep the adrenaline pumping from the first page to the last, throwing in twists and turns, and maybe a series of ups and downs, that keep readers on the edges of their seats and never quite give them a chance to rest until that last page is turned.

Thank you for joining me in June for a look into thrillers. I hope you’ll join me in July as I go on the hunt for crime fiction. My “Chatting with the Pros” author guest will be bestselling author, Jenifer Ruff, and I will also be interviewing noir author Michael Poole and hard boiled fiction author Jim Nesbitt, and my reviews will be Rose City, by Michael Poole and The Numbers Killer, by Jenifer Ruff. See you then.

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Writing for a YA Audience: Author Photo Shoot

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I’ve done a few photo shoots for my author pictures, and they are always so much fun.  I get to feel like a model.  For FANYA IN THE UNDERWORLD, we decided to do things a little differently.  Aaron Siddall illustrated the book and I wrote it; we both brainstormed the concepts.  Because this was a joint collaboration, we decided to have a joint photo.

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A good friend of ours, Monica Reid Keba, met with us at the Utica Train Station, known as Union Station.  The building is beautiful, with marble pillars and chandeliers.  Stepping inside is a little like going back in time.  Many of the fixtures are original from the construction in 1914.  I have a special fondness for the waiting room benches.  Not only do they incorporate the heating system, but they are gorgeous to look at.  The station was designed by Allen Stem and Alfred Fellheimer.  In case you aren’t familiar with those names, they are the architects who designed New York City’s Grand Central Station.

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Aaron Siddall and I posed on the benches, beneath the chandeliers, and outside.  The autumn day was crisp, with a light drizzle in the air.  I hiked up my skirt and scaled the side of an old trolley car.  We also explored the park next door.  The train station is located in the historic Bagg’s Square neighborhood.  The quaint park, surrounded by a stone fence, is home to the site of a log cabin known as Bagg’s Tavern.  This log cabin saw esteemed guests such as George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant.

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If you are ever in the area and love visiting historic sites, check out the train station and Bagg’s Tavern.  Your eyes won’t be disappointed by the sites.

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Jordan Elizabeth is a young adult fantasy author.  She is most likely gazing at something in awe, something she will soon include in one of her novels. You can connect with Jordan – and point her in the direction of some paranormal activity – via her website, JordanElizabethBooks.com.

 

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