David Cranmer's Blog, page 90

Waiting to Finish Frank Bill's DonnyBrook

I was passing through New York--about two months back--when Donnybrook by Frank Bill arrived in the mail. I had just begun reading Bill's novel when I let BTAP-published poet Kyle Knapp borrow it with the idea that I'd pick it up again in four days time. Well, one thing led to another, and Kyle and I missed each other at the next junction ... and I still haven't finished Donnybrook, though I'm promised it is in the mail. Kyle posted a review on Amazon that reads:

An exemplary work of art; a raging bloodbath, that leaves you begging for more. 
Imagine Chuck Palahniuk reborn in a mental asylum to a hermaphroditic witch doctor and then loosed into the woods. He discovers there an abandoned library haunted by a ninja. Ok... maybe that's a bit much, but it is a good metaphor for what you're getting into! Frank Bill's novel has the spastic energy of a beating heart. I stayed up into the small hours night after night until it was finished, too eager to turn out the light. Friends borrowed the story jealous of who was ahead of them in line, as we all agreed that this novel was going to be the next hallmark of youth-run-amok. For a guy that grew up religiously watching Fight Club--and sneaking off into the night after a few beers with his friends to beat the hell out of each other... This is it! This is the next Holy Pyre of the Damned. Enjoy at the risk of falling in love on the battlefield!

Hell, wanna finish reading this in the worst way but have to wait for it to arrive in the mail, again!

Letters: Edgar Allan Poe

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. — Edgar Allan Poe to James Russell Lowell, July 2, 1844

Big Booty Judy and Vienna Sausages

So, you think you’re staying in a hotel with some class. It’s nice. The rooms are modern and stylish. The service is friendly. You have all the amenities of home, including a fully equipped kitchen. Just like living in a one bedroom flat (as my British pals would say). All with the added bonus of housekeeping. And a pool. And free breakfast. Not to mention a social hour every weekday evening, but you’re too whooped after work to partake. (Heck, you barely have the gumption to write, but the view of the courtyard with the meticulously landscaped area around the pool with flowering shrubs and palms is inspiring, and you place the desk just so you can look out the window and pretend you’re Ian Fleming at Goldeneye in Jamaica. Well, kinda.) It makes you forget that you’re staying in a hotel, away from family and friends, and tames the thoughts that you’ve put out your loved ones again. You almost feel a sense of normal.

Until this …
You wake up and head off to the gut-wrenching job. No time to stop for breakfast. On the stairs as you start down is an open can of Vienna sausages with a note from Big Booty Judy leading some, I guess, deliriously happy suitor to Big Booty’s room. “Almost there, sexy!” the note (didn’t come out in the pic) reads.  Another can of sausages waits on the landing and at the very bottom of the stairs is a condom -- still in the wrapper -- on the floor.
Before you get to the vehicle, the cold reality sets in … Yeah. 

The Heath Lowrance Interview

Where did life begin for Heath Lowrance?

If we're talking literal, it began in Huntsville Alabama with a smooth-talking ladies man who somehow convinced my (rather naive) mother that he was Chuck Connors. A whirlwind romance, a quickie marriage, and bammo, a kid-- at which point the smooth celebrity look-a-like vanished from the scene and left my mom to do the child-rearing on her own. We migrated to Calhoun, Tennessee, then Michigan, and back and forth for a while, depending on my mother's fortunes and family relations.

If we're talking figurative, it began when I was in my forties and decided I didn't give a damn what anyone thought anymore and decided to stake everything on writing.


What has been the greatest sacrifice?

I sacrificed relationships and "career opportunities" that would have led to stability and money. I turned away from any sort of "normal life". But I never missed any of it. By middle-age, I knew that nothing else would work for me but to be dedicated to writing. Any job I took would have to conform to that; if it meant eating ramen noodles and sleeping in the back seat of my car (which it did, for a while) then so be it. Nothing else would do.

My life so far has been an example of Amazing Luck. Despite some intensely rough periods, I'm at a place now where I have a day job that doesn't interfere with my real work, I have a lovely and supportive wife, and a bright and beautiful daughter from a previous marriage. I'm not hungry. I have a roof over my head. And I write. I never had to give it up.


I always liked the way Charles Bukowski referred to mind numbing day labor as soul-sucking jobs. What were a few of your memorable positions?

I've had a LOT of jobs, man. The worst one ever was the one I had the longest, through most of my thirties: working as an office drone. Customer service and all that, taking phone calls from angry customers and dealing with the idiotic managerial hierarchy and soul-destroying corporate minds. Oh, how I hated it. And not surprisingly, I didn't write much during that period. It was awful.

Before that, I worked in a lot of book stores. I worked as a private detective for about a year, which was not nearly as interesting as it sounds. I worked security in the parking lot of a punk club in Detroit. I was even one of those guys who dresses up like a cartoon animal at a theme-pizza- restaurant for kids.

The best job, though, was at Sun Studio in Memphis, where I was a tour guide. I got to listen to great music all day, and talk to people from all over the world. Met a lot of my favorite musicians there and learned a great deal.


Is the ghost of Elvis alive and well at Sun Studio?

Ha... no Elvis sightings while I was there, I'm afraid. But the King will always live on in our hearts, yeah?

I did hang out with Billy Lee Riley, though, and Rufus Thomas, Roscoe Gordon, a few others. I gave a tour of the studio to The Cramps, and that was kind of cool. Probably the highlight of my time there was when the BBC came to do a documentary and filmed Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Scotty Moore (Elvis' guitar player) jamming in the studio. I was the only non-essential personnel in the room. I still get chills thinking about it. I shared a Coke with Carl Perkins and got dissed by Jerry Lee.


What an incredible moment! I gotta ask though, what was up with The Killer that day?

The Killer was getting make-up put on for the cameras. I came up and introduced myself, told him I was a fan, and he sorta looked up at me in this stiff-necked way and said, "'course ya are, son," and then turned away. It was kinda funny, and pretty typical Jerry Lee.


How did you come to write weird westerns?

It was a case of writing what I wanted desperately to read. I loved Robert E. Howard's work, and Joe Lansdale's crazy weird westerns, and really wanted to read something that was all out pulp-inspired western horror. So that's where I went. "That Damned Coyote Hill" was a combination of genres I love, featuring my ideal damaged tough guy protagonist. I wasn't thinking in terms of a series at the time. I honestly thought it would be a one-off. But something about Hawthorne kept inspiring more story ideas and now he and the weird western have taken hold of me.


Can you give us a hint of what Hawthorne is up to next?

Next is "Scarred", the origin story, probably in summer. You'll find out about the woman named Johanna, and Hawthorne's father, and the unspeakably horrible act that led to Hawthorne's current preoccupation with slaughtering evil wherever he finds it. After that, the Cash Laramie/Hawthorne cross-over, which I'm pretty excited about. That will take us approximately halfway through the Hawthorne saga.


It will be interesting to see how you and Ed Grainger are able to cross these two worlds. Hey, make sure Grainger does his fair share of the writing.

Hey, you don't crack the whip on Grainger. But you can be sure it'll be every bit his story as much as mine.


You're right and I shouldn't dump on Ed, he does contribute to a couple of my bills. So, what's it like to write Grainger's Gideon Miles character and what's next?

I've really grown attached to Gideon. It's sort of like when a mutual friend introduces you to someone and says, "Hey, you guys should hang out," and you wind up being tight with that person. That's how I feel about Grainger lending me Gideon Miles. And I also think Gideon is sort of inspirational, as a character; whenever I have to decide what course of action he'll take in a story, or what he'll say or think, I start with: what would a decent, strong-minded, level-headed man with a deep understanding of the world do? Because that's what Gideon Miles would do. He's a role model. I'm proud to have contributed to his mythos and help develop his character.

It's a very different proposition from writing Hawthorne, who is a bit of a psychopath, really, and not someone you'd want to emulate.

The next Gideon Miles is a novella called "Gideon Miles and the Axeman of Storyville," which catches up with our hero in his senior years, running a club in New Orleans and coming into conflict with a depraved murderer. Sometime in the near future, I'll return to Gideon in his Old West Marshaling days.

Heath Lowrance regularly blogs at Psycho Noir and his Amazon page can be found here.

Doughnuts Are The New Cupcake

I think I might’ve mentioned that I’ve been staying at a hotel for a spell. When you stay somewhere long enough, you start to notice patterns. And there is a particularly annoying pattern that I’ve noticed with this particular stay.

Everyone seems to flitter like moths to the window light at my end of the hall to talk on their cell phones. I could kinda understand if any one of them had a room near mine, but none of them do. My room is the last one in the hall, with no room across from me and I know who’s staying in the one next to me.
So, there’s this guy talking on his mobile phone outside my door. LOUD. Discussing what should’ve been a personal matter. I looked to my wife as I grabbed my cell phone and then went the door, pretending to be in the middle of videoing a narrated tour of the hotel.
“This is the hall outside our room.” I panned around and put him in the lens view. “And here is the window. Nice view, as you can see …” and I rambled on a bit more as I milled around the hall like him, talking just as loud. (Btw, the window is not a draw for some breathtaking view … unless you find a parking lot and a strip mall across the street spectacular.)
He looked at me with a suspicious side-eye, as if he couldn’t understand what I was doing. He fidgeted and fumbled in his conversation for a moment, then he walked away, never saying a word to me.
I detected annoyance … I know it couldn’t be my listening in on his conversation, after all he was talking loud enough for me to hear him through a closed door. Couldn’t be that I made an intrusion in his space, since the hallway is public space. Was it aiming my phone camera in his direction? Worse than a gun these days, right? No worries, bro, I don’t have a YouTube account—though many author friends say I should.
But what the hell is the matter with some people? Maybe it doesn’t bother him when someone is outside his door talking about child support at the top of their lungs. But shouldn’t it?
After I went back in the room, my charmer asks, “Everything, ok?”
“Yeah,” I say. I motion to the newspaper she’s holding. “What are you reading?”
“Nothing worthwhile.” She sets the paper on the table. “Just an article that says doughnuts are trendy again.”
“Oh,” I sigh.

4/2/13 9:36 PM

As I lumbered through the lobby, a bunch of barefoot and giggling teenagers (yes, they still do that), flowed passed me, out the door into the hotel courtyard, aimed for the pool. I took the stairs and heard a man one flight up from me, bitching to himself, “F---ing tourists!” I passed him mid-flight. He wore a hotel maintenance shirt and forced a smile on his hard face. Poor bastard—another man with a soul-sucking job.
A conference was in full swing on the 3rd floor just down the hall from my room. A Christian conference. Lots of beaming faces greeting each other. Standoffish, I parted the hall like a beaten-down Moses. Just wanted to get to my room.
And there, my beautiful wife and daughter were waiting with big smiles, while the pleasant aroma of a pasta dinner wafted through the room. All with the added bonus that my books had arrived: the final print proof of BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 2 and Ross Macdonald’s The Ivory Grin and The Blue Hammer. Macdonald’s  Lew Archer is comfort food reading for me. The best detective the genre ever produced waiting to be read.
I started thinking ‘bout the hard-faced maintenance man on the stairs—hope he has something equally rewarding waiting for him. 

A Night of Blood and Fire ...

An abandoned Army fort is the perfect hideout for the worst criminals around. Or so they thought. In the fort basement lurks evil--The Sisters--bringing Plague to the fugitives, poisoning minds and souls, and thirsting for blood. When Hawthorne is led to the fort in pursuit of a thieving murderer, he must also fight the Sisters. And, when ugly ties to his own shadowy past are revealed, the mysterious gunslinger is pushed to his very limits ... and into the darkness.

"Hawthorne: Bad Sanctuary" by Heath Lowrance is available.

Failure To Follow Rules Will Cause Flooding

The thick-necked traveler ahead of me at the Hyatt was just building up to a crescendo when I walked in to register.
“Why do I need to show a credit card? This makes no sense. None at all.”
The young lady at the front desk had that same painted-on, pained expression I used to wear when I had worked in retail during my college days. She was basically telling him without saying it aloud, “Go to hell, you stupid bastard.”
The man asked to speak to a manager, and the lady obliged by stepping into the back room. I’m sure the young lady asked the manager, “Can you please tell this thick-necked, stupid bastard to go to hell.” At least I'd like to imagine that she got to say it that way.
While she was away, the man turned to me for some form of comfort.
“Unbelievable,” he said as he shook his head.
I raised my eyebrows and shifted my gaze away. Didn’t wanna be a part of his suitcase. Luckily I didn’t have to answer … the manager arrived—a striking, 6’ tall redhead with a plunging neckline and take-no-prisoners hardened look. Poor bastard was outgunned.
Young Lady turned to me and asked, “Sir, may I help you?” I presented my info which Thick Neck seemed to be lacking.
After some back and forth with Thick Neck, Sexy Manager said, “Those are our rules, sir.” Thick Neck began with another lame approach, but by then, I was checked-in and heading down the hall to the elevator to get to my room. As I waited for the elevator, I heard his loud stammers and shift in tone. A “can you do me a favor” change of tune. Watership down!
The word “rule” went through my head. I remember a former boss used to say, “If a rule exists, it’s because someone somewhere screwed up.”
While I unpacked my bags for the umpteenth time over the past few weeks, I glanced around the room. An inviting, clean, cozy room. And then the sign underneath the sprinkler system, which jutted from the wall near the ceiling, caught my eye … it read, “Contact with sprinkler will cause flooding.”
I pondered the words of warning for a moment as I walked to the window and looked out. There was Thick Neck in the parking lot, tossing his suitcase—with great force—into the car trunk, and then he slammed it shut.
It’s for the best he didn’t stay. Guys like him, who can’t follow rules, would’ve flooded his room, causing a false alarm in the middle of the night that’d send the rest of us evacuating the building in our underwear. We’ve all been there, right?
I went to the desk in the corner of my room, sat down in the computer chair, and warmed up the laptop to get back to formatting the latest Hawthorne eBook. But before that, a blog post …

The Reading Habits Of A Tired Traveler

I’m pooped. I’ve been in, like, twelve states in two weeks. Published one book during that time and working on publishing three others. Not complaining, just letting you know the reason I haven’t made my usual round of the blogs. We’re trekking again this weekend, and I hope to play catch up when we get to our destination. Many of you know I read several books at the same time. Odd, but that’s me. (And, hey, I still knock on wood religiously and carry a bottle of holy water just in case.)

During my travels—and whenever I can steal some time—these are a few that I’m reading. ALL THE WILD CHILDREN by Josh Stallings. Because I just bought this book, it’d normally be farther down on my TBR list, but the opening chapter hooked me good. An interesting life well-told. HOME INVASION by good friend, Patti Abbott. Do I need to say more? This novel in stories has all the dramatic power you would expect from one of the finest short story writers of our time.

I’ve been on a kick of recent reading letters written by various writers, most recently Charles Bukowski’s SCREAMS FROM THE BALCONY: SELECTED LETTERS 1960-1970 and Hunter S. Thompson’s FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA (GONZO LETTERS).

Rounding out the list is THE KILLER IS DYING by James Sallis. I started reading this one a year back, but circumstances with day job distracted me, and the book ended up in storage. I was rummaging through boxes this week when I rediscovered it, and I’m savoring this fresh, unique novel.

So that and several ARCs—for blurbs I’m working on—is what I’m reading. What’s on your nightstand?

The Drifter Detective

Jack Laramie, grandson of the legendary US Marshal Cash Laramie, is a tough-as-nails WWII vet roaming the modern West. He lives out of a horse trailer hitched to the back of a DeSoto, searching out PI gigs to keep him afloat.

With his car limping along, Jack barely makes it to the sleepy town of Clyde, Texas, where he stops at a garage. While waiting for repairs, he accepts a job from the sheriff, pulling surveillance on a local oilman allegedly running liquor to Indian reservations in Oklahoma. When Jack runs afoul of several locals and becomes dangerously close to the oilman’s hot-to-trot wife, he wonders if the money is worth his life.

Garnett Elliott writes in the best hardboiled tradition of the masters and turns out a tour-de-force novelette, clocking in at a trim, fighting 9k words. Take a chance on this new series ... and experience a Jack Laramie beat.

James Reasoner and Randy Johnson on "The Drifter Detective."