Les Edgerton's Blog, page 38

Mike Monson's review of JUST LIKE THAT

Hi folks,

Just got this--a review by Mike Monson of my novel, JUST LIKE THAT on his blog. Check it out!

Blue skies,
Les

And... thanks, Mike!

More writer's quotes and a couple prepub blurbs for THE RAPIST

Hi folks,
A couple more advance blurbs for THE RAPIST, followed by more writer’s quotes. Hope you enjoy ‘em!
First blurb is from Mark Ramsden, a British musician and novelist whose work you should check out.
If the narrator of Camus’ The Outsider had written an especially disturbing thriller it would be The Rapist - rock hard, darkest Noir, very fine writing, first-class storytelling.An intelligent, proud psychopath on death row tries to win your approval, in the last few hours before the big sleep. You don’t like him but it’s impossible to stop reading.While some of us tourists can sometimes concoct realistic stories from knowing criminals and having dabbled occasionally, Mr Edgerton has served time, giving him knowledge citizens prefer not to have. Writers Helen Fitzgerald and Wendy Gager also had initial misgivings being associated with this title and a persuasive narrator. My name, for the few who know it, is already associated with unapologetic hard drug use, chronic alcoholism, a lightweight’s criminal record, sex work, (that’s where drugs can take you) and twenty years campaigning for consensual fetish sex. “This is supposed to be about him!” sorry, but if degenerates like me are squicked out by our unrepentant host, a cold man who looks down on those who empathise with other humans, you might feel uneasy about this book. Decent people should despise scumbag predators but that’s not a reason to avoid this gripping book.I’m thrilled to have a new author over whom to obsess. It’s been a while since I discovered Ted ‘Get Carter’ Lewis, Elmore Leonard and Thomas Harris. Decades since I saw my first Tarantino. Les Edgerton belongs in that company.Mark Ramsden, jazz musician and author of Radical Desire (Mandrake) TheDark Magus and the Sacred Whore, The Dungeonmaster’s Apprentice, The SacredBlood (Serpent’s Tail) War School(Troubador)
And here’s one from another Brit, the uber-talented Nigel Bird:
Les Edgerton’s ‘The Rapist’ is an extraordinary book. In essence, it describes the events leading up to the protagonist’s incarceration and the time he passes as he waits his final dawn to arrive. It’s written in a style of yesteryear and there are sketches that suggest a contemporary setting; what I feel the author achieves by this juxtaposition is to direct his thoughts to the human condition as it’s always been rather than it might be at any given point. The main character is an intellectual. A pedant. A philosopher. He is in the middle of a war of attrition against the people he meets, himself and even more importantly with the reader. It’s like being hit repeatedly by a blunt object as he cajoles and insists and backs up his arguments. There are even times when the guy seems convincing and these are the most disturbing sections of all. There aren’t many modern books like this, I’m pretty sure. Though it may not always be a fun ride, there’s an element of satisfaction for the reader who takes this on in undertaking such a perilous journey. I left ‘The Rapist’ battered, bruised and exhausted - what more can one say about a book than that? Nigel Bird, author of Smoke, Mr Suit, In LocoParentis
Thanks, guys!
Now—here’s some more of quotes from writers about all kinds of subjects.
On fame:
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.” Mark Twain
“First you’re unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.” Martin Myers
“A writer is always admired most, not by those who have read him, but by those who have merely heard about him.” H.L. Mencken
“When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we’ll be funnier to look at than to read.” Sinclair Lewis
“It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” Robert Benchley
“Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, double obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.” Vladimir Nabokov
“Odd things happen to book writers when they become famous.” Ronald Sukenick
“Little presses write to me for manuscripts and when I write back that I haven’t any, they write to ask if they can print the letter saying I haven’t any.” John Steinbeck
“It’s a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.” Vladimir Nabokov
On grammar:
“Grammar is the grave of letters.” Elbert Hubbard
“Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it.” Henry David Thoreau
“I don’t know any but the simplest rules of English grammar, and I seldom consciously apply them. Nevertheless, I instinctively write correctly and, I like to think, in an interesting fashion. I know when something sounds right and when it doesn’t, and I can tell the difference without hesitation, even when writing at breakneck speed. How do I know this? I haven’t the faintest idea.” Isaac Asimov
“Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.” W. Somerset Maugham
“Why care for grammar as long as we are good?” Artemus Ward
“You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.” Robert Frost
“Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.” Joan Didion
“Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.” James Thurber
These folks ain’t lyin’…
Hope you enjoyed ‘em!
Blue skies,Les
My agent Chip Macgregor and me hanging out. (I'm the good-looking one...)

More writer's quotes-more advance blurbs for The Rapist

Hi folks,
Here come some more advance blurbs for THE RAPIST. And, following these, some more writer’s quotes for your perusal… Building the buzz... (click on the links to see their own way-good books)

From the fantastic British writer, Tony Black
The Rapist's narrator has the same overweening self-importance as Nabokov's Humbert Humbert and the Lolita comparisons don't end there. At times you don't want to look, you want to wash your mind out but this compelling work, told in bleakly sonorous prose, pulls you back. Les Edgerton has produced that rare thing: a book of seriousness.
Tony Black, author of Murder Mile

And one from another fantastic writer, Heath Lowrance
With THE RAPIST, Les Edgerton has written the most bone-chilling, evocative, depraved and insightful novel of the year. Forget "hardboiled", forget "noir", forget everything you think you know about what a genre story is supposed to be. THE RAPIST brushes all of that aside with a disdainful sneer and instead presents something that aspires to far more than any single genre can provide. More than anything else, this novel occupies that same uneasy space that Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" rests in-- a controlled testament of misanthropy and delusion. But whereas the great Russian's protagonist was fueled by rage, Edgerton's narrator is fueled by a sharp, ugly narcissism, and a beastly inhuman nature that peeks like a stalker through his eloquent language and high-minded ideas. Not so much a plot-driven novel as a narrative, Edgerton guides us into the mind of his narrator and leaves us there alone to fend for ourselves and make our own way back from the darkness. How much of what Truman says can we dismiss as the ravings of a damaged mind? And how much must we stop and listen to, hunting for a glimmer of truth?
THE RAPIST is a challenging novel, not for the squeamish, and definitely not for anyone who dislikes being pulled out of their comfort zone. It quite simply blew me away. Destined to be a classic. Heath Lowrance, The Bastard Hand, Dig Ten Graves, City of Heretics and others.


Thanks, guys!
And, here’s some other writer’s talking about writing and other stuff. From Writers On Writing, edited by Jon Winokur.
On bestsellers:
“A bestseller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.” Logan Pearsall Smith
“Bestsellerism is the star system of the book world. A ‘bestseller’ is a celebrity among books. It is known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.” David J. Boorstin
“Can anybody be so naïve as to think he or she can learn anything about the past from those buxom bestsellers that are hawked around by book clubs under the heading of historical novels?” Vladimir Nabokov
“The writing of a bestseller represents only a fraction of the total effort required to create one.” Ted Nicholas
“If we should ever inaugurate a hall of fame, it would be reserved exclusively and hopefully for authors who, having written four bestsellers, still refrained from starting out on a lecture tour.” E.B. White
“A bestseller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well.” Daniel J. Boorstin
“The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great bestsellers.” V.S. Pritchett
More on writers writing about other writers
“Gertrude Stein’s prose is a cold, black suet-pudding. WE can represent it as a cold suet-roll of fabulously reptilian length. Cut it at any point, it is… the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through and all along.” Percy Wyndham Lewis
“Miss Stein was a past master a making nothing happen very slowly.” Clifton Fadiman
“I read him for the first time in the early forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.” Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway
“Hemingway was a necromancer who adopted every superior Balzacian trick in the book, each technical device that Flaubert and Tolstoy and Dickens had found useful, so that quite often his work seemed better than it really was.” James Michener
“Hemingway had a remarkable interest in and understanding of homosexuality, for a man who wasn’t a homosexual.” Tennessee Williams
“Thomas Wolfe has always seemed to me the most overrated, long-winded and boring of reputable American novelists.” Edith Oliver
“He writes by sanded fingertips.” Lillian Hellman on Tennessee Williams
“The only man who wrote a great deal in our time was John O’Hara, because he went on the wagon and had nothing else to do.” Irwin Shaw
“Hard to lay down but easy not to pick up.” Malcolm Cowley on John O’Hara’s novels
“He’d be all right if he took his finger out of his mouth.” Harold Robbins on Truman Capote
“She looks like a truck driver in drag.” Truman Capote on Jacqueline Susann
“I’m glad there are people like Burroughs to take the dope and all so I don’t have to do it.” John Barth
“Each writer is a separate entity. The mistake people like Mailer make is that writing is for him a track race.” William Styron
“He’s a second-rate Stephen Birmingham. And Steven Birmingham is third-rate.” Truman Capote on Louis Auchincloss
“I knew Faulkner very well. He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet.” Truman Capote
“H.L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H.L. Mencken—there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.” Maxwell Bodenheim
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” William Faulkner
“James Joyce—an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.” Tom Stoppard
Hope you enjoyed ‘em! More soon…
Blue skies,Les
Me and some buds tailgating in the Notre Dame parking lot before heading into the game a couple of years ago. Go Irish!

More blurbs for THE RAPIST and more snazzy writer's quotes

Hi folks,
Got a couple more blurbs for THE RAPIST to share with you and get this buzz thingy going. And, following these are more writer’s quotes.
Here’s the first, from bestselling mystery author, W.S. Gager.
When Les Edgerton asked me to read an ARC of “The Rapist” he warned me with that title it may not be my thing and he was okay with whatever I decided. I knew of his writing books like Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go and Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing  but never had looked at any of his fiction. I was prepared for something graphic but he refused to talk about the plot or storyline. No hints.
I was ready to be offended. I’m a strong advocate for women’s equality and won’t tolerate or put my name near anything that belittles woman. With a title of “The Rapist” it had two and a half strikes before I read the first line because rape is all about a man having power over a woman.
From the first pages the words and voice made me think of American literature masters like Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe I was forced to read in high school. The difference was in school I still muttered about reading dead masters and times, but grew to love the descriptions, plots and characters that transported me to another moment in history. In “The Rapist” I read greedily to see where the book was going, totally engrossed in the story. The honesty and freshness of the words from the main character kept me glued to the page to see what happened to the man caught in the worst circumstances and an act of degradation to woman. That is about all I want to say about the plot. I understand Les’s reasons for not explaining the details. You need fresh eyes to appreciate it but that isn’t to say I won’t go back and reread it like other writing masters savoring it. It is one of those books that each time you read it, you find another kernel of truth, a pearl of wisdom. It has that many facets wrapped in rich layers of dialogue, characterization and setting that pounded with each of the rapist’s heartbeat. I was hooked from the first page.Wendy Gager, author of A Case of Infatuation, A Case of Accidental Intersection, andA Case of Hometown Blues.
And one from Richard Godwin, who, incidentally gave me the single most exhausting andthought-provoking interview I’ve ever been through…
‘I live in a small, dark realm which I fill out’. Jean Genet’s words in “Miracle Of the Rose”. And like Genet, Edgertonwrites with lyricism and a sense of history of things that disturb, balancing through his superb style themes that may otherwise unsettle the narrative. Edgerton’s brilliant archaeological dig into the motivations of a rapist is an unflinching look at the darker recesses of the human psyche. There is nothing gratuitous here and it takes a command to achieve a narrative pull in such territory. It reminded me of John Burnside’s “The Locust Room” but it’s better written. Edgerton voices the demonic forces at work within his narrator’s head. He embeds the story with the protagonist’s need for redemption set against the backdrop of his life. "The Rapist" is confessional, poetic, unrelenting, and as real as the newspaper lying before you. It challenges the assumption that fictions need to censor the things people read every day in what is deemed factual. It is told in a style that situates it among the classics of transgressive fictions. Richard Godwin, Apostle Rising, Mr Glamour
And now some writer’s quotes:
First, writers on Hollywood. All of these are from Writers On Writing, compiled by Jon Winokur.
“I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.” Nelson Algren
“A dreary industrial town controlled by hoodlums of enormous wealth, the ethical sense of a pack of jackals, and taste so degraded that it befouled everything it touched.” S.J. Perlman
“I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain.” Ben Hecht
“Hollywood has the finest brains in the world out there. But they’re up against all these vested interests, and vested interests are the very devil for the artist.” Frank O’Connor
“My principal feeling about Hollywood is suicide. If I could get out of bed and into the shower, I was all right. Since I never paid the bills, I’d reach for the phone and order the most elaborate breakfast I could think of, and then I’d try to make it to the shower before I hanged myself.” John Cheever
“The only –ismHollywood believes in is plagiarism.” Dorothy Parker
“Itt was a hideous and untenable place when I dwelt there, populated with few exceptions with Yahoos, and now that it has become the chief citadel of television, it’s unspeakable.” S.J. Perlman
“Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.” Dorothy Parker
Writers on Journalism:
“Journalism is literature in a hurry.” Matthew Arnold
“Journalism is the entertainment business.” Frank Herbert
“The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.” Oscar Wilde
“The indispensable requirement for a good newspaper: as eager to tell a lie as the truth.” Norman Mailer
“Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.” Rebecca West
And finally, for today:
“I once saw a woman on an elevator carrying a book of mine. She held the book backwards so I could see myself peering over her elbow. I found looking at myself very disconcerting and when she had left the elevator I had a terrible feeling that she was taking my face away with her, leaving me nothing to shave in the morning.” John Cheever
Hope you enjoyed these! More anon…
Blue skies,Les
This is my wife Mary, who I always refer to as "Eye Candy" at the Notre Dame baseball banquet she and our son Mike and I attended one year. She's always a good sport going to all of our sports deals and pretending to like it... I am just one lucky doofus!

Blurb for THE RAPIST and some new writer's quotes

Hi folks,
I just got my advance paperback copies of my forthcoming novella, THE RAPIST, and I’m like the guy from the Robertson’s…. HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY! It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Thanks for Jon Bassoff, the publisher of New Pulp Press, who also designed the best cover I’ve ever had on any of my books.
I’m hoping to create a bit of buzz here, so I’m going to start including some of the blurbs I’ve received as the days dwindle down to release date on March 20. To date, I’ve received over 30 blurbs and every single one of them is raving about it. I really think this is going to be my breakout novel.


The first one I’m throwing at you is one of my favorites, from Scottish writer Helen FitzGerald. Because of the title and content, it was suggested I ask some women writers for their take on it and here’s what Helen had to say:
So, I’m reading Les Edgerton’s The Rapist. The title has already made me uneasy.
Five pages in and I can hardly breathe.
Ten and I’m nauseous.
For the next 50, I’m a mixture of all of the above, but most of all, angry.
I feel like ringing my feminist friends and confessing: Sisters, I’m reading something you will kill me for reading.
I feel like ringing my ex colleagues - parole officers and psychologists who work with sex offenders in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow - and asking them if they think it’s helpful to publish an honest and explicit transcript which shows the cognitive distortions of a callous, grandiose, articulate sex offender; one which illustrates his inability to have a relationship with a woman and his complete lack of empathy?
I’m thinking I don’t know what I should be thinking.
Will it turn sex offenders on?
Should we listen to this guy?
Is it possible to separate the person from the offence, and to empathise with him as he waits to die?
I don’t ring anyone.
I read on.
And the breathlessness, nausea, anger and confusion increase all the way to the end, at which point all I know is that the book is genius.Helen FitzGerald, author, Dead Lovely, Bloody Women, The Devil’s Staircase, The Donor and others.
Thank you so much, Helen! Coming from a writer of much renown such as you, this means an awful lot.
Bonus: For reading through my self-promo (thank you!), I’m including some more writer’s quotes, since folks seemed to enjoy the last batch.
ADVICE TO OTHER WRITERS
“You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.” William Saroyan
“To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.” Anton Chekhov
“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.” Gerald Brenan
“There is only one place to write and that is aloneat a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets… when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.” Charles Bukowski
“Listen carefully to first criticisms of your work. Note just what it is about your work the critics don’t like—then cultivate it. That’s the part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.” Jean Cocteau
“If you want to be true to life, start lying about it.” John Fowles
“The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.” Irwin Shaw
“One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.” Christopher Isherwood
“Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one’s sputum.” Vladimir Nabokov
“A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. That is too much of a temptation to the editor.” Ring Lardner
“Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.” W. Somerset Maugham
“Everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else.” Georges Simenon
“Once you start illustrating virtue as such you had better stop writing fiction. Do something else, like Y-work. Or join a committee. Your business as a writer is not to illustrate virtue, but to show how a fellow may move toward it—or away from it.” Robert Penn Warren
“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you.” James Michener
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than write for the public and have no self.” Cyril Connolly
“If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.” Don Marquis
“You can’t want to be a writer; you have to beone.” Paul Theroux
“Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.” E.B. White
“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.” W. Somerset Maugham
…and finally…
“If I had to give young writers advice, I’d say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” Lillian Hellman
Hope you folks enjoyed these! More next time!
Blue skies,Les

WRITER QUOTES

Hi folks,
Off the beaten track a bit today. It seems today’s writers are just a bit too polite. Nobody wants to say someone is a twit even when it’s obvious. I kind of liked the “good old days” when writers would talk about other writers they didn’t like or respect, before that monstrosity that undermines free speech called being “politically correct” took hold and silenced opinion.
Opinion is what writers should be about. We’re about the only ones who halfway express ours nowadays. You can’t find a politician who does, can you? At least one you can believe…
Just want to share what some writers of yore used to say about their peers and other literary matters. I got these from one of my favorite books, W.O.W. (Writers On Writing) accumulated and edited by Jon Winokur.

“The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.” Edmund Wilson
“I am fairly unrepentant about her poetry. I really think that three quarters of it is gibberish. However, I must crush down those thoughts otherwise the dove of peace will shit on me.” Noel Coward on Edith Sitwell.
“If it were ever thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding-forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on his every word I never saw.” James Dickey
(My favorite)“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell by Dickens without laughing.” Oscar Wilde
“Henry James had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.” T.S. Eliot
“Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.” William Faulkner
“Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.” Oscar Wilde
“I am reading Henry James… and fell myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.” Virginia Woolf
“I was reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.” Evelyn Waugh
“He writes plays for the ages—the ages between five and twelve.” George Jean Nathan on George Bernard Shaw
“English literature’s performing flea.” Sean O’Casey on P.G. Wodehouse
“Freud Madox Fraud.” Osbert Sitwell
“I loathe you. You revolt me stewing in your consumption… the Italians were quite right to having nothing to do with you. You are a loathsome reptile—I hope you will die.” D.H. Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield
Rebecca West: “I’ve never been able to do just one draft. Do you know anyone who can?”Interviewer: “I think D.H. Lawrence did.”Rebecca West: “You could often tell.”
“When his cock wouldn’t stand up, he blew his head off. He sold himself a line of bullshit and bought it.” Germaine Greer on Ernest Hemingway
“Hemingway’s remarks are not literature.” Gertrude Stein
“He was the critics’ darling because he never changed style, theme nor story. He made no experiments in thinking nor emotion.” John Steinbeck on Ernest Hemingway
“I detest him, but I was certainly under his spell when I was very young, as we all were. I thought his prose was perfect—until I read Stephen Crane and realized where he got it from.” Gore Vidal on Ernest Hemingway
“You know the beginning of Gatsby, the little frontispiece? They say that Fitzgerald made that up. I always thought that was such a great thing to do—make up a quote and pretend it really inspired you.” Nora Ephron
“Could Faulkner find a publisher now?” Annie Dillard
“I’m told, on very good authority, that he hasn’t stopped writing at all. That he’s written at least five or six short novels and that all of them have been turned down by The New Yorker. And that all of them are very strange and about Zen Buddhism.” Truman Capote on J.D. Salinger
“That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac
“Phillip Roth is a marvelous writer but I’d hate to shake hands with him.” Jacqueline Suzann after reading Portnoy’s Complaint
“He’s a bad novelist and a fool. The combination usually makes for great popularity in the U.S.” Gore Vidal on Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.” John Osorne
“I don’t see how you can write anything of value if you don’t offend someone.” Marvin Harris
Hope you enjoyed these!
Blue skies,Les
Here's a guy who's never had another writer say a negative word about...

MIRROR, MIRROR a freebie on Amazon!

Hi folks,

Well, I see my YA thriller, MIRROR, MIRROR is being offered as a freebie on Amazon. Didn't know the publisher was going to do that (although it's fine--it always seems to generate great sales afterwards!), so just alerting you in case you want to glom onto a copy. Just click on the cover. And, if you do get it, take a second and click on the "Like" button and if you have more time and could provide a review and/or rating, that would be really appreciated!


Quote of the day:
It's not a good idea to try to put your wife into a novel... not your latest wife anyway.Norman Mailer
Blue skies,Les

Review of Terrence McCauley's PROHIBITION

Hi folks,
Today, I want to give some props to a friend of mine, Terrence McCauley, and his new novel, PROHIBITION. Terrence is an amazing writer and this is a book I really could not put down until I reached the end. Writing students could study this for its pacing alone.
Hope you trust my judgment and show Terrence some love by glomming onto his book if it looks like your cup of tea. Don't forget to hit the "Like" button and if you can, provide a review for him.

PROHIBITION by Terrence McCauley
At one time, it was assumed pulp fiction died in the fifties, but the genre is making a solid comeback these days. One of the publishers responsible for its rebirth is Airship 27. What is noteworthy is that original pulp fiction novels were famous both for their stories and for their cover art. In fact, individual artists would develop a reputation by being able to convey what the story was about with just a glance at the cover. Airship 27 has recognized this by giving readers outstanding work in both areas, as evidenced by their latest release, Terrence McCauley’s PROHIBITION, featuring ex-boxer and now mob enforcer Terry Quinn as the tough-as-barbed wire protagonist and illustrated by Rob Moran with Shannon Hall providing the coloring of Moran’s images. The result is a veritable return of the glory days of pulp. Each on their own—either McCauley’s story or Moran’s art—are worth the price of admission. Together, they’re worth much, much more.
Rarely have I encountered a novel that made me turn the pages at such a breathless pace. Mob enforcer Terry Quinn is destined to have his own wax figure unveiled if ever they create a pulp fiction hall of fame. PROHIBITION has it all—mob guys, gorgeous broads, speakeasies, Tommy guns, crooked politicians, smarmy reporters, Molotov cocktails, blood and bodies galore—everything pulp fiction fans want in their reading pleasure is here. My first thought after I read “The end” was that I wanted to read more Quinn. What a wonderful character! He’s realistic, original, and yet so true to the original pulp fiction milieu that it was like picking up one of those wonderful classics of yesteryear that I thought had disappeared forever. It’s back and with a vengeance!
McCauley immerses us not only into a physical world that’s totally believable and based on real historical figures, but the novel is also centered around a mystery that is revealed in the same way a clever and top-notch fighter reveals his skills in the ring to a respected opponent, little by little, round by round. Left hooks and right crosses come out at moments when you least expect them and they have the same effect as a real-life punch would. They smack you in the solar plexus and take your breath away. The pacing is superb. It just builds and builds and builds and the last third feels like you’re hurtling along in one of those high-speed Japanese trains. You sense immediately you’re in the hands of a writing master.
When you read this—and you should—take a moment to savor the cover and the art that graces each chapter heading. The drawings will flat-out take your breath away. Taken together—the art and the writing—signal a return to the glory that was once pulp fiction and is again.
Warning: Literary snobs may not enjoy it as much for it contains the one thing that many of those folks detest—entertainment value. This isn’t about some middle-aged English prof contemplating his navel and wondering why his wife left him. Terry Quinn and other such characters are why she left him—they got tired of hearing the guy conjugate verbs and wanted to hook up with someone who actually had a life, did things and had a set of steel beans in his jeans. That means that if you prefer your books to have sleeping powder qualities—don’t start reading this book.
You ain’t gonna sleep until it’s over.

I've got some other writer friends who I owe reviews of their terrific books, but I kind of slid Terrence in here ahead of the pile--just because. I'm working on the others!

Blue skies,
Les

Just posting this because it's one of my favorite pictures of my son Mike. This was his eighth-grade basketball team photo. He was about six feet tall then and played the post. Now, he's 6' 2" and plays... the couch... (One thing that hasn't changed--he's still a babe magnet...)

FREEBIES!

Hi folks,

I wasn't aware they were going to do this, but my publisher, StoneGate Ink, has made two of my novels free! I don't know if it's for one day or several, but if you want to save a few books glom onto them. The two are JUST LIKE THAT and THE PERFECT CRIME. Just click on the covers below.



Then, since you saved big bucks on these, you might consider buying one of these:


or...


If you get any of 'em, please do me a huge solid and hit the "Like" button and if you really want to go the extra mile, a rating and/or review would be stupendous!
Thanks--I really appreciate your support and hope you enjoy the read(s)!
Blue skies,Les
And, just for the heck of it, here's a picture of my wife Mary who just happens to be having her birthday today! And... I forgot it. This was taken before she realized I'd forgotten... I need to start writing things down...

INTERVIEW WITH LEE THOMPSON

Hey folks,

Just completed an interview with horror/crime writer Lee Thompson you can see on his site here.


The next two days are going to be big days in my life. The next 10-week session of my online creative writing class begins today--yay!--and tomorrow night the Fighting Irish play Bama for the national championship! Don't even try to call or email me during the game. I'm buying a "Motorman's Friend" for the game so I don't have to miss a second of it. (For those who don't know what a Motorman's Friend is, check it out in the movie THE LONGEST YARD with Burt Reynolds...

Blue skies,
Les

GO IRISH!