Michael Lister's Blog, page 3

Would you help me choose a new Author Photo?

Help me pick a new author pic

It’s time for a new author photo and I want you to help me choose it. The talented Lou Columbus of 1492 Productions snapped the pictures below. Now I just need you to help me choose which one to use. Just vote for 1 or 2. And thanks for helping me choose.

Limited Time 20 for 20 Anniversary Store

20 for 20

Limited Time Celebration Store

Because I am so very grateful for you and your support, and to celebrate my birthday, and to commemorate John Jordan’s 20th Anniversary, between now and my birthday on February 11th, 20 of my signed print books are just $20. That’s it. $20 (includes tax and shipping).

CLICK HERE to check out 20 for 20. 

Reader Appreciation Store. Limited supply of signed print books (hardcovers and paperbacks). $20. FREE shipping. Now through February 11th. Then they're gone for good!

Happy Birthday to John. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Reading. 

Win a Signed Michael Connelly / Michael Lister hardcover!

Win a Signed Michael Connelly / Michael Lister hardcover!

Thank you!

2016 has been a truly amazing year for me—and the best year yet for my books.

In addition to selling and giving away more books than ever before, I hit the New York Times Bestseller List and the USA Today Bestseller List—twice!

My writing means so very much to me, I pour myself into each and every book, and I’m so grateful for every page, every paragraph, every word you read!

Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!

Taking a moment to write and post a review of the books of mine you’ve read is one of the most helpful things you can do for me. Please consider taking a moment and posting a review right now.

Win a Free Signed Michael Connelly and Michael Lister Hardcover!

Post a review for any of my books and be entered to win 1 of 5 signed hardcovers from Michael Connelly and me.

For every review you post, you’ll be entered into the drawing—the more you review the more chances you have to win!

AND for every review you post of one of these books—BLOOD OATH, BLOOD WORK, and BLOOD CRIES—you’ll be entered be entered in 3 times. That’s 3 times per review for BLOOD OATH, BLOOD WORK, and BLOOD CRIES.

As soon as you post your reviews email me and let me know and I’ll enter you in the drawing.

Much Love! Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Happy New Year!

Michael  
PS. The 20th Anniversary Edition of POWER IN THE BLOOD is almost complete and will be available soon--and boy is it something else! Can't wait for you to see it!          

Your Gifts and Mine

     Nothing brings me more satisfaction than giving.
     My livelong pursuit has been identifying my gifts, investing in and honing them, and sharing them—with the goal of making the world a better place.
     My hope for us during this gift-giving season is that we will more clearly recognize our gifts and have more opportunities to develop and share them with the world.
     I give everything I’ve got when I write a novel, pouring myself into each one, Emerson’s words that “the greatest gift is a portion of thyself” echoing inside of me.
     I also give many of my books away—not because I undervalue them, but because I value them so much. To me they are priceless and to give them is to give the best I have.
     Since 1997, when my first novel, “Power in the Blood,” was published, I have given away over one and a half million copies of my books.
     That makes me very happy!
     A gift is something given willingly, a talent, or anything that makes the recipient better in some way.  
     The truest gifts can’t be gotten so much as freely given and graciously received—an act that transcends buying, wrapping, and exchanging.
     I love what Joseph Conrad said about this. “The artist appeals to that part of our being . . . which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, is therefore, more permanently enduring.”
     Books are my favorite gifts to give and receive. Chances are you are reading this because you have at some point been one of the over 1,500,000 readers who have received a book from me. If you’d like to help me give even more books away, please join me in this endeavor.          Would you consider helping me turn that 1.5 million into 150 million or more?
     You can.  
     Please consider becoming one of my patrons at https://www.patreon.com/MichaelLister
     Click Here to combine your gifts with mine, to chip in a few dollars to help me write, produce, publish more books—and to give even more of those books away.

Playing Broom Guitar After Feeding Those in Need! 

     This past weekend, I, along with friends of mine, purchased, prepared, and served the Sunday evening meal for those in need and homeless people on the street. It’s something we’ll be doing for all of 2017 and beyond. Nothing is more rewarding than giving, nothing more satisfying than sharing our gifts and ourselves, our time and our talents, with gratitude and humility, expecting nothing in return but the honor of serving.
      Make of yourself a gift—not just this season, but all year long.
      We don’t just have gifts. We are gifts. Life itself is a gift. Share your gifts and the gift of yourself with others today. It will simultaneously make your life and the world better. 

I’m Dreaming of a Celluloid Christmas

Christmas movies are as much a part of my holiday traditions as parties and presents, candy and carols.

I love films in every genre, but certain Christmas movies are among my favorite films of all time. I’m talkin’ stranded-on-a-deserted-island favorite.

If I did find myself on an island this yuletide season, these are the movies I’d want with me.

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

“It’s A Wonderful Life” ranks among my favorite movies of all-time, perhaps even tied for first place with “Casablanca,” and the only film that moves me as much as “Keys of the Kingdom.”

George Bailey has so many problems he’s thinking about ending it all on Christmas. A film so dark it’d be noir if not for the ending, there’s far more to “It’s A Wonderful Life” than most viewers imagine. 

I am George Bailey. So are you. He reminds us that at our best our little lives can make a big difference in the lives of others. George Bailey teaches us what the wonderful writer Frederick Buechner says so eloquently: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, feel your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

LOVE ACTUALLY 

Richard Curtis is not unlike George Bailey—making the world around him a better place with what he builds. And what he builds are great romantic comedies. I’ve loved his work since I first saw “Four Weddings and a Funeral” by myself in a small theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when it first came out. A few years later, when I saw “Notting Hill,” I knew it was a love that would last a lifetime. I adore all his films, and as powerful as “The Girl in the Café” is, I believe “Love Actually” is his best film so far.

“Love Actually” is entertaining, poignant, and heartbreaking. It, better than any other movie, captures the magic of Christmas, using the dizzying effects of romantic love as a metaphor for the season’s gentle madness.

THE FAMILY STONE

Two of the things most associated with Christmas—family and home—are brilliantly captured in “The Family Stone.” A dramaedy about the only thing crazier than Christmas—family, the perfectly cast film makes me wish I were a member of the Stone family. As much about life and death, loss and love, as anything else, Christmas provides a prison-like cauldron to heat up the explosive elements and dynamics of all families, but none more than those of the Stone family.

THE HOLIDAY

“The Holiday” starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet is a well written and wildly romantic holiday movie. The story revolves around two disillusioned women, one from England, the other from the US, who switch lives and find what they’ve been missing. Like the season in which it’s set, the movie is magic.

THE ICE HARVEST

But perhaps all the romance and comedy is too much for you and you’d rather explore the darker side of Christmas.

Crime movies don’t get much darker or more comedic than the noel noir “The Ice Harvest.”

In icebound Wichita Falls, Kansas, Christmas Eve is as dark, depressing, and desperate a night as any of the year, and Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) is trying to escape it, leave town with two million dollars of mob boss Bill Guerrard’s money. Can he escape Wichita Falls? Can any of us?

Though all performances are strong, it’s Cusack’s embodiment of Arglist that sets the film apart. His ability to make the small-time, small-town, lawyer a likable everyman trying to break out of his life of quiet desperation gives the film its charming and redeeming qualities.

“The Ice Harvest” is dark, quirky, and blackly comedic, but it also has some poignant moments of existential meditation, erudite contemplations of the elusiveness of the spirit of the season, and stinging satire on the hypocrisy of Christmas.

“As Wichita Falls, so falls Wichita Falls” is written and spoken repeatedly throughout the film like a lost line of poetry or a riff of jazz, and it says it all. It’s about existentialism, karma—something made far more obvious in the alternate ending.

THE END

This holiday season, give yourself the gift of great movies. Travel with George Bailey on his long, hard journey that out of hell leads up to light, Charlie Arglist on his even darker one, spend some time with the Stone family, careful to give and receive the gift of love, not knowing which Christmas will be your last, and fall in love all over again as you realize with Kate and Cameron, Liam and Hugh, that at Christmas love is actually all around.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good Movie Night!