Nigel Bird's Blog, page 68

MARTIN EDWARDS - FAVOURITES

Martin Edwards is a man who is widely respected in the writing world.  He will have a piece in the Mammoth Best British Crime Stories 9 which will can be pre-ordered now (the publication date is less than 2 weeks away now).

Here he gives a valuable list of some of his favourite works:

What is your favourite short story?



'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson


Your favourite Sherlockian story?


'The Red-Headed League' by Arthur Conan Doyle


Your favourite classic detective story?


'The Avenging Chance' by Anthony Berkeley


Your favourite humorous story?

'The Murder at the Towers' by E V Knox

Your favourite 'impossible crime' story?


'The House in Goblin Wood' by John Dickson Carr


Your favourite American crime short story?

'Don't Look Behind You' by Fredric Brown


Your favourite modern crime short story?


'The Rio De Janeiro Paper' by Reginald Hill

Your favourite contemporary short story writer?
William Trevor

Your most successful story?
'The Bookbinder's Apprentice' which won the CWA Dagger
Your favourite of your own stories?


'Waiting for Godstow'


Your thoughts about 'Clutter', which appears in the Mammoth Book?


A dark story that was fun to write


                               Martin Edwards' latest novel is 'The Hanging Wood'

One Man's Opinion: DEAD MONEY by RAY BANKS

I was absolutely thrilled a couple of days ago to find that Smoke has been short-listed for Spinetingler's 'Best Novella' award and even more thrilled when I saw the company I was keeping in the rest of the list.

The response to the book has been overwhelming, which has come a something of a surprise.  When I sent it over to Trestle Press, I really had no sense of its merits.  Maybe I'd been living too closely to it for too long to be able to find any perspective on it whatsoever.

If you read it and enjoyed it, I'd be honoured if you took the time to pop over and consider voting.

If you haven't read it and would like to, it's not too late to pick up a copy and form an opinion (it might help that if you follow the Trestle Press link here you'll find out how to get a buy-one-get-one-free deal).  Needless to say, that goes for the other books in the list, too.  Votes are being taken until the end of the month.

I'd also like to thank and praise Brian Lindenmuth for setting up this category in the first place.  It would appear that novellas are thriving just now and I'd like to celebrate that fact.  Great work Spinetingler.

Other good news. 

Allan Guthrie's 'Savage Night' is now available in Kindle.  It's going for the paltry sum of 99p in the UK and $1:54 in the US.

Here's a little about it if you don't already know:

Praise for SAVAGE NIGHT

"Guthrie's work stands up against the best the genre has to offer. His prose is clinically efficient, his storytelling consummate, his dialogue sparkles and snaps on the page, and his blend of black humour and breathless action is impossible to put down." The Herald

"A black comedy akin to the work of Christopher Brookmyre and Douglas Lindsay... If you have a robust sense of humour, you'll love this." The Observer

"Guthrie twists the plot, chops up the timeframe, and toys with point-of-view… never a dull moment." Booklist

"A masterful exercise in pulp storytelling." The List

"The best noir writer in the country...easily the match for America's finest in the genre." The Scotsman

My tip - buy it.  Then read it.  And weep.

And so to Dead Money by Ray Banks, published by Blasted Heath.

When I first became a teacher I was going to change the world.  I looked around scathingly at my older colleagues with their crumbling enthusiasm and veneer of bitterness.  I vowed to myself that I'd never be like them.  Never.
Nowadays I should be apologising to my younger self.  At the same time, I might like to explain that getting older isn't what it seems from the perspective of youth.  It does things to you.  What I didn't understand then is that experience can step in where energy once used to be, making things simply different and only slightly less good for the pupils.
Alan Slater might have been like the young me once, Les Beale being his older colleague.   Les became Alan's role-model in the techniques of selling double-glazing and then hit the bottle, the gambling tables and the skids in fairly quick succession.
Alan observes Les's decline from close quarters, though he's no intention of heading down the plug-hole in the same way as his wayward mate.
Thing is, as Les is a big fellow he has a powerful gravity and it's impossible for Alan to get out of his orbit.  When a gambling-fix goes wrong and Alan's called in to clean up the mess, his life really does begin to tumble.  What's worse for Alan is that rather than being a pale image of the bigoted, arrogant and violent Les, he's actually got a darker core that easily surpasses that of his master. 
As we follow Alan's attempts to keep control of his wife, dog, home, drinking problem, job and lover, we witness his satellite falling back to earth.
The book's set in Manchester.  It's not the Manchester of Victorian splendour or the sterile Arndale centre, but the dingy world of mill-town terraces and rot.
Mixing the sharply angled panoramas with the down-sides of gambling, booze and the predatory instincts of the salesman, Banks gives a wonderful cocktail of noir sensibilities to be enjoyed.
The scenes, particularly the casino and the pub settings, are wonderfully set.  He doesn't miss a trick when painting a backdrop, nor does he add unnecessary weight.
The gambling routines are described with relish by Banks, a man who's worked under the half-lights himself and clearly knows the ropes.
The first person narrative cracks along and as a reader I was completely absorbed in the tale.
To my mind there's not a nice character in the book.  There's not a redeeming feature on show, not in the sales team, the gamblers, the police, the students, the women in Alan's life of the clients.  That makes the way the book remains engrossing all the more of an achievement.
There's something reminiscent of the black-and-white toughness of the British flicks of the late fifties and early sixties, the Saturday Night and Sunday Morning hues washed over the twenty-first century setting.
Lowry painted a lot in Manchester.  Working scenes of movement and depression.  If he were painting Dead Money, far more of the matchstick men would have been lying on the pavement, throwing up, bleeding or fending off a gang of attackers.
A hugely enjoyable piece of work.

ONE DAY THROWDOWN!

SALE WITHIN A SALE-PAUL D. BRAZILL'S 'BRIT GRIT TOO' -MONDAY- AND MONDAY ONLY -$.99, PLUS THE BUY ONE GET ONE FREE IS STILL IN FORCE!!

Amazon Kindle Best-Selling and trailblazing author Paul D. Brazill has decided to drop the price of his legendary "Brit Grit Too" to $.99 for one day, Monday, January 16, 2012. If you purchase "Brit Grit Too" Trestle Press will match that with any title up to the full purchase price of $4.99 as part of the BOGO sale.Just email Paul D. Brazill or find him at his legendary blog- http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/Or email Trestle Press directly with your proof of purchase-trestlepress@gmail.comThis is what you will find contained within "Brit Grit Too":Edited by Paul D Brazill, Brit Grit Too collects 32 of Britain's best up and coming crime fiction writers to aid the charity Children 1st http://www.children1st.org.uk/

The BRIT GRIT mob is coming to kick down your door with hobnailed boots. Kitchen-sink noir; petty-thief-louts; lives of quiet desperation; sharp, blood-stained slices of life; booze-sodden brawls from the bottom of the barrel and comedy that's as black as it's bitter—this is BRIT GRITTable of Contents.
1. Two Fingers Of Noir by Alan Griffiths
2. Looking For Jamie by Iain Rowan
3. Stones In Me Pocket by Nigel Bird
4. The Catch And The Fall by Luke Block
5. A Long Time Coming by Paul Grzegorzek
6. Loose Ends by Gary Dobb
7. Graduation Day by Malcolm Holt
8. Cry Baby by Victoria Watson
9. The Savage World Of Men by Richard Godwin
10. Hard Boiled Poem (a mystery) by Alan Savage
11. A Dirty Job by Sue Harding
12. Squaring The Circle by Nick Quantrill
13. The Best Days Of My Life by Steven Porter
14. Hanging Stan by Jason Michel
15. The Wrong Place To Die by Nick Triplow
16. Coffin Boy by Nick Mott
17. Meat Is Murder by Colin Graham
18. Adult Education by Graham Smith
19. A Public Service by Col Bury
20. Hero by Pete Sortwell
21. Snapshots by Paul D Brazill
22. Smoked by Luca Veste
23. Geraldine by Andy Rivers
24. A Minimum Of Reason by Nick Boldock
25. Dope On A Rope by Darren Sant
26. A Speck Of Dust by David Barber
27. Hard Times by Ian Ayris
28. Never Ending by Fiona Johnson
29. Faces by Frank Duffy
30. The Plebitarian by Danny Hogan
31. King Edward by Gerard Brennan
32. Brit Grit by Charlie Wade
Spinetingler Award nominee Paul D Brazill has had stories in loads of classy print and electronic magazines and anthologies, such as A Twist Of Noir, Beat To A Pulp, Crime Factory, Dark Valentine, Deadly Treats, Dirty Noir, Needle, Powder Burn Flash, Thrillers, Killers n Chillers, Noir Nation, Pulp Ink, Pulp Pusher, Radgepacket Volumes Four and Five, Shotgun Honey& The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8.He writes for Pulp Metal Magazine and Mean Streets.His blog, You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? is here: http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com  He is the creator of the  horror/noir series, Drunk on the Moon, published by Trestle Press.

Dancing With Myself: DAVID FREED interviews DAVID FREED

At the risk of sounding like a scratched record, you can get a free copy of With Love And Squalor today at Amazon in the UK and the US as well as throughout Europe.

And now, here's something that will definitely be of interest, an interview with a lot of great information.  Take it away Mr David Freed.

How can you ask yourself questions and answer them for public dissemination without coming off as completely egomaniacal and/or wacko?

Brilliant question. You must be a genius! Seriously, though, I don't really know how to answer that one. This is my first Q&A in which I functioned both as the interviewer and interviewee. I guess the most truthful response is to say that any writer, or anyone who dares to hold his creative work up for public inspection, must maintain a fairly healthy ego. But if you've kicked around, and been kicked around for as long as I have, you learn pretty quickly to park the maniacal part of your writer's id at the door—or else have it shoved down your throat every time some critic savages your work. As my mother used to say, "Egotism is an alphabet of one letter." Actually, my mother never said that. It's an old Scottish proverb. I only used it because it makes me sound incredibly intelligent which, of course, I must be, to ask and answer my own questions, right?


Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Hardly. I convinced myself for the longest time that I wanted to be both a physician—a heart surgeon, in particular—and a World War II fighter pilot. A dubious GPA my freshman year of college quickly disabused me of the doctor game plan, and I was born long after WWII ended, so the fighter jock thing was out, too--though I did get my pilot's license in my early 20's and continue to fly to this day. For what it's worth, I also held out the notion in various phases of my life of being an astronaut, playing in the NFL, and performing with the Beatles. Each ambition was as equally implausible as the next. For whatever reason, I always enjoyed writing and, like so many others of my generation, had this wacky idea that I could Make The World A Better Place, which more or less led me to investigative journalism. I realized, hey, I could be a detective armed not with a ,45, but a notepad. Getting paid to write while defending truth, justice, and the American way, plus seeing my name on the front page. Not a bad way to earn a buck. I later toiled in Hollywood as a screenwriter and, later still, working with the U.S. intelligence community, all of which provided plenty of grist when I ultimately decided to try my hand at writing a novel.


Who were/are the people inspired you?


For better or worse, I'm not a big believer in external inspiration, or role models, for that matter. Creativity, as the old saw goes, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. When it comes to being a writer, that means you can't wait for brilliance to strike. All you can do is park your butt in the chair and write. No excuses. Too many folks who aspire to write for a living spend way too much time talking about writing, or pretending to write, hanging out at Starbuck's, eavesdropping on conversations ostensibly for "research" purposes, and not actually writing. For me, the process of composing creatively only works if I can wall myself off from the rest of the world--just me and my laptop--and focus. My goal when I'm actively engaged in a project is to write 1,000 words a day, no less than five days a week. Some days, I fail miserably when attempting that goal; on other days, when I'm in The Zone, I can double or even triple that number. Those are rare days, to be sure.


Your hero in Flat Spin , Cord Logan, is a private pilot and flight instructor, and the book contains many flight references. What influences led you to incorporate this element in his character?

The Internal Revenue Service. I'm an instrument-rated pilot and own my own airplane. One big problem with owning a plane is how much it costs. One day, the guy who does my taxes assured me that I could deduct at least a portion of my flying expenses if those expenses involved legitimate research, and that research ultimately contributed to my work product. When he told me this, I nearly kissed him! Thus, Cordell Logan was born. My life has not been the same since.

And a follow-up: What is a " Flat Spin "?

A flat spin occurs when an aircraft spirals down, wildly out of control, while remaining essentially horizontal to the ground. There's relatively little hope of recovery, depending on what kind of plane you're in. Remember that scene in "The Right Stuff," when Chuck Yeager (as played by Sam Shepard) nearly makes it into space in a silver F-104 Starfighter, then loses power, fights to regain control while falling to earth, and ultimately has to punch out? That was the flat spin to end all flat spins. Get in one, and you're basically toast. In the case of my book, Flat Spin, the title serves as a metaphor to explain the sorry state of my hero's life when we first meet him.

What books are on your nightstand? Who are your favorite authors and genres?

I'm pretty eclectic in my reading tastes. Nonfiction-wise, I particularly love biographies and military histories. As far as fiction goes, I just finished David Benoiff's City of Thieves—a great book, if you haven't read it—and am about to embark on Shavetail by Thomas Cobb, who wrote Crazy Heart (another great book). I love Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Hemingway, though the latter, not as much as I once did. When it comes to modern literature, you can't beat James Salter, in my opinion. On my best day, I could not write one-tenth as well as he does. Among authors of mysteries, I stand in particularly awe of Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Reed Farrell Coleman, Bruce DeSilva (his Rogue Island is fantastic), Denise Hamilton, and Chris Knopf, whose Sam Acquillo/Hampton series is consistently entertaining, and newcomer Len Rosen, whose "All Cry Chaos" is nothing short of brilliant.

To paraphrase Steve Martin, "Hey, Dave, how can you be so freaking funny?" Others who've read and enjoyed it say that part of Flat Spin's allure are the sardonic, sometimes over-the-top characters. Is humor an element in all of your writing? Have you ever thought of being a stand-up comic?

Truth be told, I'd rather go to the dentist and get a root canal than stand up in front of a crowd of strangers—unless, of course, they're willing to buy my book!

Is there a real Mrs. Schmulowitz? Can she come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner?

You mean Cordell Logan's landlady, a retired PE teacher who loves pro football, cooks a mean brisket, and is the only 80-something who favors Lycra bicycle shorts and fire engine red tank tops? Nope. There is no real Mrs. Schmulowitz, though I have had more than a few relatives and friends upon whom I modeled her.


Your hero, Logan, is a former government assassin-turned-flight instructor who used to be an Air Force fighter pilot. If you had your choice of flying any fighter, which would it be?

The World War II-era P-51 Mustang, hands down, followed, in no particular order: the F-86 Sabre, A-10 Warthog, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the Harrier.


Finally, the question we've all been wondering: Why are there no vampires in "Flat Spin"?

Because--spoiler alert--there are no vampires

With Love And Squalor Giveaway

It's free today at Amazon UK and US.  This is what you'll get:

An Arm And A Leg

first published in Crimespree Magazine 2010

Also published in Mammoth Best British Crime Stories 8 2011




Fisher Of Men

first published in Voluted Tales Magazine 2011




A Whole Lotta Rosie

first published in the anthology Pulp Ink 2011




Reaching The Summit

first published in Apollo's Lyre 2011




No Pain No Gain

first published at Crime Facory Magazine




Breakfast TV

first published at A Twist Of Noir 2011

put forward for the Pushcart Prize by Christopher Grant




Suture

first published at PulpMetal Magazine 2010




and Samples

Hoodwinked

first published at All Due Resepect 2011

included in the collection Beat On The Brat (and other stories)




Sea Minor

first published in The Reader Magazine 2009

included in the collection Dirty Old Town (and other stories) 2011




Chapter 1 of Smoke, a novella 2011

Dancing With Myself: LOREN EATON interviews LOREN EATON

Things move quickly in this world of electronica.  New ways of selling and distributing and grabbing people's attention.  I guess we all need to pay attention to get to the good stuff and here's s little slice of that.
The Pablo D'Stair fiction challenge has taken off.  There has been a good deal of interest and for all those who entered, you'll be getting a new readership that your work deserves.  There's a podcast out there now, so you can hear the thoughts of Pablo in the hands of Rob and Livius over at Booked.
I you want some of the action and a chance to vote, the details can be found here.
MANHUNTER'S MOUNTAIN is the first full-length Cash Laramie novel by hardboiled veteran Wayne D. Dundee.  It's free for today, the last day of the offer, so you know you need to follow the link.  Don't you?Here at Sea Minor, Loren Eaton is about to open your eyes to one or two things.  Loren has a story in the excellent Grimm Tales anthology and you'll find an offer on the book over at Untreed Reads.  If you buy the most excellent Discount Noir and Grimm Tales at the same time, you get 50% off Grimm tales.  I believe that means you can pick up both for $5.  You'll get a double dose of today's guest in the process.
Just an aside, Dirty Old Town (and other stories) is close to 1250 sales now after a mini-boom at Christmas.  Thanks for that.
You'll also be able to get a copy of 'With Love And Squalor' for free at Amazon tomorrow if I've done things right, so check it out if you're interested.
And now the main event.
Loren Eaton, you're very welcome here.
So, in preparing for this interview, I happened across your blog, I Saw Lightning Fall. You really like SF and fantasy and horror, all those really geeky genres. How did you end in the crime fiction anthology Grimm Tales?
True, speculative fiction really is my first love. I grew up reading it and naturally turned to writing it in later life. But several years ago I discovered Peter Rozovsky's blog Detectives Beyond Borders and the crime writing of Patti Abbott. That influenced both my reading and writing habits.
And I suppose that a fairy-tale-themed crime-story collection didn't fall too far off of your normal compositional mark, right?
Well, that's true. When John Kenyon of Things I'd Rather Be Doing suggested it, I thought it sounded like a wonderful idea. Plus, it's a lot of fun to be writing alongside fine folks such as Patti Abbott, Evan Lewis, Kaye George, Eric Beetner and Nigel Bird. You've heard of him, haven't you?
Yes, I most certainly have. Let's talk a little more about your story itself, shall we?
By all means.
For Grimm Tales, You were supposed to riff off of one of the original Grimm's fairy tales. Which one did you choose?
In truth, I didn't have much exposure to Grimm's fairy tales as a child. I knew some of the stories that Disney had reworked (sanitized, really), but I hadn't read the originals. Around 2004 or 2005, I picked up a copy of the Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling-edited anthology Black Swan, White Raven, which featured reimagined folk stories. Michael Cadnum's "The Flounder's Kiss" really grabbed me. It retold "The Fisherman and His Wife," a story about a henpecked husband who begs a magical fish for greater and greater blessings at the behest of his overbearing wife. With an almost noirish twist in the end, the woman's greed and the man's cowardice undo everything they've earned to that point. It was a natural choice for me.
And how exactly did you turn it into a crime story?
About the time I started writing it, my wife and I had just finished watching The Godfather for the first time. (I know, I know, I don't understand how I made it that far in life without having seen Coppola's masterpiece.) I wanted to feature a Mafioso as my protagonist and to riff off of that famous scene where Michael Corleone offs Sollozzo and McCluskey in an Italian restaurant. But I had to work in a flounder somehow. My father and I had done a little bit of fly fishing on the salt flats in the Keys, so I had my Mafioso head down there on vacation. True, the flounder population in south Florida is notoriously sparse, but I thought a bit of creative license would have to do.
Anything else for us?
Yes! Go buy Grimm Tales, which is currently on sale in the Untreed Reads store. If you like it, pick up the cut-rate-retailer-themed anthology Discount Noir. It features my zombie love story "Thirty-One Hundred."
Sea Minor - I'm glad I'm not the only one out there who arrives late to parties of cultural significance.  I'm only just half way through the first series of The Killing.  And I love it.

One Man's Opinion: HOODTOWN by CHRISTA FAUST

In her novella 'Hoodtown', Christa Faust has attempted something extra-ordinary.  She's created a world and a micro-culture that are similar enough to our everyday lives to be recognisable, yet different enough to keep a reader on their toes from start to finish.


Hoodtown is the broken down sleazy ghetto where the hoods hang out.


The hoods are a group of people brought together by religion, slang, wrestling and culture in a way that means they have to keep their faces covered at all times. They have hoods for babies, for sleeping and for wrestling in. There are special arrangements for shaving and facials. Their whole way of life is impeded upon by these hoods, not least in the way they are looked down upon by the majority 'Skins' who wear no hoods and pull the strings in society.


The story is told by X. She's an ex all-right – an ex-wrestler, ex-beauty and the ex of one Jaguar de Juarez who is a wrestling legend.


When we meet her she's well past her heyday in wrestling terms, drummed out of the federation after 'the incident' with Blue Velvet.


She's a tough lady and a hell of a character. She also exposes herself in ways that many first-person narrators don't achieve.


Unfortunately for X, she happens upon the body of a murdered hood. It's something that haunts her given the nature of the killing; the victim's hood has been removed and an act of sacrilege has been committed.


The murder turns out to be one of a series and X is driven to find out what's going on.


The plot broadens as the involvement of big fish from Skin and Hood ponds react to her enquiries and the only allies she has are the men in her life and a sympathetic Skin cop (who is the exception rather than the rule).


Her life moves at a pace, shifting from one lead to another until the satisfying and totally unexpected identification of the killer.


Overall, the work is written really well. Faust has turns of phrase that show a great creativity in her use of language and an unusual perspective on everyday happenings. There are regular nuggets of delight to be savoured.


The hard-boiled package works really well and she carries off the creation of the Hood culture with apparent ease.


A couple of things slowed things down for me, however, making this a four star review than a five. I'd also like to point out that these points probably say more about me as a reader than about the author.


I was fascinated by the Hood concept. Tried to work out what a face would look like after so many years under-cover, or thinking about how the baby hoods worked and sleeping and love-making etc and I found myself drifting away from the plot. I was also bogged down with attempting to fathom the whole concept (yep, probably trying to see things that weren't even there). It doesn't seem to make any fresh statements about prejudice, but it's a constant reminder of the need to respect-people for who they are. It had me thinking of Burkas and the issues for wearers and non-wearers within western communities. Ghettos and exclusion and riots and poverty were frequently in my thoughts. I guess from that point of view it should be seen as a thought-provoking book that should be read, but I'm not sure.


The other issue for me was my capacity to hold the threads together. Each scene leads to the next with a fairly high speed of turnover and big changes coming fairly quickly. Throw in the unusual names and the number of characters and I found myself having to work pretty hard to stay with the programme – like I said, this is likely my issue as working-memory isn't one of my strengths.


These points were minor in the scheme of things. Amidst the colourful language, the raw setting and within the violent scenes of a crazy, Hood wrestler on the rampage they pale into the background.


Very entertaining overall. A perfect book for groups and group discussions. I'd quite like to do some discussing myself, see the parts I missed and find out what others took from the setup so I can read it again from a better-informed position.


Please go and try it - I'd love to see your reviews and interpretations.

For those who love the book, and there will be many, you have the luxury of a wonderfully illustrated copy as an extra option (I'm half-tempted, I must say).  It looks like the kind of thing you'd pull down from the shelves when you really wanted to impress.  You'll find that here.