Ed Gorman's Blog, page 183

"The Dead Man" Series $0.99 on Kindle

"The Dead Man" Series $0.99 on Kindle
by Kindle Editors on 10/24/2011
Author Spotlight: Lee Goldberg on "The Dead Man" Series

The Dead Man series is the continuing story of Matt Cahill, an ordinary man who survives a terrible accident with a horrific side effect: he can see the evil in people as a rotting, festering, physical decay, one that's spread like a plague by a mysterious supernatural figure known as Mr. Dark. Now Matt is pursuing Mr. Dark and trying to stop the evil from spreading.

William Rabkin and I are both experienced authors but we've also spent twenty years writing & producing network TV series together. Writing books is a lonely profession, involving a single writer facing a blank screen.

But writing television is a collaborative experience, with a room full of writers plotting stories together, then going off to write their individual episodes under the "showrunners" hands-on, creative supervision.

Now we are bringing that episodic TV approach to The Dead Man novels, which is not only making it possible for us to publish a new book every month, but also to capitalize on the creativity, experience, and unique voices of a dozen successful authors representing a wide variety of genres.

The two of us wrote the first book and twelve story-lines, then invited writers we admired, or who we loved to read, and or who we were dying to work with, to write episodes, or in this case novels, in the world of The Dead Man.

We were surprised and delighted by the enthusiastic response that we got. It turns out there are many novelists who crave the creative interaction that's common place in TV...but while also ending up with a work they can still feel is uniquely their own. And that's the case with each monthly Dead Man tale.

As the "showrunners" of The Dead Man, William Rabkin and I still shape every story and manuscript to maintain the consistency of the character, the world, and the story-telling, just as we would on a TV series.

But unlike a TV episode, each book is still very much a reflection of each individual author's point-of-view and told in their unmistakable voice.–Lee Goldberg


Dead Man Series, $0.99 each for a limited time

Face of Evil (Dead Man #1)
Matt Cahill survives a shocking accident...and discovers that he now can see a nightmarish netherworld that exists within our own.


Ring of Knives (Dead Man #2)
Matt infiltrates a lunatic asylum to speak to a madman who may hold the secret to defeating Mr. Dark...and ends up fighting for both his sanity and his life.

Hell in Heaven (Dead Man #3)
Matt wanders into a bizarre town seemingly trapped in the past and tormented by an unspeakable horror.


The Dead Woman (Dead Man #4)
Matt meets a woman who may see the same dark world that he does…and who may be able to reveal the secrets behind his mysterious rebirth.


The Blood Mesa (Dead Man #5)
Matt must save a group of archeologists and graduate students who dig up a Native American ruin...and awaken an ancient evil.



Kill Them All (Dead Man #6)
Matt is pursued by a well-armed, ruthless mercenaries into a dying, western town...where he has to make a last stand and prevent a slaughter. (Pre-order, Nov. 22)

Each book in "The Dead Man" series is just $0.99 on Kindle for a limited time.

"The Dead Man" Series $0.99 on Kindle
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Berkley/NAL to Launch E-book Imprint, InterMix

Berkley/NAL to Launch E-book Imprint, InterMix (From Locus)

Oct 19, 2011|

With demand for mass market paperbacks withering, Berkley/NAL, the mass market paperback division of Penguin, will launch a new e-book imprint in January that will operate much like a mass market paperback publisher. InterMix will focus on titles in traditional mass market genres—women's fiction, romance, mystery/thriller and science fiction/fantasy—and will release a mix of reprints and titles from new authors.

For its January launch, InterMix will publish 11 Nora Roberts's titles for the first time as e-books. The titles, which originally had been published by Silhouette, will be priced at a mass-market like $6.99. In February, InterMix will bring back to life an old mass market line, Signet Regency, releasing six books as e-books for the first time. Three additional Regency-set romances will be released each month throughout 2012. While Berkley/NAL will publish new authors under the InterMix imprint, no new authors were announced. It also wasn't clear how many titles InterMix will release over the course of 2012. Additional titles signed for 2012 are seven more Roberts's titles and four Jayne Ann Krentz-writing-as-Jayne Castle novels in the Guinevere Jones series.

Berkley said that all InterMix titles will be completely repackaged with new cover art and interior designs as well as "creative marketing, publicity, and advertising campaigns." Leslie Gelbman, president of Berkley Publishing, said she sees InterMix as "an extension of what we've been doing, providing a way for original voices to reach readers." Berkley/NAL, Gelbman stressed, is "fully committed" to its print program and noted that some of InterMix's original e-book authors could be republished in any or the three print formats.

Mathesons shop massive genre library

From Variety:

Mathesons shop massive genre library
'Real Steel,' 'I Am Legend' author looking for studios to partner on creative vision
By MARC GRASER

"Real Steel" is based on a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson.

Sixty years after Hollywood started adapting his sci-fi, fantasy and horror tales into movies and TV shows, Richard Matheson is ready for a comeback.
The author, now 85, has teamed up with his screenwriting son, Richard Christian Matheson, and former William Morris literary agent Alan Gasmer to shop Matheson's library of 150 short stories, books, plays and scripts around town -- with one caveat: that he has a say in what winds up onscreen.

"Steel," a short story published in 1956, is the basis for DreamWorks' robot boxing pic "Real Steel," which stars Hugh Jackman and bows Friday through Disney's Touchstone banner.

His ghost story "Earthbound" already is set up at DreamWorks, with Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald producing. And negotiations are under way with 20th Century Fox and Shawn Levy's 21 Laps shingle for the film rights to his 1963 short "Deus Ex Machina," about a man who discovers he's mechanical when he cuts himself and bleeds oil. Levy helmed "Real Steel."

Matheson may not be a household name in the same vein as a Stephen King or even Stephenie Meyer,but his work is certainly recognizable.

His vampire tale "I Am Legend" has spawned three pics, with Will Smith starring in WB's most recent version, while "What Dreams May Come," "The Incredible Shrinking Man," "A Stir of Echoes" "Somewhere in Time" and "The Legend of Hell House" are based on his novels.

Steven Spielberg turned "Duel" into a telepic, while "Button, Button" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" were adapted as "Twilight Zone" and "Night Gallery" episodes, which then became pics like "The Box."

"People are not necessarily aware of who I am but they're aware of the things that I've written," Matheson told Variety.

fir the rest go here: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118...

Kris Rusch's FIERY attack on editors

Ed here: Kristine Kathryn Rusch has long been one of my favorite writers. And editors. And savvy commentators on the lives of freelance writers. Kris and her husband (and writer) Dean Wesley Smith are also well-known for their writing workshops. Now I had assumed with all of Kris' street cred that she would never be treated by NYC the way some or many of us have been over the years. Not so. Kris blog is mandatory reading for writers. Here's an example.


Crank up the Aretha Franklin as you read this. Because her classic "R*E*S*P*E*C*T" is blaring as I write this.

I am fed up.

This is the kind of mood I get into when I tell bosses to go screw themselves, when I walk off the job, when I say, "That's it, no one treats me like this. Not a soul."

In the past two days, two different editors have told me that I don't know how publishing works. One deigned to explain to me how something in book production worked when I questioned a scheduling problem in the publishing house. The other told me I had no idea how to write a good book in my genre.

Excuse me, children?

And I do mean children. Both are younger than me, both have been in the business less than ten years, neither is anything more than an editor. Not a senior editor, not a vice-president, not the owner of the damn company. Editors. Employees way down the food chain.

I know. I was one, long before these two were out of frickin' school. I have taught copy editors, for god's sake. I have designed publishing schedules. I have run publishing offices. I have managed managing editors. I have more knowledge about publishing in my little finger than either of these two.

for the rest go here:
http://kriswrites.com/2011/10/19/the-...

Sam McCain hits #15 on the Baker & Taylor list

#1: Feast Day of Fools
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Feast Day of Fools
Simon & Schuster
By: Burke, James Lee
Pub Date: 9/27/2011
ISBN: 9781451643114
Binding: Cloth

#2: The Night Strangers: A Novel
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

The Night Strangers: A Novel
Crown Pub
By: Bohjalian, Christopher A.
Pub Date: 10/4/2011
ISBN: 9780307394996
Binding: Cloth

#3: Murder Unleashed: A Novel
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Murder Unleashed: A Novel
Ballantine Books
By: Brown, Rita Mae
Pub Date: 10/4/2011
ISBN: 9780345511836
Binding: Cloth

#4: Heat Rises
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Heat Rises
Hyperion
By: Castle, Richard
Pub Date: 9/20/2011
ISBN: 9781401324438
Binding: Cloth

#5: City of Whispers
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

City of Whispers
Grand Central Pub
By: Muller, Marcia
Pub Date: 10/26/2011
ISBN: 9780446573337
Binding: Cloth

#6: Skeleton Letters
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Skeleton Letters
Berkley Pub Group
By: Childs, Laura
Pub Date: 10/4/2011
ISBN: 9780425243893
Binding: Cloth

#7: Headstone
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Headstone
Grove Press
By: Bruen, Ken
Pub Date: 10/4/2011
ISBN: 9780802126009
Binding: Cloth

#8: The End of the Wasp Season: A Novel
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

The End of the Wasp Season: A Novel
Reagan Arthur Books
By: Mina, Denise
Pub Date: 9/26/2011
ISBN: 9780316069335
Binding: Cloth

#9: The Dark at the End
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

The Dark at the End
Tor Books
By: Wilson, F. Paul
Pub Date: 10/11/2011
ISBN: 9780765322838
Binding: Cloth

#10: The Chocolate Castle Clue: A Chocoholic Mystery
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

The Chocolate Castle Clue: A Chocoholic Mystery
New American Library
By: Carl, Joanna
Pub Date: 10/4/2011
ISBN: 9780451234742
Binding: Cloth

#11: The Blood Red Indian Summer
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

The Blood Red Indian Summer
Minotaur Books
By: Handler, David
Pub Date: 10/11/2011
ISBN: 9780312648350
Binding: Cloth

#12: A Double Death on the Black Isle: A Novel
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

A Double Death on the Black Isle: A Novel
Atria Books
By: Scott, A. D.
Pub Date: 9/27/2011
ISBN: 9781439154946
Binding: Paper

#13: The Vault
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

The Vault
Scribner
By: Rendell, Ruth
Pub Date: 9/13/2011
ISBN: 9781451624083
Binding: Cloth

#14: Trick of the Dark
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Trick of the Dark
Bywater Books
By: McDermid, Val
Pub Date: 9/6/2011
ISBN: 9781932859959
Binding: Cloth

#15: Bad Moon Rising: A Sam Mccain Mystery
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 08:03 AM PDT

Bad Moon Rising: A Sam Mccain Mystery
Pegasus Books
By: Gorman, Ed
Pub Date: 10/12/2011
ISBN: 9781605982601
Binding: Cloth

Forgotten Books: Baby Moll by John Farris

Baby Moll by John Farris

John Farris was my generation's first literary rock star. When his novel Harrison High was published it quickly became controversial because of its honest depiction of life among American teenagers. This was 1959. America still believed that if teens weren't exactly like Ricky and David Nelson they certainly weren't like Elvis. Given the fact that many of these teens would be in the streets protesting the Viet Nam war only a few years later, you can see how badly books such as Pat Boone's Twixt Twelve and Twenty misjudged them.

The paperback edition became a companion to Peyton Place, published a few years earlier, both Great Reads and both purveyors of unpopular truths.

Mr. Farris, now famous, was all of twenty-three when the book was published. But he was no beginner. Born in 1936 he could already claim the following novels in print:

* The Corpse Next Door (Graphic Books, 1956) (as John Farris)
* The Body on the Beach (Bouregy & Curl, 1957, hc) (as Steve Brackeen)
* Baby Moll (Crest, 1958, pb) (as Steve Brackeen)
* Danger in My Blood (Crest, 1958, pb) (as Steve Brackeen)

He was writing and publishing before he could legally buy beer.

Hard Case Crime has now given us a chance to look at some of Farris' early work with Baby Moll appearing this month. And fine work it is.

"Six years after quitting the Florida Mob, Peter Mallory is about to be dragged back in.

"Stalked by a vicious killer and losing his hold on power, Mallory's old boss needs help—the kind of help only a man like Mallory can provide. But behind the walls of the fenced-in island compound he once called home, Mallory is about to find himself surrounded by beautiful women, by temptation, and by danger—and one wrong step could trigger a bloodbath."

If you have any doubt about Farris' writing skills open the book and read the first chapter. It is both lyrical and ominous, an unlikely combination in a paperback crime novel. This establishes the way Farris even then managed to take some of the familiar tropes of genre fiction and make them entirely his own.

The set-up itself is unique. Mallory called back to save the life of a boss he despises but a man he owes his life. The boss got him off the bottle.

The story, as it plays out, is also all Farris. While parts of the first act brought Peter Rabe to mind Farris takes the gangster novel in a different direction. Given the relationship of the people on the island the book becomes almost Gothic in its entanglements and ambience.

Farris of course went on to write numerous bestsellers, a number of them staples of modern dark suspense and horror, but even here, early on, he was a cunning storyteller fascinated by the perplexity and perversity of the human soul.

PAULINE KAEL: LOVED & LOATHED

From The New York Times
Mad About Her: Pauline Kael, Loved and Loathed

Robin Holland/Corbis Outline
Pauline Kael, the longtime New Yorker critic, in 1986. She is the subject of a new biography, "Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark."
By MANOHLA DARGIS and A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 14, 2011

THE longtime New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael didn't just write about movies — she made it seem as if they were worth fighting about. Nearly 20 years after her retirement and a decade after her death, she remains an often polarizing figure. On Oct. 27, the Library of America will publish "The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael," followed four days later by the publication of "Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark," a sometimes surprising biography by Brian Kellow, from Viking. A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis discuss her work and its legacy.


MANOHLA DARGIS I was talking to a critic friend recently who, with a sigh of regret, mentioned what he characterized as the assault on critical authority. This isn't a new topic for professional opinionators like us: in the age of Rotten Tomatoes, with its hundreds of reviewers weighing in on new movies, and Yelp, where nonprofessionals thrust their thumbs up or down, the idea that critics don't have the say they once had has been much discussed during the Great Decline (of critical influence, the publishing industry, the economy). The notion that critics once had power is certainly one of the selling points on the jacket for the Kael biography, which states that during her time at The New Yorker (1968-91) she "became the most widely read, the most influential, the most powerful, and, often enough, the most provocative critic in America."

for the rest go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/mov...

Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

From The New York Times

October 16, 2011
Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal
By DAVID STREITFELD
SEATTLE — Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer's fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.

It has set up a flagship line run by a publishing veteran, Laurence Kirshbaum, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. It signed its first deal with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week it announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which it paid $800,000, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said.

Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.

Several large publishers declined to speak on the record about Amazon's efforts. "Publishers are terrified and don't know what to do," said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, who is known for speaking his mind.

for the rest go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/tec...[image error]

King, Kubrick and the most expensive f**k-off note in history by Stephen Gallgher.

Ed here: I've mentioned Stephen Gallagher several times over the years. To me he's one of the most original, compelling writers of our time. His books, stories, screenplays and television work are as finely wrought and darkly moving as only real literature can be. He's a bestseller in the UK and while many of his books have been published here he's never been promoted well enough to give him the wider audience he deserves. And it's no surprise that his website is packed with a whole lot of cool stuff, too. Here's an older piece that's well worth the read.

King, Kubrick and the most expensive f**k-off note in history by Stephen Gallagher.

I've watched Channel Five's airing of the miniseries based on THE SHINING, and a very thought-provoking experience it's been. With Stephen King as screenwriter and executive producer, it comes a full eighteen years after Stanley Kubrick's feature adaptation of the novel. King disliked the earlier adaptation, and used to say so. He can't say so any more because in order to get hold of the remake rights he had to undertake not to.

I love THE SHINING. I think it's the definitive haunted-place book and it would have been my favourite King novel if he hadn't gone on and written THE DEAD ZONE. The night I finished reading it for the first time - actually at around two o'clock in the morning - I had to walk around the house putting all the lights on. The next day I started it again, something that I'd rarely done with a book before and never since.

When Kubrick's feature adaptation came out in 1980 my feelings about it were mixed, and continue to change over time. I probably like it better now than I used to. On a first viewing I remember my reaction being a big disappointment that he simply hadn't managed to get it, and that what we had before us was a magnificent toolkit for a SHINING movie but not the movie itself. Now I suppose it's merged with the book in my mind, and I find myself supplying the missing elements to make it work. It has an intellectual elegance, and it's made with enormous craft and skill. As cinema, it's still state-of-the-art nearly two decades later. All it lacks is the narrative integrity that sets THE SHINING apart as material and made it worth tackling in the first place.

for the rest go here:
http://www.stephengallagher.com/artic...[image error]

Dave Zeltserman-free Julius; Nightmare Noir: Nightmare Alley

I've made Julius Katz Mysteries free on Smashwords.

Julius Katz Mysteries with 2 award-winning stories (including last years Shamus) now free http://tiny.cc/iqp29 #ebook #free #mystery

thanks,
Dave

-------------------From The Los Angeles Times:

Paperback Writers: Nightmare noir
PAPERBACK WRITERS

William Lindsay Gresham's novel 'Nightmare Alley' draws deeply on autobiographical sources to tell the story of a doomed carnival hustler.

March 28, 2010|By Richard Rayner
William Lindsay Gresham's novel "Nightmare Alley" (NYRB Classics: 288 pp., $16) tells the rise-and-fall story of Stan Carlisle, a hustling carnival wanna-be who transforms himself into the Great Stanton, a big-time stage magician, and then into a fake psychic, running a "spook racket" before reaching too far and engineering his own catastrophe.

In the end, Carlisle is torn apart by the very same emotional disturbances that have driven him, let down by a woman who loves him and betrayed by another who is even more ruthless than he. The "nightmare" of the title rings true, for this delirious and unstoppable novel -- first published in 1946, famously filmed starring Tyrone Power in 1947 and only now re-issued by NYRB Classics in its full, uncensored version with a new introduction by Nick Tosches -- inverts the American dream. The plot turns the Horatio Alger myth on its head and the psychology leans on Freud, but the torment, the pervading sense that the human creature lives in a trap he or she is doomed never to escape, comes from the heart and mind of the author. Never was noir more autobiographical than here.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/...
"Baptized an Episcopalian, raised an agnostic, in turns a Unitarian, a hedonist, a stoic, a Communist, a self-made mystic, and an eclectic grabber after truth, I had at last come home," wrote William Lindsay Gresham after his reconversion to the Christian faith in the early 1950s.