Ed Gorman's Blog, page 190

Say it ain't so...`The Wild Bunch' to be re-made

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Tony Scott Boarding 'The Wild Bunch' While Revving 'Hell's Angels' As Next Pic



By MIKE FLEMING | Thursday August 18, 2011 @ 6:00pm EDT

Tags: Brian Helgeland, Chris Pine, David Ayer, Denzel Washington, Ernest Borgnine, Jeff Bridges, Jerry Weintraub, Robert Ryan, Ryan Reynolds, Sam Peckinpah, Scott Frank, Sonny Barger, Stephen Gaghan, Tom Cruise, Tony Scott, Warren Oates, William Holden



EXCLUSIVE: Deadline revealed this morning that Ridley Scott was returning to his sci-fi classic Blade Runner. His Scott Free partner and brother Tony Scott is also getting serious about a new version of a movie classic. Scott is in talks with Warner Bros to direct a reboot of the 1969 Sam Peckinpah-directed The Wild Bunch. This film becomes one of three or so that Scott is most eager to direct as his follow-up to the Denzel Washington-Chris Pine action film Unstoppable.



Scott's next assignment will be Hell's Angels, though its timing will depend on whether he gets the actor he wants to play gang leader Sonny Barger. I'm told that he wants Jeff Bridges. They've not met face to face yet, because Bridges is right now touring his self-titled musical album that he recorded after he won the Oscar playing Bad Blake in Crazy Heart. Once Bridges gets back to film work, he's booked to star with Ryan Reynolds in Universal's R.I.P.D. and Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures' The Seventh Son. If Scott has his heart set on Bridges and the actor says yes, Hell's Angels won't get underway until next spring or later. Fox 2000′s Hell's Angels is set around the Laughlin riots of 2001 when the Angels were caught up in a war with rival gang The Mongols. The drama revolves around a friendship that develops between Barger and a young drifter mechanic with a gift for fixing motorcycles. The script is in by Scott Frank, who did numerous rewrites of an earlier draft by Stephen Gaghan.



for the rest go here:

http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/tony-...

How Ray Bradbury became a literary icon

MONDAY, AUG 22, 2011 21:01 ET

How Ray Bradbury became a literary icon

A new book explores the acclaimed sci-fi writer's rise to fame -- and how he helped make a genre cool

BY ADAM KIRSCH, BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW



This article appears courtesy of The Barnes & Noble Review.

These days, when it's common to see adults engrossed in Harry Potter on the subway, and the edgiest shows on HBO are about vampires and dragons, it's hard to believe there was once a time when sci-fi and fantasy fiction were confined to a cultural ghetto. But in his new study, "Becoming Ray Bradbury" (Illinois), Jonathan R. Eller shows that being a sci-fi writer in pre-World War II America was thoroughly unglamorous -- less a career than a dubious kind of hobby. Ray Bradbury himself was an undistinguished high school senior when he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League in 1937, and in the years that followed he seemed likely to remain in that amateur realm: sending his stories to mimeographed fanzines, scraping together bus fare to attend annual conventions. The highest glory available was to publish in "prozines" with names like Astonishing Stories and Thrilling Wonder, which actually paid their contributors -- sometimes as much as a penny a word.



As Eller shows, Bradbury cherished a secret sense that he was marked out for something greater. "I believe there was always one core of belief in me that burned from the time I was twelve on: I want to be different, to be different from everybody else ... It is only that hard core of wanting to be different that separates the true artist, I believe, from the man who writes merely as a means of livelihood." Eller's book is an academic study, charting Bradbury's early career in thorough, at times numbing detail, up to the publication of the three books that made him famous: "The Martian Chronicles," "The Illustrated Man" and "Fahrenheit 451," which appeared in rapid sequence in the early 1950s.



But it is easy to imagine a novelist turning the young Bradbury into a character like Jude Fawley, in Hardy's "Jude the Obscure": a gifted man, cut off by poverty and provincialism from the sources of high culture, struggling to make his way into the literary world where he belongs. What allowed Bradbury to succeed where Jude failed was partly luck; for one thing, his bad eyesight spared him from the draft, allowing him to spend the World War II years practicing his craft.



for the rest go here:

http://www.salon.com/books/biography/...

New Books: CLAN by Harry Shannon

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CLAN by Harry Shannon is now on Kindle for $3.99



Like most people, I remember my first time. Pretty well, in fact. I was sober. It was wonderful. I was curled up on the bed, with my head on the pillow and my legs extended. Some 50's music was playing. I was probably wearing pajamas; most likely with some stupid-assed Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob stuff printed all over them. Or maybe it was Rin Tin Tin, I can't say for sure. Not after more than fifty years. I was already a bookworm, though. I was devouring everything within sight by the time I was seven or eight years old. So this night I was maybe eleven, give or take. And I believe that first horror story I ever read was by H.H. Munro, who wrote under the name of Saki. The masterful little tale was of one angry and abused little boy with a vivid sense of outrage and an "imaginary creature" that was hiding in his room. The kid claimed he could summon it with a low, poetic chant. Adults mocked him. Of course it turned out to be quite real. That story was called "Srendi Vashtar." The ending sticks with me to this day.



Anyway, that was my first time, and after that I was no longer innocent. I had been shocked into an appreciation for the macabre, and for the literary realm of horror and dark fantasy. Next came the astonishing Ray Bradbury, Ambrose Bierce, John Collier, Anthony Boucher, Richard Matheson, Roald Dahl, Robert Bloch, Robert Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Shirley Jackson. So many gifted folks. And later on Stephen King, Peter Straub, Robert McCammon and a host of other authors inspired me all over again, as did the Gold Medal and Lancer Books of the 60's. But first there was that one gory little tale by Saki.



I suspect it was not an accident that the first story to grab me that way was one of flesh-rending violence. Few of us have made peace with both extremes of our nature; the beastly and the spiritual, the gourmet and the cannibal. The oldest cave paintings treat animals as deities who sacrifice their lives to feed us. They are likely just expressions of our guilt and deep ambivalence about being the earth's dominant predators. However, our gargantuan base appetites tend to be counter-balanced with a reverence for life that makes the act of killing genuinely disturbing to our higher nature. It is a conundrum. But whether we like it or not, that dark craving does exist. It is a deep down gnawing, gristle-rending lust for blood and bone. Just stop by a steakhouse and watch the patrons chewing away, minds in vapid rapture. Or pay really close attention to the audience at a football game.



Folks, although my new novel CLAN (early incarnation released as Night of the Werewolf in late 2002) does indeed deal with these themes, it is first and foremost an entertainment. It's a B-movie, a tribute to the spirit of pure pulp and the glory days of mass-market fiction, with a little crime noir tossed in for seasoning. But I would also like to think CLAN stands on its own as a fast-paced thriller. Readers will have to be the judge of that.



I have always had a soft spot for this one, so I'm delighted to have it rewritten, improved and back in print as a more affordable trade paperback and ebook. The first version only sold a modest number of limited-edition hardcover copies. This one should be far more widely read. I'd love to see the movie made someday, now that CG is good enough to bring this one off. Fingers crossed, because there is a screenplay already written. Anyway, should you sample and buy this new baby, I hope you consume a lot of popcorn while reading, and that at least a few of the scenes actually disturb your sleep. Nothing would make me happier than that.



Best,

Harry Shannon



1

Best-Selling Author and Grieving Mother Jude Deveraux Loses $20 Million to 'Psychics'

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Jude Deveraux



From The Daily Mail U.K.



Best-Selling Author and Grieving Mother Loses $20 Million to 'Psychics'



Bestselling author 'gave fortune tellers $20m after she was told her dead son was somewhere between heaven and hell'

By JOHN STEVENS and TED THORNHILLL



A bestselling author gave $20 million to a group of fortune-telling gypsies after she was told that her dead son was somewhere between heaven and hell, it has been claimed.



Prosecutors said ten 'psychic readers' from Fort Lauderdale in Florida allegedly conned customers out of a total of $40million, telling them that unless they handed over cash and valuables, they would be haunted.

Jude Deveraux, the author of 37 New York Times bestsellers, is reported to be the writer who lost $20 million.



Conned? Jude Deveraux, the author of 37 New York Times bestsellers, is reported to be the writer who lost $20 million to the gang of fortune tellers

Prosecutors refused to identify the author who they said lost her eight-year-old son in a motorcycle accident, but several sources with knowledge of the case has named Ms Deveraux.



More...

Aruba suspect and missing woman did NOT go snorkelling, says witness as man's account of how Robyn Gardner vanished falls apart

'I was up all night trying to figure out how to use those iPhone things.' West Memphis Three on first taste of freedom in 18 years after release for 'satanic' boy scout killings

The author, whose real name is Jude Gilliam Montassir, wrote on her MySpace page that she 'adopted a son, Sam Alexander Montassir… My son died at age 8 in a motorcycle accident.'



Arrested: Nancy Marks is one of the fortune tellers who has been arrested for fraud (file picture)

Ms Deveraux, 63, who has written romantic novels and tales of the paranormal, was allegedly exploited by at least one of the defendants, Rose Marks, who she considered a friend.



'She was under, for want of a better word, the curse of Rose Marks,' Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurence Bardfeld told a judge at a hearing in federal court in West Palm Beach on Friday.



Police swooped on the soothsayers, who are all related by blood or marriage, this week after a huge cross-state investigation dubbed 'Operation Crystal Ball'.



More than 400 rings, 100 watches and 200 necklaces – many of them from Cartier, Tiffany & Co and Gucci – were seized.

Facing charges are Rose Marks, 60, Nancy Marks, 42, Cynthia Miller, 33, Rosie Marks, 36, Victoria Eli, 65, Vivian Marks, 21, Ricky Marks, 39, Michael Marks, 33, Donnie Eli, 38, and Peter Wolofsky, 84.



They all billed themselves as fortune tellers, clairvoyants and spiritual advisers and operated from shops in Fort Lauderdale.

The authorities said that many customers came to them as a desperate last resort, for instance hoping that they could be cured of a disease or put in touch with a deceased loved one.





Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

Gold Medal in The 70s by Fred Blosser

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GOLD MEDAL IN THE 70s by Fred Blosser



Whenever the old timers write fondly about Gold Medal Books, they seem to dwell mostly on the glory era

of the '50s and '60s. I don't see the '70s GMs discussed much. Maybe I've

missed an article here or a blog there? Or could it be that fans view the '70s

as a twilight era for GM, a sad march toward the line's eventual extinction, and

best forgotten?



One could argue that attrition had hit GM hard. Knox Burger departed in ...

1970? Also by 1970, Stephen Marlowe had left the GM stable, the six-book run of

Richard Stark's Parker under the GM tag (four originals, plus two movie tie-in

reprints from Pocket) had ended, and I believe Lawrence Block had moved on as

well.



The old guard of John D. MacDonald, Donald Hamilton, Philip Atlee, Dan J.

Marlowe, Lou Cameron, Charles Runyon, and Edward S. Aarons hung on through some,

most, or all of the decade. (And in the Western line, "Jonas Ward" plugged on.)

In my opinion, Hamilton's and Marlowe's best work was behind them, although

Hamilton had already started to slip in the mid-'60s when the Matt Helms began

to get longer in page count and flabbier in pace. The '70s cover art, in which

the tough-guy series characters began to look like sleazy lounge singers or porn

actors in long hair and sideburns, didn't help much either.



I can't identify any one dominant trend in the '70s GMs, but there were some

smaller trends, at least in the first half of the decade:



MAFIA NOVELS ... "From the publisher of THE GODFATHER," as Fawcett Gold Medal's

cover blurbs capitalized on the fact that Fawcett Crest had published the

paperback edition of Mario Puzo's bestseller. Could it also have been a

marketing campaign to compete with the rising tide of The Executioner and

similar war-against-the-mafia pulp paperback series?



THIEF-TURNED-SECRET-AGENT NOVELS, a sub-genre not unique to GM at the time by

any means, but Dan J. Marlowe's Earl Drake and Don Smith's Tim Parnell were game

contenders, Marlowe's in relative longevity if not in relative quality (unless

someone would care to argue that Marlowe's OPERATION ... titles were better than

THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH and ONE ENDLESS HOUR).



MOTORCYCLE GANGS -- although I may be stretching a point on this one. Do two

novels -- THE HIGH SIDE by Max Ehrlich and THE SCARRED MAN by Basil Heatter -- a

trend make?



RETURN OF SOME STALWARTS WHO HAD BEEN SCARCE ON THE GM LISTS IN THE LATTER '60S

-- Peter Rabe, Robert Colby, Richard Wormser, and Ovid Demaris (with a reprint

of CANDYLEG as a movie-tie in).



New to the ranks in the '70s were Daniel Da Cruz, Richard Posner, and (a

one-shot, I believe) Mike Jahn. Da Cruz's DOUBLE KILL is pretty good -- reminds

me of Dan Marlowe in places -- and its three sequels in the Jock Sargent series

have their moments. I don't know that I ever read any of Posner's stuff.



All in all, according to my personal tastes, I can't say that GM in the

Watergate and Disco years matched, volt for volt, the energy of the '50s years

with Charles Williams, Stephen Marlowe, and Peter Rabe (and some would probably

add Richard Prather) or the '60s with JDM, Jim Thompson, the best of Dan J.

Marlowe, Block, and the early Matt Helms. But I wouldn't count the line out

altogether after 1969. DOUBLE KILL, THE PADRONE, BLACK MAFIA, THE CANADIAN

BOMBER CONTRACT, and POWER KILL are worthy efforts, to name some that come to

mind.

DYING MEMORIES by Dave Zeltserman

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In ten years Dave Zeltserman has just about covered the waterfront with the range of his novels and stories. In so doing he's created at least three neo-noir masterpieces, done both Rex Stout and Bram Stoker one better, and now he's edged into territory previously the province of the late Richard Condon.



Dying Memories is a flat-out conspiracy novel with an engine that never falters. The story starts in the first sentence and pushes relentlessly to the last sentence. No detours get in the way.



Murders and mysterious e mails lead reporter Bill Conway to a corporation named VIGen whose stated business may sound innocent but isn't. What raises the novel above many conspiracy novels is that Zeltserman is able to keep thrilling us while at the same time seriously examining how human beings are being subjected to experiments and critical intrusions by both corporations and government. He always manages to give us some new twists on being framed for murder.



Think of such great thrillers as North By Northwest and Charade and the early novels of Michael Crichton. The pleasure comes from putting all the pieces together until the smashing climax. If you're up for great intelligent read, this is it. And for only $2.99 wherever e books are sold.

Alan Guthrie's Thuggish Thirteen

Allan Guthrie's Thuggish Thirteen—Brit Grit Part 3 From AsheditFor the rest go here:



Filed under: Uncategorized — ashedit



I am beyond thrilled to welcome Allan Guthrie to Ashedit. I asked Allan for "a few words" on the current state of British crime fiction and he delivered a microcosm of space and time in 13 paragraphs—a feat not unlike stuffing a battleship into a bottle. Allan's name comes up time and again whenever British crime fiction is mentioned. He is the author of 5 novels, including a Top Ten Amazon Bestseller. His debut novel was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award and went on to win the Theakston's Crime Novel Of The Year in 2007. He was also nominated for an Edgar Award. When he's not writing, Allan is a literary agent with Jenny Brown Associates. A complete list of his credits appears at the end of this feature.



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Thuggish Thirteen:



Ray Banks, originally from Kirkcaldy but now living in Edinburgh, is part Ted Lewis, part Bukowski, part Palahniuk, and a whole lot Ray Banks. He's best known for a 4-book series featuring Manchester-based, uprooted Scot, Callum Innes, that might just be the most realistic depiction of a British PI you'll find. The last book, BEAST OF BURDEN, is just out now in the US and it's one very brave piece of crime writing. He just released an ebook novella, GUN, which is an excellent introduction to his writing.



David Belbin made his name as a writer of YA fiction. His debut adult crime novel, BONE AND CANE, is set in Nottingham against the backdrop of the 1997 general election, and follows the intersecting storylines of Nick Cane, an ex-con just released after serving a sentence for growing wholesale quantities of cannabis, and Sarah Bone, his ex-girlfriend and Labour MP. Belbin hit the ground running with this book, scoring an Amazon UK #1, and there's a lot of publisher support for the next book in the series. Very smart crime fiction, potentially as ambitious as David Peace's RED RIDING QUARTET.



Tony Black's another Scot with grit in abundance. His series about Edinburgh-based dypso-journo Gus Dury started with PAYING FOR IT and now runs to four books. Black conveys a remarkable sense of place, and Gus Dury – a man who's never short of an opinion or two – is an excellent guide to the city. The first in a new police procedural series TRUTH LIES BLEEDING is just out as well, and Black has a novella pending with Pulp Press.



For the rest go here:

http://ashedit.wordpress.com/2011/08/...

Private Eye Writers Banquet; Literary Brooklyn

FROM ROBERT J. RANDISI, President Private Eye Writers if America



Hey Guys,



Can we get this info on your site, please? Tickets are available for the PWA Banquet in St. Louis.



Fri., Sept. 16, 2011, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM at a St. Louis institution. Tickets are $60, buses will leave from the Convention Hotel to the venue. Email Christine Matthews ar RRandisi@aol.com for more information, or to order tickets.



RJR



-------------------------------LITERARY BROOKLYN



Brooklyn Takes a Bow as a Town of Writers

By DWIGHT GARNER

Published: August 16, 2011



"Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in," the chorus of an improbably lovely song by the Avett Brothers implores. "Are you aware the shape I'm in?"



Amy Wilton

Evan Hughes

LITERARY BROOKLYN

The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life

By Evan Hughes

337 pages. Henry Holt & Company. $17.

Related



Excerpt: 'Literary Brooklyn' (pdf)



Patricia Wall/The New York Times

For generations — long before it became fashionable — Brooklyn has taken in writers fleeing from Manhattan's steep rents and steeper pretensions. In the first sentence of "Sophie's Choice" (1979), William Styron's narrator, Stingo, turns out his pockets and says, "In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn."



It's been a refuge too for those who simply needed some quiet, a place that had human scale and dirt under its fingernails. "Young men were writing manifestos in the higher magazines of Manhattan," Thomas Wolfe said in the 1930s about his years in the borough, "but the weather of man's life, the substance and structure of the world in which he lives, was soaking in on me in those years in Brooklyn."



As anyone who has paid attention to the Book Review, Styles and Dining sections of The New York Times is aware, things have changed in Brooklyn. Over the past decade or two it has filled with heat-seeking young writers, editors, artists and chefs, so much so that it's become the butt of unfair but funny anti-hipster tirades. The novelist Colson Whitehead was compelled to cool the warm jets in 2008 by writing a witty essay in The Times titled: "I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It."



For the rest go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/boo...

Canceling The Lone Ranger; Galleys

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Ed here: I bet those old Lone Ranger TV episodes didn't cost more than six or seven million apiece. :)



Shutting Down The Lone Ranger



By Lee Pfeiffer of Cinema Retro



"Studios are cracking down on pet projects of big name directors by canceling some high profile productions because of budget costs. Ron Howard and Guillermo Del Toro are among the recent "victims". Now Disney has informed producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Johnny Depp that their long-planned Lone Ranger film is being shut down. Filming was to start in October- but Disney execs got cold feet when the estimated budget hit $232 million. The studio is insisting that the film cost no more than $200. This is how insane Hollywood has become: $200 million for a movie about a guy on horse and it's considered to be too paltry of a sum. The question remains whether Bruckheimer and Depp will have their egos bruised and scale down the budget in order to make the movie. As of right now, it's officially off Disney's schedule. The underwhelming performance of Cowboys & Aliens has the studio nervous- and there are other factors as well. Disney is sinking a jaw-dropping $250 million into next year's John Carter sci-fi epic and there is also the $200 million Oz: The Great and Powerful in the pipeline. Saying "no" to Johnny Depp is almost unheard of in the industry, especially when he has brought billions into Disney's coffers through the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. However, his track record outside of that series is spotty at best and the suits at Disney aren't about to invest a king's ransom just to please him."



Then Lee links to: Hitflix.com and writer Gregory Ellwood



"Starring Depp as Tonto and "The Social Network's" Armie Hammer as the masked Western hero, "Ranger" was expected to be one of the studio's major tentpoles for December 2012. The film's budget, however, was said to be hovering at around $232 million and that was just too rich for Disney's tastes. Especially considering the dubious prospects for next year's "John Carter" (a stunning $250 million plus budget) and their $200 million investment in Sam Raimi's "Oz: The Great and Powerful." And yet, this is still bizarre considering Bruckheimer and Depp's billion dollar track record on the "Pirates" series and the $1 billion dollar gross for Depp's "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010. The fact Depp could even help the audience-unfriendly "The Tourist" hit $278 million worldwide can't be disputed either. With Will Smith still on his personal sabbatical Depp is absolutely the biggest draw in the world. So, why would Disney get so skittish about a Johnny Depp adventure movie? Perhaps "Cowboys & Aliens" contributed to their thinking.



for the rest go here:

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/shocke...



------------------------GALLEYS



Last night I ran a review of my new novel (Oct) Bad Moon Rising. If you don't regularly review my books, have a blog and will review the book I have eighteen galleys I can send. ejgorman99@aol.com is my e address. Please put GALLEYS in the subject line (don't want to get spammed) and include your snail mail address. Thanks, Ed



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Bad Moon Rising

*Starred Review



Ed Gorman. Pegasus (Norton, dist.), $25 (208p) ISBN 978-1-60598-260-1



Social turmoil overshadows the sleuthing in Gorman's excellent ninth Sam McCain mystery (after 2009's A Ticket to Ride). In 1968, a hippie commune near Black River Falls, Iowa, both horrifies and entices the townsfolk with its uninhibited lifestyle. Sardonic lawyer and investigator McCain becomes involved after the discovery of the body of Vanessa Mainwaring, the teenage daughter of a well-to-do local, at the commune, and a Vietnam vet who's one of its members flees. Interference by a bigoted sheriff, an opportunistic preacher, and a hysterical father makes matters even worse as Sam tries not just to solve the murder but to help the people around him caught in an intensely stressful situation. The real crime, as Sam eventually realizes, is how one generation exploits the next—while the younger generation devours itself. In turn mellow and melancholy, this book grapples with problems that are too complex for any detective to untangle. (Oct.)

The new Sam McCain novel - Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly; Carolyn Hart

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Bad Moon Rising

*Starred Review



Ed Gorman. Pegasus (Norton, dist.), $25 (208p) ISBN 978-1-60598-260-1



Social turmoil overshadows the sleuthing in Gorman's excellent ninth Sam McCain mystery (after 2009's A Ticket to Ride). In 1968, a hippie commune near Black River Falls, Iowa, both horrifies and entices the townsfolk with its uninhibited lifestyle. Sardonic lawyer and investigator McCain becomes involved after the discovery of the body of Vanessa Mainwaring, the teenage daughter of a well-to-do local, at the commune, and a Vietnam vet who's one of its members flees. Interference by a bigoted sheriff, an opportunistic preacher, and a hysterical father makes matters even worse as Sam tries not just to solve the murder but to help the people around him caught in an intensely stressful situation. The real crime, as Sam eventually realizes, is how one generation exploits the next—while the younger generation devours itself. In turn mellow and melancholy, this book grapples with problems that are too complex for any detective to untangle. (Oct.)



-----------------------------FROM CAROLYN HART



Dear Ed,



It turned out there was some file confusion and the version posted by Kindle for Escape from Paris - which is my favorite book of the lot - contained many errors and typos. Wonderfully, they let me revise and the new corrected version should be up by next week. They removed the earlier file. A mea culpa to wonderful readers.



My best - Carolyn