Ed Gorman's Blog, page 203

New Books: THE MICK CALLAHAN NOVELS by Harry Shannon

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THE MICK CALLAHAN NOVELS
by Harry Shannon
$4.99 Kindle
ASIN: B004WLOB12

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mick-Callah...


Like many of us, I grew up loving books by Donald Hamilton, Richard Prather, and the great John D. MacDonald. I've always wanted to be an author but kept postponing any serious attempt. But then the character of a failed young media superstar named Mick Callahan captured my imagination just as I turned fifty, months after the birth of my first and only child. I felt compelled to write my first real novel.

Mick Callahan is a decent guy when he's sober; athletic and exceedingly bright, but he is also very troubled. He's my Jungian shadow, I suppose--someone who pushed the boundaries of his life even further than I did back in my wayward youth. Like me, Callahan grew up in Nevada , is a recovering alcoholic, a psychologist and a former entertainer. Like me, he managed to trash a promising career in the entertainment business, but in his case, by punching someone on live television. Unlike me, he's also a Navy seal washout whose abusive stepfather made him fight other kids for money.

I first pictured the poor guy on the comeback trail, hunched over the decrepit console of a funky radio station in the middle of the desert, desperately trying to hold his own as guest host of a call-in program designed for UFO junkies, black helicopter paranoiacs and those who have been anally probed. To make the experience even more excruciating, it seemed appropriate to have Callahan also hail from that desolate area, a town called Dry Wells, Nevada. This way, the poor guy returns home not in triumph, but in disgrace. That concept became the first novel, "Memorial Day."

The second book grew out of reading an article about the "Burning Man" festival, which began in California but ended up in Nevada . I'll admit I was initially fascinated by the wildness of it, although time and common sense have tamed it down since I'd first heard of it. In this book, I had some old enemies lure Mick there to take their revenge.

"One of the Wicked," the third Callahan, is set half in Los Angeles and half in Nevada at a mythical new casino in the Valley of Fire. It takes Mick into more of a thriller status than the first two books, a trend I continue into the fourth novel, "Running Cold," which is due in June.

Naturally, Callahan's fiery temper is always a big part of any story. However, he is also a trained therapist, so Mick uses a variety of actual therapeutic techniques to probe for clues. The guy knows how to back people into a corner and play them like a piano, so the dialogue is loads of fun to write. My own background as a counselor comes in handy.

In honor of the June release of "Running Cold" the first three Mick Callahan novels "Memorial Day," "Eye of the Burning Man" and "One of the Wicked" are now in one inexpensive Kindle book, simply entitled The Mick Callahan Novels.

And you get all this for only $4.99! Hope you'll take a few minutes to check it out one of these days. I know Mick would appreciate that.

Harry Shannon

Vince Keenen: The Hardy Boys

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Ed here: On The mighty fine Abbott Gran Medicine Show Vince Keenan talks about the books of his youth. There's not a word of treacle in the piece and there's a good deal of wisdom.

Vince Keenan:

The truth is that then as now, I consumed heroic quantities of crime fiction. And that meant The Hardy Boys. It's fashionable to mock the series in all its gee-whiz, asexual glory. But I refuse to do that. I come here to praise Frank and Joe Hardy, not to bury them with scorn. The boys put me on a glide path that led to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, to Lawrence Block and James Ellroy. For good and ill, they made me the reader that I am today.

The series is a remarkable American narrative in itself. Created by Edward Stratemeyer, the pioneer of book packaging. Cranked out by countless ghostwriters. (I never believed in Santa Claus, but it crushed me to learn that Franklin W. Dixon wasn't real.) The first 38 entries were substantially revised beginning in 1959 to simplify them in the face of television's popularity and to eliminate racial stereotyping. As a result, two completely different novels with the same title could be in simultaneous circulation, a lesson I learned the hard way. Buying the "wrong" version of The Missing Chums (#4 in the series) prompted a crash course in typefaces. I soon discovered that the original editions had denser text in every sense.

for the rest go here:
http://abbottgran.wordpress.com/

Do Literary Gimmicks Work?

From The Daily Beast

Do Literary Gimmicks Work?
by Caryn James

From Steve Martin's art world games to a novel constructed like a dictionary, there's a slew of gimmicky new novels. Caryn James wonders if they equal good fiction.

Those live-action newspapers from the Harry Potter books and films—with moving and talking images on the page instead of old-fangled still photographs—don't seem like a stretch today. They're more like a prototype for the near future. Soon we're likely to see a first-rate literary novel written expressly for the iPad or whatever higher-tech device comes next. We already have video books, cross-bred from e-books, and extra features. How can plain ink-on-paper compete with reading as an action sport?

We have entered the Age of the Stunt Novel, literary fiction that relies on gimmicks: photos splashed throughout the text, codes for your smartphone, stand-on-your-head structures, anything that screams "Look, this isn't a boring old book."
From Joyce and Beckett through Georges Perec, playing with form is nothing new, of course. The experimental novels of the 1970s turned stunts into a new genre. In Walter Abish's Alphabetical Africa, for one, all the words in the first chapter begin with the letter A, expanding in chapter two to include words beginning with B, and so on. What we're seeing now doesn't come with the same rigorous artistic principles.

The impulse behind today's shift is partly commercial. You can't blame frantic authors, stranded in the land of tumbling sales, closing bookstores, and miniscule e-book royalties. But the dynamic also flows, perhaps unconsciously, from the powerful influence of the Web and the way we juggle several things at once, watching online video or TV while texting or checking email and talking on the phone. That multiplicity is creeping into novels.

for the rest go here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-an...

Beware-Crankiness Ahead Talking Funny

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I watched Talking Funny last night with Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Louis CK, and Ricky Gervais and my impression was that these egomaniacs love themselves a lot more than I do.

Seinfeld hasn't been very funny since his show ended, Rock peaked sometime back, Louis CK has always irritated me (he's the guy at the bar who always gets decked) and Gervais' fame and fortune has turned him into a preening parody of his former self.

So there you have it--my prejudices going in. I admit to them. Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe when this many shallow minds try to get analytical at once boredom is guaranteed. It's what I always tell people who people who are assume that all writers are smart. I always say no, they're not. (I'm not very smart--and that's not self-effacement; I'm just not that bright.) They're talented. And there's a difference. For instance If you've ever heard Marlon Brando try to talk you know that not all actors are smart.

What I'm saying is that all the guys on Talking Funny last night are indisputably talented. Seinfeld-Larry David created what is for me the greatest anti-sit-com of all time. Rock knocked the walls down. Geravis' Extras is nothing less than brilliant; to me it's more important than his version of The Office. Louie CK, I'm sorry to say, is not in this league and never will be. But four out of five ain't bad.

Maybe I expected too much and the fault is therefore mine. I didn't hate it, I just thought it was dull..

John D. MacDonald on Dashiell Hammett

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Ed here: Steve Scott does excellent work on his The Trap of Solid Gold website dedicated to the work and life of John D. MacDonald. Be sure to check it out. Here's a sample.

http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.co...

JDM on Dialogue

"I never met [Dashiell] Hammett and never corresponded with him. Here are some small and unimportant ways in which our lives touched. Hammett and I were both discharged from the Army in September of 1945 at Fort Dix, NJ. I was 29 and he was 51.

"His first novel, Red Harvest, was published in 1929 when he was 33. My first novel, The Brass Cupcake, was published in 1950 when I was 34. Both novels are still in print.

"His last short story in the pulp magazine Black Mask was "Death and Company," published in 1930. Seventeen years later, my first story in that magazine was titled "Manhattan Horse Opera," which doubtless shows a smidgen or two of the Hammett influence. He influenced us all: The straight, simple prose style. Everything deleted except what moved the action forward. Characters shown through action and through dialogue -- with a special emphasis on making the dialogue ring true. This is a very chancy area. You cannot have people talking the way people actually talk. Transcribe a tape of any casual conversation, and you will see what I mean. You have to do dialogue that, if spoken exactly as written, would sound just a little bit stilted -- yet on the page, it creates for the reader the imitation of a total reality."

-- from John D MacDonald's book review of Shadow Man (a Hammett biography) published in the August 2, 1981 edition of the Washington Star.

Gorman-Piccirilli; Edmond Hamilton

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Ed here:That fine writer James Reasoner was nice enough to review the novella that Tom Piccirilli and I did. If you like adventure stories, give this one a try. I think you'll enjoy it. Thanks, James.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2011

Cast in Dark Waters - Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli
How long has it been since you read a good, old-fashioned, swashbuckling pirate yarn? Well, neighbor, that's too long, as they used to say on the Wolf Brand Chili commercials. What you need to do is read CAST IN DARK WATERS by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli, which is a pirate yarn . . . and more.

Gorman and Piccirilli have come up with a fine protagonist in the young woman known as Crimson, a beautiful, redheaded female pirate in the Caribbean sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century. She's hired by a tobacco planter from Virginia and the man's wife to retrieve the couple's daughter, who has run off with a pirate who makes his headquarters on an island that's supposed to be cursed.

Because this is as much a horror tale as it is a pirate story, you know things aren't going to go particularly well on this mission, and sure enough, they don't. But there's plenty of pulpish goodness along the way, including swordfights. You know I love me some swordfights.

Gorman and Piccirilli have done a great job on this novella, which was originally published as a limited edition hardcover. I missed out on that edition and have wanted to read it ever since, so as soon as it became available as a very affordable e-book, I grabbed a copy. It's available at all the usual outlets, including the publisher's website, and if you enjoy high adventure yarns with more than a touch of creepiness and some fine characters, I highly recommend CAST IN DARK WATERS.


----------------THE UNIVERSE WRECKERS BY EDMOND HAMILTON

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Ed here: I was raving about Edmond Hamilton's science fiction last night. What's cool about this volume is that it also includes some of his horror stories which are spectacular.

The Universe Wreckers
The Collected Edmond Hamilton,
Volume Three
Edmond Hamilton
Introduction by Eric Leif Davin
Illustrated by H.W. "Wesso" Wessolowski, Frank R. Paul, Hugh Rankin, C.C. Senf, J. Fleming Gould, and Leo Morey
ISBN 9781893887411
$40.00
784 pp. Hardcover
Description
Less than a year after the release of first two volumes of THE COLLECTED EDMOND HAMILTON (Vol. One: The Metal Giants and Others and Vol. Two: The Star Stealers: The Complete Tales of the Interstellar Patrol) Haffner Press lets no grass grow under our feet as we announce the next volume of collected stories from one of the godfathers of Space Opera.

This volume sees Hamilton established not only as a regular contributor to Weird Tales, but also to Amazing Stories, Hugo Gernback's new magazine Air Wonder Stories, and the young upstart publication, Astounding Stories. Eight of these stories are reprinted for the first time, including two novels: "Cities in the Air" and "The Universe Wreckers."

Hamilton's as-yet-unrecognized talent for the short horror story gets a work-out with "The Plant Revol," "Pigmy Island," and "The Life-Masters."

As with previous volumes in this series, an appendix showcasing the original pulp magazine illustrations also bulks large with obscura including reader's letters from the vintage magazines commenting on these stories, along with editorial correspondence between Hamilton and his editors.

University of Pittsburgh professor Dr. Eric Leif Davin (and author of Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations with the Founders of Science Fiction and Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965) provides a lengthy introduction placing these Hamilton stories in historical context and shares a wealth of information on the editorial policies of the commissioning editors. His website is: http://ericleifdavin.vpweb.com/

Table of Contents
Reviews
Excerpts

Related Books
The Vampire Master
Stark and the Star Kings
The Metal Giants and Others
The Star Stealers
Captain Future - Volume One
Captain Future - Volume Two

Table of Contents
Introduction by Eric Leif Davin
"Cities in the Air" (Air Wonder Stories Nov, Dec '29)
"The Life-Masters" (Weird Tales, Jan '30)
"The Space Visitors" (Air Wonder Stories, Mar '30)
"Evans of the Earth Guard" (Air Wonder Stories, Apr '30)
"The Plant Revolt" (Weird Tales, Apr '30)
"The Universe Wreckers" (Amazing Stories May, Jun, Jul '30)
"The Death Lord" (Weird Tales, Jul '30)
"Pigmy Island" (Weird Tales, Aug '30)
"Second Satellite" (Astounding Stories, Aug '30)
"World Atavism" (Amazing Stories, Aug '30)
"The Man Who Saw the Future" (Amazing Stories, Aug '30)

Appendix
• Original Pulp Illustrations
• Readers' Letters from Original Magazines
• Correspondence between Hamilton and the SF Luminaries of the Day

Paul Levine; Captain Future

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PAUL LEVINE'S "FLESH & BONES" NOW AN E-BOOK

From Paul Levine

I was sitting at the end of the bar sipping single-malt Scotch when I
spotted the tall blond woman with the large green eyes and the small gray
gun.

That's the opening line of "Flesh & Bones," Paul Levine's bestselling 1997
thriller that has just been released as an e-book. It's the last of the
critically acclaimed series featuring Jake Lassiter, the second-string
linebacker turned hard-boiled Miami lawyer.

"Flesh & Bones" deals with the very real issue of "recovered memories."
In the opening scene, fashion model Chrissy Bernhardt shoots her wealthy
father. She claims to have recently recovered repressed memories of
having been sexually abused by him as a child. Hired to defend her, Jake
Lassiter begins to doubt his client, even as he falls for her.

"Another breathless thriller," wrote the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
"Filled with smart writing and smart remarks," proclaimed the Dallas
Morning News.

"Flesh & Bones," priced at $2.99, is available on Kindle, Nook, and at
Smashwords.

-----------------------------------------CAPTAIN FUTURE

Ed here: Edmond Hamilton is one of my favorite old-time pulp writers. That he survived the pulps and went on to write some of the most masterful stories of the Fifties and Sixties is a credit to his skill and intelligence. But even these days I pick up one of his old pulp stories from time to time and have a great time with it. If you want to know where Star Trek and all other such shows and books came from, look no further than this gorgeous edition of Captain Future Volume One.

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The Collected Captain Future
Volume One
Edmond Hamilton
Introduction by Richard A. Lupoff
Illustrated by George Rozen, Earle K. Bergey & H.W. "Wesso" Wessolowski
ISBN-10 189388735-9
ISBN-13 978189388735-0
$40.00
776 pp. Hardcover
Description
Here is a letter, attributed to Standard Magazines editor Leo Margulies, sent to science fiction fanzine editors in 1939. This text is from Bob Tucker's classic fanzine Le Zombie (vol. 2, No. 4, Oct 28, 1939)

"Dear Mr. Tucker,

Can there be anything new in scientifiction? We say yes -- and offer CAPTAIN FUTURE. Fellows, CAPTAIN FUTURE is tops in scientifantasy! A brand new book-length magazine novel devoted exclusively to a star-studded quartet of the most glamorous characters in the Universe. And the most colorful planeteer in the Solar System to lead them -- CAPTAIN FUTURE. You'll find Captain Future the man of Tomorrow! His adventures will appear in each & every issue of the magazine that bears his name.

He ought to be good. We spent months planning the character, breathing the fire of life into him. For we feel that the man who controls the destinies of nine planets has to be good. But don't take our word for it -- get your first copy of CAPTAIN FUTURE the day it hits the newstands and marvel at the wizard of science as he does his stuff on every thrilling page.

You'll find Captain Future the most dynamic space-farer the cosmos has ever seen. A super-man who uses the forces of super-science so that you will believe in them. You'll see Captain Future's space craft, the Comet spurting thru the ether with such hurricane fury you'll think Edmond Hamilton, the author, has hurled you on a comet's tail.

And you'll agree that Captain Future's inhuman cavalcade -- the Futuremen -- supplement the world's seven wonders. There's Grag, the metal robot; Otho, the synthetic android; and Simon Wright, the living brain. A galaxy of the ultimate immortal forces!

So come on....give the most scintillating magazine ever to appear on the scientifiction horizon the once over. You'll be telling us, as we tell you now, that CAPTAIN FUTURE represents fantasy at it's unbeatable best.

CAPTAIN FUTURE will appear at all newsstands in a few weeks. Price, 15 cents. First issue features Edmond Hamilton's novel, CAPTAIN FUTURE AND THE SPACE EMPEROR. Cover by Rozen. Illustrations by Wesso. Short stories by Eric Frank Russell and O. Sarri. Brand new departments -- THE WORLDS OF TOMORROW, THE FUTUREMEN, UNDER OBSERVATION, and THE MARCH OF SCIENCE.

That's all.

--Leo Margulies"

Table of Contents
Reviews
Excerpts

Related Books
The Vampire Master
Stark and the Star Kings
The Metal Giants and Others
The Star Stealers
The Universe Wreckers
Captain Future - Volume Two
Table of Contents
Introduction by Richard A. Lupoff
Original Magazine Editorial
"Captain Future and the Space Emperor" (Captain Future, Win '40)
"Calling Captain Future" (Captain Future, Spr '40)
"Captain Future's Challenge" (Captain Future, Sum '40)
"The Triumph of Captain Future" (Captain Future, Fll '40)
"The Future of Captain Future"
Artwork Gallery

Reviews
Edmond Hamilton (1926-1977) was a pioneer of American science fiction who began his writing career during the 'Golden Age' of pulp magazines. He sold his first story, 'The Monster-God of Mamorth" to Weird Tales magazine in 1926 and became a prolific contributor to the science fiction pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s. He was writing and getting published through the 1960s, even as the popularity of science fiction action/adventure tales of the kind he specialized in was fading. Now under the deft and expert editorship of Stephen Haffner, Haffner Press is bringing out deluxe editions comprising all of the Edmond Hamilton stories, beginning with "Captain Future", a quintessential science fiction hero who, along with his three companions (a sentient robot, a synthetic android, and a disembodied brain kept alive in a serum-case) protected the solar system against all manner of villains and menaces. Captain Future was such a popular character that it became the title of one of the many science fiction pulp magazines of the day. Now all those wonderful science fiction adventures of yesteryear are available in a single 776-page volume.

Also very highly recommended for dedicated science fiction fans and made available by Haffner Press is a collection of Edmond Hamilton stories originally published in the pages of Weird Tales magazine (along with two that were published in Amazing Stories Quarterly and one printed in Science Wonder Quarterly): "The Collected Edmond Hamilton: Volume One: The Metal Giants And Others" and "The Collected Edmond Hamilton: Volume Two: The Star-Stealers: The Complete Tales of the Interstellar Patrol".
—Midwest Book Review

"One more title for tonight, also a deeply-appreciated review copy: The Collected Captain Future, Volume One, from Haffner Press. Edmond Hamilton was the quintessential space opera writer of the 1930s and '40s, but he was an author I had never read: with this book in hand, I read the 150-page long title story, "Captain Future and the Space Emperor", first published in 1940. It is a hoot; it is a casebook of prose the like of which is described in writing courses under the heading *do not write like this* -- a compendium of "said-bookisms" such as "he muttered sickly to himself", "the President asserted confidently", "the thing gasped hoarsely", and so on and on. But more than that, it's a tale of simple presumptions about space flight and planetary natives and easy villains with unironic tags like "space emperor"... So unironic that it's hard to believe anyone could have read this stuff without choking. Isn't there a lesson here, though, about context and presumptions and relative sophistication? Might we reflect on what has or has not changed since then? As an example, here back in 1940 two of Edmond Hamilton's characters debate about who or which is most human... a debate carried on in subsequent decades by Isaac Asimov and STTNG's Data and all the way to Bernard Beckett's Genesis. Some things never change; some debates seem never to be resolved."
—Mark R. Kelly, Views from Medina Road, the locusmag blog

Excerpts
TBA

Jack Williamson; Robert Colby

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Ed here: Haffner Press continues to produce some of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. If you've seen any of its Jack Williamson collections (this is the final one in the series) you know how rich they are not only in artwork and the art of making books but in bringing back classic material in a permanent form. If you love science fiction you'll love these books. Jack Williamson was always one of my favorite writers so this is a special treat.

At the Human Limit,
The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson,
Volume Eight
Jack Williamson
Foreword by Connie Willis
Cover art by Ralph McQuarrie
ISBN 9781893887510
$40.00
616-page Hardcover

Full Color Endpapers

Description
The ambitious program to collect the short fiction of Grand Master Jack Williamson concludes!

As with previous volumes in this series, the full-color endpapers reproduce the original magazine covers (with artwork by masters including Virgil Finlay, Jim Burns, Luis Royo and Vincent Di Fate) of the stories herein, and the binding is designed to match the 1940s editions of Williamson's works published by Fantasy Press. The book is smythe-sewn, bound in full cloth, and printed on acid-neutral paper, with full-color endpapers reproducing each story's original cover art.

With a foreword by award-winning author and long-time friend of Williamson, Connie Willis, At the Human Limit represents the changing state of mid-20th Century American Science Fiction and concludes the documentation of Williamson's unparalleled career.

Table of Contents
Reviews
Excerpts

Related Books
The Worlds of Jack Williamson
In Memory of Wonder's Child
Seventy-Five
The Metal Man and Others
Wolves of Darkness
Wizard's Isle
Spider Island
The Crucible of Power
Gateway to Paradise
With Folded Hands . . .
The Queen of the Legion
Table of Contents
"Foreword" by Connie Willis
"Second Man to the Moon" (Fantastic, April 1959)
"The Masked World" (Worlds of Tomorrow, October 1963)
"Jamboree" (Galaxy Magazine, December 1969)
"The Highest Dive" (Science Fiction Monthly, January 1976)
"Farside Station" (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November/December 1978)
". . . All Ye Who Enter Here" (Stellar Science Fiction #6)
"A Break for the Dinosaurs" (Speculations, 1983)
"Space Family Smiths" (JD Journal, 1983)
"At the Human Limit" (The Planets, 1985)
"The Mental Man" (Amazing Stories, October 1988)
"The Bird's Turn" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 1992)
"Venus Is Hell" (Omni, October 1992)
"The Litlins" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1993)
"The Fractal Man" (VB Tech Journal, July 1996)
"The Firefly Tree" (Science Fiction Age, May 1997)
"The Hole in the World" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 1997)
"The Purchase of Earth" (Science Fiction Age, July 1998)
"The Story Roger Never Told" (Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny, 1998)
"The Pet Rocks Mystery" (Alien Pets, 1998)
"Miss Million" (Amazing Stories, Winter 1999)
"Eden Star" (Star Colonies, 2000)
"Nitrogen Plus" (Asimov's Science Fiction, October/November 2001)
"Afterlife" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2002)
"The Planet of Youth" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2002)
"Shakespeare & Co." (Shelf Life, 2002)
"The Man From Somewhere" (Asimov's Science Fiction, October/November 2003)
"Black Hole Station" (Space Stations, 2004)
"Devil's Star" (Visions of Liberty, 2004)
"Dream of Earth" (Amazing Stories, November, 2004)
"The Half Men" (Absolute Magnitude, May 2005)
"The Cat That Loved Shakespeare" (Chronicle, August 2005)
"Ghost Town" (Weird Tales, July 2005)
"The Mists of Time" (Millennium 3001, 2006)
"A Christmas Carol" (The Worlds of Jack Williamson, 2008)


---------------------ROBERT COLBY

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Ed here: Several of you wrote off-line for information about Robert Colby whose novel The Captain Must Die I praised awhile back.Here's a very good piece and bibliography about Bob from Pete Enfantino on the Mystery File website.

ROBERT COLBY - A TRIBUTE by Peter Enfantino


Robert Colby died last week. A lot of people won't even recognize the name. That's a shame, but it's their loss. Colby was every bit as good a writer as the other Gold Medal authors of the 50s and 60s who've found favor among historians and collectors. He just never had one of those million sellers like the other guys did. There was no Death of a Citizen or Hill Girl. Just respectable sales for some of his "adult" titles like Lament for Julie (Monarch, 1961) and Executive Wife (Monarch, 1964).

My introduction to Robert Colby, as was my introduction to all the classic Gold medal authors, was through an article Ed Gorman wrote for a magazine I used to co-publish called The Scream Factory. In the piece Ed sang the praises of a couple dozen GM authors, writers such as Peter Rabe, Vin Packer, Gil Brewer, Wade Miller, and Harry Whittington. Back in 1993, (when the article first appeared) Black Lizard was publishing a lot of forgotten writers like Packer, Rabe, and Brewer, so I was fairly familiar with those guys. One of the writers Ed praised was Robert Colby, a name I was not so familiar with. Ed called Colby's The Captain Must Die (Gold Medal, 1959) "one of the great GM novels," so I knew I had to check this one out.

for the rest go here:
http://www.mysteryfile.com/Colby/Trib...

The new "Parker." What do you think?

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Jason Statham is 'Parker' for Taylor Hackford's New Film Noir Thriller
April 18, 2011
Source: Variety
by Ethan Anderton

(link from Noir of The Week)

Since his 2010 film Love Ranch starring Joe Pesci went largely unnoticed, director Taylor Hackford (Ray) looks to be putting his talents to work on a film more appealing to general audiences. Variety reports the filmmaker will direct a new thriller called Parker, and Jason Statham (Crank, The Transporter) is in negotiations to star in the film as well. Based on series of novels by Donald Westlake, the story follows a thief who, though at times is forced to be a killer, still lives by a code of honor that includes never stealing money from people who need it. His word is his bond, and if he is crossed he will strike back. Read on!

This definitely sounds like a job for Jason Statham, and considering Westlake has written no less than sixteen novels featuring the titular character. This isn't the first time, the character has been seen on screen as films like Payback (with Mel Gibson) and The Outfit (with Robert Duvall) were adapted from stories featuring Parker, though his character name was changed for the films themselves. Hackford is looking forward to making this his first sort of film noir saying, "I don't want to get stuck in a genre. What I like the most about this piece of material is that you can take a genre piece like this and turn it into a great movie." The role seems like old trick for Statham, but with someone like Hackford behind the camera, this could be interesting. What do you think?

•

The Ramble House Story

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Here's my interview with the talented and tireless Fender Tucker about his fine Ramble House imprint.

What motivated you to establish Ramble House Publishing?

Back in 1999, Jim Weiler, a fellow programmer at the software com-pany we
worked, and I decided to figure out how to make books at home using our
PCs and laser printers. It worked, sort of, and we started with the
novels of Harry Stephen Keeler, a forgotten author that Bill Pronzini and
Francis M. Nevins had championed. Soon after, we met Gavin O'Keefe, from
Bendigo, Australia, online and he began providing brand new cover art.
Before we knew it, the three of us had made a couple of thousand copies
of the A6-sized, dustjacketed paperback books. Then, in 2005 the POD
companies made it easier to use them than to make my own books. So we
branched out into other forgotten authors and even added a few living
writers who have supported us.

Describe your line to those unfamiliar with it.

Ramble House is a Print-On-Demand publisher. We take old books that are
out of copyright (or in copyright limbo) and re-edit them and sell modern
editions of them through the Ramble House web site or Ama-zon. We don't
have an inventory of books; they're only made by Create Space, Lightning
Source or Lulu after we get an order for them. We mostly do old, forgotten
mystery or horror authors but we've also added a few modern mystery and
western writers in recent years.

One way to get a sense of your publishing program is to ask what type of
fiction you prefer reading.

I enjoy old mysteries the most, especially noir, but I can't pass up
ob-scure science fiction, erotica or horror and detective pulps. Of
modern authors I find that I tend to read only the ones I have met in
person at Bouchercons and other book shows. I will also read almost
anything by an amateur author like myself who will swap books with me. I
always report on their book but they rarely ever say anything about mine.
Could that be a hint?

I read an article recently that claimed that small publishers now discover
and develop new writers far more often than the big pub-lishing houses in
NYC. How do you feel about that?

I believe it, although I think that the traditional publishing process is
still the best way to get the cream of the literary crop paid for their
work. Let me digress a bit by saying that I stopped paying any attention
to mu-sical awards back in the 80s when it became easy for anyone to
record a song with reasonable quality. How can they say at the Emmy's
that these are the best songs of the year when the judges only heard 2%
of the songs written and recorded that year? I'm beginning to feel that
way about novels and short stories. There are way too many novels written
and published every year for anyone to claim to have a handle on which
are the best. I predict that in a few years I will even say the same
thing about the Oscars. Back when there were only 100 or so films a year
with any production quality at all, the Oscar meant something. Now there
are 1000 (3000 if you count India) films every year it's getting harder
to say that a $100,000 film by a teenager from Cedar Rapids couldn't be
better than the latest James Cameron blockbuster.
Democracy is good for humanity and cults. It's bad for tradition and
el-ites. The old ways produced a Mozart every century; the new ways
pro-duces several Willie Nelsons. I'm fine with the new ways.

What are two or three of the biggest problems small publishers face?

Getting the word out about a new product is the biggest problem facing a
small publisher. Once his books get listed somewhere, he then has to find
a way to make his books stand out and that is where the many liter-ary
awards help. However, since I just trashed the whole idea of awards in a
field where there are too many competitors, I guess there's no real
solution to the problem. In the future, all books will be cult books.

Do you feel that that tsunami of self-published books get in the way of
legitimate small publishing?

Is Ramble House "legitimate"? Probably not, according to the way I'm sure
many veterans of publishing feel. I've rejected a few books because they
weren't in the Ramble House mold, but in general I feel that every-body's
story deserves to be available in my all-time favorite medium: the paper
book. No, I don't think everybody's "memoir books" get in the way.
Readers just have to be a little more discerning when buying an unknown
book.

Small press publishing is a perilous task--how are things going so far?

Ramble House started as a hobby and it's still one for me, although I
must admit, the few hundred dollars it adds to my social security check
every month is quite welcome. If I needed $1000 a month minimum from
Ramble House I'd have given it up years back and somehow tried to land a
real job. I don't recommend getting into POD publishing as I have if you
have a family to feed. It's more suited for an ambitionless curmudgeon
who likes to read.

The beauty of my business is that I get paid in royalties. There's a
reason why that way of getting paid is given such a lofty name. It's
income suitable for a king. It's getting paid for something you already
did. Now that Ramble House has over 300 titles in its stable, I can
probably look forward to getting $500 a month for the rest of my life. If
I get up to the 1000 titles mark, I might get that number up to $1000. Of
course, I la-bored pretty hard for the past ten years to get in this
position, and if I'd had a decent job instead I would have made $200,000
or so and could make $500 a month in interest. I guess it's the socialist
in me, but I'm happy with collecting royalty, and consider interest a form
of blood money.

Which title has been your biggest success so far?

By far, GADSBY by Ernest Vincent Wright is Ramble House's best-seller.
It's sold maybe 500 copies. I consider it practically unreadable but it's
a lipogram, and the gimmick of having no letter E anywhere in the text
makes it a curiosity that many people can't resist. I doubt if many
people actually read it all the way through.
Of the rest of the RH titles, the two impossible crime books by Hake
Talbot, RIM OF THE PIT and THE HANGMAN'S HANDYMAN al-ways sell well. Of
our reference books, Mike Nevins' THE ANTHONY BOUCHER CHRONICLES and
Richard O'Brien's RESEARCHING AMERICAN-MADE TOY SOLDIERS are the most
popular.

Tell us about your some of your current books as well as a few future ones.

Thanks to our merging with John Pelan of Midnight House, we've added a
bunch of horror and detective books from the pulps. Authors like Mark
Hanson, Day Keene, Walter S. Masterman and John H. Knox are his specialty
and we hope to have many more collections and novels from them in the near
future. John's imprint is The Dancing Tuatara Press.
A similar surge of titles from Gelett Burgess and Philip Wylie comes from
Richard A. Lupoff under his Surinam Turtle Press imprint.
I'm excited about our publishing the novels of William Ard, one of my
favorite 50s and 60s writers, and I still think everyone ought to read at
least Harry Stephen Keeler novel.

How are you planning to deal with the e book stampede?

I'm hoping that a single format for e-books emerges and that it's easy to
convert a well-edited and formatted book to that format in a few
min-utes. Then I'll probably spend the time to convert most of the RH
titles to it and offer them as well as the paper editions. I don't have
an e-book reader myself, and probably won't get one because I can't see
carrying around an electronic device. I've had a cell phone for five
years now and it stays in my bedroom, running down its batteries
regularly even though it never rings or is used. I dread talking on the
damn thing. I'd probably feel the same way about a Kindle.

Where do you hope Ramble House will be two years from now?

I'd love to move Ramble House to California where I understand people can
actually smoke marijuana without danger of getting thrown in jail by an
alcoholic, wife-beating sheriff, but I'm pretty sure Ramble House will
still be in Vancleave MS. I bought 1000 ISBNs back in 2004 and have used
550 of them so far. I hope to live to use up all of them even though as
far as I can tell, the ISBNs haven't helped sell a single book.