Ed Gorman's Blog, page 208

Resurrecting a Genre with a Dead Man by Lee Goldberg

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Featured book on Amazon-Kindle today

Resurrecting a Genre with a Dead Man
by Kindle Editors on 03/08/2011
Guest post by novelist and television writer Lee Goldberg, author of Face of Evil

I grew up loving those "men's action adventure" paperback novels of the 60s, 70s, and 80s...series like The Destroyer, The Ninja Master, Nick Carter: Spymaster and The Death Merchant. You could find them in finer supermarkets, gas stations, 7-11s and bookstores everywhere. They were the male equivalent of Harlequin romances, though the only romance was often between a man and his AK-47.

The books were short and tightly-written, with hard-boiled heroes, outrageously sexy women, and gleefully over-the-top plots. Nobody would ever mistake them for great literature, but they were enormous fun to read...and to write. I know, because I broke into publishing in the mid-1980s writing one of those series--357 Vigilante by "Ian Ludlow"--while I was still in college.

Sadly, the "men's action adventure" series novels are virtually extinct now, early victims of the narrowing of the paperback marketplace.

But the Kindle offers the perfect medium for the revival of the genre, which is why I've teamed up with eight other writers on The Dead Man, an original ebook series that we hope recaptures the spirit and pure escapism of the thousands of books written during the heyday of "men's action adventure."

The first Dead Man book is Face of Evil. It's about Matthew Cahill, an ordinary man leading a simple life...until a shocking accident changes everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does, making each day a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about. He's on a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become. And it's a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil. New books in the series will appear every month or so, just like they used to in paperback in the old days.

The Kindle makes cheap, short action novels viable and exciting again, giving me and my fellow Dead Man authors--William Rabkin, Bill Crider, James Reasoner, Joel Goldman, David McAfee, Burl Barer, James Daniels, and Matt Witten--the thrilling opportunity to indulge our great affection for the genre and hopefully get you hooked on it, too.

Face of Evil is currently $2.99 on Kindle.

Murder on The Aisle

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Ed here: I'm reprinting Cullen Gallagher's review of my 1986 novel Murder On The Aisle not just because it's positive but because it's the kind of review most writers want. Yes, he reviews the plot but he also reads the book carefully and details what it's about. Not that he's suggesting that this is all that remarkable a novel; he's merely pointing out some of the aspects that give it life.

Toward the end of my tenure editing Mystery Scene I did a long interview with Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and his chief lament about reviewers was that few of them touched on anything except the plot. I mentioned one example to him of his own novel Blood Relatives. I talked about his 1975 87th Precinct novel Blood Relatives. The murder victim is a nineteen year old girl whose diary is discovered in the course of the book. I've rarely seen first love put more powerfully and tragically than in this diary. The novel is solid but the diary lifts it to something fine and memorable and makes the detective story all the more resonant. He said that not a single review mentioned the diary.

So to Cullen, thanks for reading me so carefully and reviewing my book in such detail.

From Pulp Serenade:

"Murder on the Aisle" by Ed Gorman

For those who like movies as much as they like murder, Ed Gorman's Murder on the Aisle is a dark delight. Think Day Keene meets Siskel and Ebert. The book mixes a classic, Gold Medal-style plot about an innocent man accused of murder and blends it with some funny and spot-on cultural commentary, as well as some of the most rancorous characters I've encountered in Gorman's novels.

Tobin and Dunphy are film critics who host the television show Peeps, "a pseudo-intellectual version of mud-wrestling." They're notorious for their on-screen bickering and are known to throw the occasional punch – but no one expected Dunphy to wind up with a knife in his back. Suspected of murdering his co-host, Tobin must find the real killer before the cops catch him or the scandal kills his career.

The story is cleanly plotted and the twists are never overly complicated, which allows more room for the characters to grow, and that is one of the aspects that keeps me coming back to Gorman's work. The pretext of the murder mystery allows Gorman to explore a milieu so conniving, acrimonious, and duplicitous that one almost envies the deceased Dunphy for no longer having to take part in the whole charade. There's nothing glamorous about this world or its petty inhabitants, but there is a lot of pain and resentment, and a lot of it feels very real.

Part of what makes the book so much fun is how accurately Gorman gets the New York film scene. His descriptions of the critics and their pretensions still holds true today, as does his description of film students (trust me, I'm one of them): "If there is a group more insular and arrogant than film students, it is still in the experimental stage and has not been mass-released yet." Tobin's tastes don't earn him a lot of fans, and it's fun to argue and agree with his different opinions throughout the book. He takes John Sayles over John Hughes, Nicholas Ray over Michelangelo Antonioni, Richard Corliss over David Ansen, and Chuck Norris over Sylvester Stallone.

Murder on the Aisle also has what I'd like to nominate as one of the best pickup lines of all time: "Do you like In a Lonely Place?" I'm not sure which is better – that Tobin uses Nicholas Ray's movie to hit on a girl, or that the movie he picked is so filled with doomed relationships that anyone who knows it should sense another failed relationship on the horizon. (Or perhaps that Dorothy Hughes' source novel is about a man who stalks and kills women. Either way, it's not the right foot to start any romance on.)

Broken families, of both the personal and professional variety, occur throughout Gorman's books, from his first, Rough Cut, all the way to his latest, Stranglehold. Marriages collapse, spouses cheat, colleagues betray, businesses fall apart. Gorman uses these themes to explore how reprehensible our own actions can be. His protagonists are never innocent victims, and are well aware of how they've screwed up their own lives as well as those around them. What redeems his main characters is that, after causing so much pain, they don't explicitly try to hurt others anymore, and instead try to put themselves in places where their loneliness will keep others safe. After four failed marriages you don't see Tobin running off to get into a fifth. It might have taken a while, but he's learned something about himself. As Gorman describes Tobin, "He missed seeing his children, and thought of his dead father, and worried in a dumbstruck way that he was just as shallow and amoral as he sometimes feared." This self-awareness is part of what makes his protagonists so relatable and likable. Gorman's not an idealist, but that doesn't mean he rejects ideals – he's just down to earth and recognizes humanity for what it is.

In Gorman's world, there's something noble about professionalism: dedication, craft, and courtesy. Tobin doesn't always have it, but that's one of his failings, and Gorman doesn't easily forgive him for it. Tobin's not surprised when a colleague is eager to try and squeeze himself into the television show only days after Dunphy was killed. Tobin is, however, genuinely surprised when another colleague offers to help get him assignments in his magazine, if the show should ever get canceled. That small, sincere gesture opens Tobin's eyes more than any of the corruption he uncovers in the course of his investigation. Those small but human touches are some of the fondest moments in Gorman's novels.

Some writers would turn this story into a concept mystery or a one-note parody, but Gorman doesn't let that happen. The cultural references aren't superfluous but serve to flesh out Tobin's character and show how dicey his reputation is with audiences. As we've come to expect of Gorman, his characters are maturely crafted and full of surprises. Gorman also resists the temptation to let the story become too fantastic and implausible. Even his sex scenes (which too many authors let run wild and ridiculous) show a rare sophistication. After going to bed with a young woman, Tobin wakes up to find her aloof and staring out of window, and after breakfast she treats him less like a lover than a substitute father. The fantasy never lasts in Gorman's books: reality always kicks in at the wrong moment, but those are the moments that make the stories ring true.

Murder on the Aisle was originally published in hardcover by St. Martins in 1987, and in paperback by Ballantine in 1989.

Two of my favorite quotes:

"What he wanted to say, of course, was how could any generation that had such fine and noble ideas as world peace and feeding the hungry end up here – grinding out sex as lonely as masturbation and affairs as doomed as the prayers of TV ministers. And he knew he was no better than the rest of them…"

"No," he said. "People never are what you expect, are they?"

Mystery Scene Winter #118

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Ed here: I've already told editor Kate Stine that this is the finest issue of Mystery Scene I've ever read. Part of the reason I say this is because of Lawrence Block's piece about his old friend Evan Hunter/Ed McBain. There's a Proustian element to all of Block's pieces about the writers he's known over the years. He's not just recalling friends but an entire era, now unfortunately long gone. I've always felt that Block, Donald Westlake and Evan Hunter/Ed McBain were the giants. I'm glad Larry is so eloquently remembering his friends. This is only the first of two parts about Hunter. Can't wait to read the next one.

Table of Contents
Winter, Issue #118 Contents

Features


Robert Crais: The Dudes Abide
With Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, and a large cast of continuing characters, Crais has created a world—and a new way to tell us about it.
by Kevin Burton Smith

Jill Paton Walsh: As Wimsey Takes Her
Walsh continues the adventures of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, this time in a 1952 murder investigation that has its roots in Wimsey's very first case 30 years before.
by Lynn Kaczmarek

Deadline! Journalists in Crime Films
Like detectives, journalists are often involved in ferreting out the truth and exposing wrong-doers—sometimes with cataclysmic results, as in the Watergate scandal.
by Art Taylor

The Murders in Memory Lane: Evan Hunter, Part I
Over his 60-year career, Hunter (aka Ed McBain) turned out an extraordinary volume of work, and never lost his enthusiasm for it.
by Lawrence Block


Bawdy Bibliophiles
There's only one thing these folks like more than books...
by Stephen J. Gertz


Steve Hockensmith: Holmes on the Range
Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer, cowboy brothers turned sleuths.
by Cheryl Solimini


Killer Covers
These book jackets do justice to the excellent stories they promote.
by J. Kingston Pierce

What's Happening With... K.J. Erickson
by Brian Skupin


Departments


At the Scene
by Kate Stine

Mystery Miscellany
by Louis Phillips

Hints & Allegations
2011 Edgar Award nominations, 2011 Dilys Award nominations, Lawrence Block on Reading Agatha Christie; CWA Diamond Dagger to Lindsey Davis.

The Hook
First Lines That Caught Our Attention

Eyewitness
The Best Damn Private Eye on TV? Kalinda Sharma on The Good Wife.
Kevin Burton Smith

Writing Life: Gormania
Forgotten Book: Wild Night by L.J. Washburn, Margaret Millar, Vin Packer
by Ed Gorman

New Books
Deadly Research
by Beth Groundwater

Gertrude Stein & Ernest Hemingway, Mystery Fans
by Craig McDonald

Moments of Weakness
by Simon Wood


Reviews


Small Press Reviews: Covering the Independents
by Betty Webb

Very Original: Paperback Originals Reviewed
by Lynne Maxwell

Short & Sweet: Short Stories Considered
by Bill Crider

What About Murder? Reference Books Reviewed
by Jon L. Breen

Sounds of Suspense: Audiobooks Reviewed
by Dick Lochte

Mystery Scene Reviews


Miscellaneous


The Docket

Letters

Readers Recommend

Advertiser Index

Piers Morgan & Other Jerks

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Ed here: Because I read the London papers on line I was aware of Piers Morgan without really knowing much about him. I decided to check him out when CNN began to bombard the cable waves with commercials for the guy. He'd been a true blue asshole savant in the U.K. and based on the U.S. commercials he promised to be even more so here.

He came off as a braggart, a smirker and a tool. The copy was so hyped up I'm amazed even someone with his considerable powers of ego was able to get it out of his mouth. I took particular exception to the implicit way he dumped on Larry King. I'll take ole Larry any day over this jerk.

While his show hasn't bombed it certainly hasn't fulfilled network expectations. It's the Katie Couric syndrome. I sort of like Katie. I can't even tell you why. I felt sorry for her when she allowed CBS to hype her to the degree that failure was assured. Remember "Something news in news!" Will she be nude? Will be she be in contact with aliens? Will she be able to channel the dead and jabber with Lincoln? No...she'll just sit behind a desk and read the news like the other network anchors. Nobody could live up to that kind of hype.

I urge you to read Wolcott's take not only on Piers Morgan but also his overview of what "news" has become. That was part of Morgan's pledge--not just gossip but hard news with newsmakers. Oprah? Ricky Gervais--who as Wolcott points out was at his most arrogant right along with ole Piers. And an inadvertently hilarious horndog interview with the Kardashian tarts.

Wolcott also makes this important point:

As Rachel McAdams says to Harrison Ford in Morning Glory:

"The world has been debating news versus entertainment for years, and guess what? You lost!" Which hasn't stopped the losing side from singing the chain-gang blues. Civic-minded souls in journalism, academe, and the mushroom farms of C-span panels can still be heard lamenting the infestation of news and politics by showbiz values, a war between informed debate and pole dancing that they (unlike Ford's Pomeroy) recognize as a lost cause, hence their elegiac tone, the dead fly in their lemonade. The days when the words "Hollywood actor" framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics—candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike—is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops. (Only Mitt Romney doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, his polished-leather insincerity unsalted with irony or anything remotely self-aware.) Mourning the fall of the judicious savant (or solon) and the rise of the preening jester is pointless, foolish; elite opinion has failed this country so miserably that it has no moral or intellectual standing left, only its club-member privileges. Think back on the Iraq war and the W.M.D.'s, the Terri Schiavo circus, the iguana contortions of John McCain under the guise of maverick integrity, the Wall Street meltdown and bailout—TV satirists and late-night hosts drove much deeper nails into the marrow of what was happening than the editorial pages of The Washington Post, that prison morgue of Beltway consensus. A new political-entertainment class has moved into the noisy void once occupied by the sage pontiffs of yore, a class just as polarized as our partisan divide: one side holding up a fun-house mirror to folly, the other side reveling in its own warped reflection.

for the rest go here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/fea...

Bound to happen - Marilyn Monroe in new movie?

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Toronto owner of Marilyn Monroe image says the late icon may return to film
By: Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press
Posted: 01/30/2011 4:02 AM | Comments: 1 | Last Modified: 01/30/2011 8:10 AM

TORONTO - Audiences may one day see Marilyn Monroe back on the big screen starring in new roles.

It's a real possibility as technology evolves, says Toronto businessman Jamie Salter, who recently bought the rights to the image of the late 1950s Hollywood icon.

"We're pretty comfortable that Marilyn Monroe, in the next couple of years, will be in a real feature film and be playing a part," Salter said Friday in a phone interview.

"I don't know if it's a '007' movie or if it's action or it's drama or what type of movie it's going to be, but she's going to be an actress that the director chooses, no different than Kate Hudson or Meryl Streep."

Salter's New York-based brand development and licensing company, Authentic Brands Group, announced two weeks ago it made the Monroe deal in conjunction with NECA, a global media and entertainment company.

Salter wouldn't disclose a purchase price for Monroe's name and likeness, but published reports say it was nearly $50 million.
"I can't tell you the price of the deal but what I can tell you is we're extremely happy with our purchase and we think it's one of the better deals we've done over the last 20 years," said the chairman and CEO, who splits his time between Toronto and New York.

Anna Strasberg — who managed Monroe's estate and is the widow of the late star's acting coach, Lee Strasberg — is a minority partner in the joint venture.

Strasberg and her son, David, approached Salter's company last summer about how to rebuild Monroe's brand into the iconic, glamorous and beautiful personality that she was.

for the rest go here:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts...

EVERY SHALLOW CUT; FORGOTTEN BOOKS-NIGHT SQUAD by David Goodis

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EVERY SHALLOW CUT Starred PW Review

Ed here: As I said here when I reviewed it, Every Shallow Cut is my favorite piece by Tom Piccirilli and that's saying something. Buy it now!

EVERY SHALLOW CUT received a starred review in Publishers Weekly

"Lovers of gritty noir will devour this stand-alone from Piccirilli (Shadow Season), a pulse-pounding account of a writer's descent into despair and violence. The unnamed narrator's wife has left him; he feels guilty about their decision to have an abortion; and his once-promising literary career, which netted him several awards, has petered out. As the story opens, he's a homeless drifter, alone except for his dog, Churchill. When three punks attack him on a Denver street, something snaps and he fights back, seriously injuring his assailants. He pawns his few remaining possessions from his late parents and uses the cash to buy a gun, before traveling across the country to seek out his brother in New York. On his tortured odyssey, he revisits parts of his past in an effort to tease out some sort of meaning. Piccirilli makes his fall from grace utterly convincing and his emotional rage all too understandable. (Apr.)"

Forgotten Books: Night Squad by David Goodis


If Philip K. Dick had written crime fiction he probably would have sounded a lot like David Goodis. Or if David Goodis had written science fiction he probably would have sounded a lot like Philip K. Dick.

Think about it. The precursor to Dick's dystopian future worlds resemble in many respects Goodis' 1953 world of down-and-out Philadelphia. Worlds of poverty, violence, despair. And protagonists whose well-earned paranoia often lapse into almost hallucinatory reactions. Cloying, claustrophobic worlds where death is often a mercy.

In the case of THE NIGHT SQUAD we have another example of the Goodis-Dick connection, that of the utter isolation of a man in society. Here though, unlike Dick's protagonists Corey Bradford is not innocent. He's an ex-cop who shook down everybody in the neighborhood called the Swampland. The slum neighborhood where he grew up and has lived out his life. After he got bounced from the force, a kind of shunning took place. The people here hate him so much they generally refuse to acknowledge him.

His luck changes when he saves the life of Walter Grogan, the gangster who runs everything in the Swampland. Grogan likes him and puts him to work with the promise of fifteen grand if Bradford can find out who the two men were who tried to to kill him. They tried to make it look as if it was just a mugging but Grogan knows better. Somebody in the Swampland is trying to kill him and take over his territory.

Goodis puts a twist on this twist. Soon enough an angry cop hires him to double-cross Grogan; Bradford will report back everything he learns from the gangster. Or will he?

I'm not an expert on Goodis (hell I'm not an expert on anything) but I read a few reviews after I finished the book and the impression I got is that it's not considered one of his best mainly because of how he handles the moral dilemma faced by Bradford.

I admired the book. It's the equivalent of somebody holding your head under water until your lungs start to burst--that grim, that frightening. But man I kept flipping those pages because this was a guided tour of hell and I was hooked. Goodis is at his best here dealing with a wino named Carp, the only honorable person in the book except maybe for Bradford's ex-wife. Nobody created the lost angels of the underclass more vividly than Goodis. He broke your heart with them.
I recommend this novel because of its bleak, Phil Dickian power. This is noir cast in phantasmagoric terms.

New Books: The Hollywood Op by Terence Faherty

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Terence Faherty:

The first short story I wrote about Scott Elliott, my Hollywood historical private eye, came about as the result of an invitation from Bob Randisi, of PWA fame, to submit a story for a collection to be called The Shamus Game. At that point, I'd written two Elliott novels, Kill Me Again, set in 1947 and Come Back Dead, set in 1955, and I was outlining a third, Raise the Devil, set in 1962. The upcoming Elliott, Dance in the Dark, follows this trend of hurrying Elliott through his life, as it's set in 1969. This approach has left me a lot of room for short stories. To date, I've written eight, now collected in The Hollywood Op from Perfect Crime Books.

These are all longer short stories and divided into chapters. When I was discovering classic private-eye fiction after college, I happened on collections of Chandler's apprenticeship works from his Black Mask days. Though short stories, these were divided into chapters. Later, I discovered slightly longer works by Rex Stout, who was a master of the magazine story divided into chapters, which he published in venues like American Magazine. (Stout's are often called novellas and are certainly more like short novels than Chandler's. I call mine short stories because they seldom exceed ten thousand words. I think you have to be up over twenty thousand to have moved into novella territory.)

When I responded to Bob Randisi's invitation, I adopted the Chandler/Stout approach. A ten-thousand-word story gives you room to move around a little bit, to flesh out your cast, and to work out a plot that doesn't turn on a single twist or gimmick, but builds from character and situation. And I have to admit that I was thinking of a collection from the first. Long stories would give me a book length manuscript in half the time and with half the plots.

From the start, too, I was hoping to write a collection whose stories functioned as a unit, with almost the cohesion of a novel. That meant that Elliott had to be consistent throughout, changing as he aged, but staying true to himself. And it would help if there was a unifying theme. Luckily, Elliott came with one of those: his quixotic desire to protect the Hollywood he left behind when he went away to war, a Hollywood he is fated to see go away over the course of his long career. This theme is only occasionally overtly stated in the short stories—at the end of "Unruly Jade," for instance—but the sense of a great empire's decline-and-fall runs through them all.

In addition to filling in the gaps in Elliott's life, writing short stories gave me the chance to go back before Kill Me Again to a younger Elliott. Of these stories, the one of most interest to fans of the classic private eye novel is "Sleep Big," which inserts Elliott into the first third of Chandler's The Big Sleep. There's a story about Chandler and the screenwriting team of the film version of that novel that I've never quite believed. Supposedly when asked by the screenwriters who had killed a certain character from the book, a chauffeur named Owen Taylor, Chandler claimed not to know. This gave rise to the legend that the pIot is so complicated even its author didn't understand it. I think he actually had a pretty good idea who killed who, and my take on Chandler's solution is presented in "Sleep Big."

As I mentioned earlier, The Hollywood Op was made possible by Perfect Crime Books, a new publisher that's compiling a very nice list, including a collection by Ed Gorman and a two-volume collection of Shamus-winning short stories, another of Bob Randisi's projects. Perfect Crime has been a great house to work with, and I'm very pleased with the book we've turned out together.

James Wolcott-Dennis Cozzalio on The Outfit

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James Wolcott covers the recent DVD release of The Outfit and quotes Dennis Cozzalo along the way.

The Sky Above, the Crud Below
by James Wolcott February 28, 2011, 5:22 PM

Dennis Cozzalio stops and smells the gasoline fumes rolling off the DVD release of The Outfit, based on one of Donald Westlake's Parker novels (written under the pseudonym Richard Stark).

"John Flynn's The Outfit, a brutally efficient bit of business based glancingly on Richard Stark's procedurally inquisitive and poetic crime novel, is a movie that feels like it's never heard of a rounded corner; it's blunt like a 1970 Dodge Monaco pinning a couple of killers against a Dumpster and a brick wall.

"And not just any Dodge, but one driven by Karen Black in a Faye Dunaway Bonnie & Clyde beret!

"Substituting headlong, arrogant force for the mapped-out strategies detailed in the book, Flynn pile-drives forward just like his protagonist, setting up one cast-iron set piece after another in clean, broad strokes, as cinematically equivalent to Stark's lean, unfussy prose as one could imagine being without galloping forward into insufferable self-consciousness.

[snip]

"… easy to wonder if those probable budgetary restrictions had anything to do with Flynn's scrapping of the idea to film The Outfit as a full-on noir period piece set in the postwar '40s…I think what we've got works just fine, probably better than any attempt to predate even the novel and recreate a shadowy atmosphere which would likely only call attention to its artificiality. As is, The Outfit, set in 1973, is only 10 years removed from the cars, the styles, the guns, the diners and the entire milieu of Stark's novel, which was published in 1963. Not much in the way of adaptation in terms of production design was really needed to stay true to the cynicism-soaked atmosphere originating from Stark's typewriter."

"…there's an authentic cruddiness to the interiors and exteriors (diners, motels, gas stations, back offices, poker rooms), all of the lower-echelon men sitting behind desks or loitering at the fringes are meaty and look as if they down a lot of antacids, the cars look like they've been driven hard, not wheeled off some studio backlot…"

for the rest go here (scroll down):
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolc...

Day Keene - David Laurence Wilson

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SUMMER 2011

Ed here: As a recovering alcoholic (thirty six years dry this April) I should have read between the lines whenever I ran across references to Day Keene's drinking. The stories are usually presented in a larky sort of way, as if Keene was just a happy drunk whose company was enjoyed by all.

David Laurence Wilson is doing impressive and lasting work in recreating the lives of the Gold Medal generation of writers. I'm eager to read his long piece on Keene in the book posted above.

We've exchanged a few letters lately. Here are two of them.

DAVID:

"Yeah, hard to know about Keene. There were different opinions, a saint or a bastard. I knew about McCampbell (Keene's agent). When Harry was having trouble with him Keene sent him a letter referring to McCampbell as "God". And when McCampbell retired he threw out what was described to me as "pounds" of correspondence with Day Keene. Like the manuscripts Harry threw out, in the depths of his depression, I wish I had a few ounces of that stuff now."

"Yeah ... I know a lot about Keene, so there is that responsibility to get it right, ... but I certainly don't know as much as I'd like. His alcoholism made it difficult for those around him. His son wrote me: "The fact was on the other side of the glamour, the flip side of the character he made of himself, was the drinking. This was a bad scene. The whole family spent a lot of years worrying about him when he didn't show on time." You certainly don't have to be a saint to take up the craft of writing."

I'll try to fit all of it into the essay for Stark House, and eventually, my own collection of essays and interviews on that generation of fiction writers.

There's also that persistent theme of violence against women in most of Keene's crime books, prostitution and rape. Granted, he's from a different generation. These books are fifty to seventy years old, a million miles away from your own fiction, for example.

On the other hand, Keene wrote Seed of Doubt. Despite some antiquated attitudes, it also includes one of the most self-empowered woman characters who came from that generation of crime writers.

Harry (Whittington) was the humanist in that group, I think. Wyatt Blassingame, I think, was a good guy, and I think we're both very respectful of Bill Gault.

There were a few saints in the trade."

Pro-File: Creeping Hemlock Publishing

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Creeping Hemlock Press was founded in Gretna, Louisiana by the husband-and-wife creative duo R.J. and Julia Sevin (seh-VAN). As sometime writers, oftentime readers, they found themselves frustrated with the scarcity of generous-paying, atmospheric and bizarre short story anthologies. They took matters into their own hands in late 2004 when they began to accept submissions for their own anthology. Many months, one baby, two hurricanes, and one soggy home later, Corpse Blossoms was born to critical success and a nomination for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker award. As their homeless wanderings carried them to Texas and back, the Sevins also produced an original limited-edition novella by Tom Piccirilli, Frayed, to terrific reviews and enthusiastic reader sentiment.

What motivated you to establish Creeping Hemlock Publishing?

The desire for wealth, drugs, and long, sweaty nights filled with dripping with sexual depravity.

It's not working out.

But seriously: Newly-married, my wife and I decided to start a home business. I was reading a lot of small press horror, and we sort of looked at one another and said, "We can do this." We could, and we couldn't—it's been seven years since we decided to launch Creeping Hemlock, and we've learned a lot since then. Learned the hard way, in many cases—but how else does one learn?

Describe your line to those unfamiliar with it.

We're all over the map. Initially, our emphasis was on limited editions, but we've decided to shift our focus on affordable trade paperbacks and eBooks. We owe our collectors a few more special editions, and we do pride ourselves in producing some of the prettiest books the small press has ever seen, but our primary focus from here on is affordability.

Since 2005, we've published a horror anthology, an oddball mystery, a brutal family drama, a neo-noir novel, a futuristic/post-apocalyptic SF/Dark Fantasy , two zombie chapbooks, and a '60s soft-core porno.

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

I didn't grow up in a literate household. In many ways, it's a miracle that I can even read. My love of monster movies and comic books translated into my buying Stephen King's NIGHT SHIFT when I was eleven or twelve. For many years, I was a horror guy, not venturing very far from that particular dark pool. I still love a good horror novel, of course, but I don't read much new horror these days. Noir/Crime has become my new mistress—though, between family life, my writing, and my work as a publisher/editor, I don't have much time for leisure reading. I think I read a whopping three novels last year...

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

If it's an accurate claim, I can see how it makes sense. We're smaller, and we're not as thinly spread as editors at big NYC houses. When we edited CORPSE BLOSSOMS, we sent out something like 550 rejection letters—and every one of them was personalized in some way. We tried to give substantive suggestions to everyone who submitted, and it was very appreciated. We're currently working with a few first-time novelists, helping them to hone their craft—and this is only because we are small. It's the difference between having three kids and twelve kids, I guess—you're just not going to be able to put the same amount of effort and energy into twelve as you are three.

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

There are problems without and there are problems within. Without—the changing market, the economy, technology's impact on the distribution of information. Within--getting into the business before you know what you're doing, before doing as much research as possible.

Being cheap is a bad thing, too: I wish more small publishers would look to NYC publishing to get an idea what real books look like. Too many small presses want to save money and do their book covers in house. The results are sometimes grotesque.

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

Eh. The cream rises. The consumer usually–usually—can tell the real thing from some shoddy pretender. For some time, it seemed like vanity publishers were giving Print on Demand technology a bad name. People associated one with the other. Not the case, and of course the line is blurring—self-publishing through Kindle and other eBook platforms is becoming an acceptable practice among professionals who would have, just five years ago, frowned upon the behavior.

That tsunami has receded over the years, in some cases. The crap is still out there, and always will be, but booksellers have learned the hard way the avoid them. Six or seven years ago, stores were getting stuck with non-returnable POD vanity titles. They wised up…

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

Perilously, to use an adverb that would make Stephen king twitch. One needs to make wise decisions, or to learn from the poor ones quickly enough to start makin' wise ones…

Which title has been your biggest success so far?

THE FEVER KILL, by Tom Piccirilli.

Tell us about your future plans for the press.

In six years of publishing, we've only published two novels. This year alone, we will release at least SEVEN novels, starting in March with the launch of PRINT IS DEAD, our zombie-themed imprint. The novels that we have lined up are spectacular examples of their genre, and given the seemingly endless popularity of zombie fiction, we expect PRINT IS DEAD to be a runaway (or shambling, depending upon your zombie preference) success. The endorsement we received from George A. Romero can't hurt, either.

In addition to the zombie line, there will be another Lawrence Block reprint (APRIL NORTH, our follow-up to CAMPUS TRAMP), and we're hoping to follow that book with a reprint of one of his classic crime novels. We're planning something pretty big with T.M. Wright, and there's a few other things that I can't mention yet—too early. In short: this ship ain't sinking, and we're not going anywhere.

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

PRINT IS DEAD is a big part of that. Our zombie books will debut as Kindle eBooks, and so on…

Where do you hope Creeping Hemlock will be two years from now?

Wealth, drugs, and those sweaty, sex-filled nights.