Ed Gorman's Blog, page 242

Living with Norman Mailer

Ed here: In my youth I had three literary heroes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac and (most obsessively) Norman Mailer. I still revere all three of them today. By far Mailer was the most fun. As a drunkard I watched his numerous high-wire acts with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. For all the seeming fun in Mailer though there was great darkness and pain; maybe true madness. Maybe that was why he wrote so well about America's own madness. He was our Dreiser. He probably would have...

Marty Greenberg's condition

Dear Friends of Tekno Books,

Please excuse this mass e-mail, as we would like to inform everyone about
how Marty is doing. Many of you already know that Marty has been fighting
pancreatitis (an inflamed pancreas) for the past few weeks. However,
recently his health situation took a serious turn.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic pseudo-cysts that required draining. His
condition deteriorated to hemorrhagic pancreatitis, which necessitated
surgery to stop the internal bleeding. The operation was succe...

I scored the publishing coup of the decade..and then I blew it.

Ed here: This was published in New York magazine..

Betraying Salinger
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By Roger Lathbury Published Apr 4, 2010


The first letter I got from J.D. Salinger was very short. It was 1988, and I had written to him with a proposal: I wanted my tiny publishing house, Orchises Press, to publish his novella Hapworth 16, 1924. And Salinger himself had improbably replied, saying that he would consider it.

Hapworth is Salinger's great mystical not-quite-lost work. It takes the form of a digressive 26,000-word ...

The Fog

Just after Stephen King created the horror industry back in the Seventies U.S. publishers began importing British writers who walked the same streets as the master. One of those was Brit superstar James Herbert. While he never quite found the audience he deserved over here, a number of his novels have stayed with me long after the more successful imports have faded completely from my memory.

My favorite Herbert is titled The Fog and it continues the long and heralded tradition of the British d...

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm rereading Missionary Stew by Ross Thomas. You want brilliant dialogue? Here's brilliant dialogue. The protagonist Draper Haere, a cunning political op, runs into a ww two friend of his father's named Replogle. He learns that Replogle is near death with inoperable cancer.

Replogle says he's already had Thanksgiving.

"It's still two weeks away" says Haere.

"Not at my house. At my house they had Thanksgiving last Thursday on account of they don't think I'm going to last through Christmas, wh...

Say it ain't so..

Ed here: I've always thought that Ira Levin was one of the true Great American Storytellers. I read A Kiss Before Dying first when I was in high school and have read it ten times since and it's still beautifully plotted and written. If it has a flaw I can't find it. Then there's Rosemary's Baby and The Boys From Brazil and one of my favorite plays Dr. Cobb's Garden are among other fine Levin pieces. And Roman Polanski did him the enduring favor of taking Rosemary's Baby seriously and turning...

Stuff

I tells ya Orrie Hitt is taking over the mystery sites. In the new and as usual excellent Paperback Parade (#74) there's a long and well documented story on the life and work of Mr. Hitt. Among several other solid items are pieces on Ted Lewis of Get Carter fame, Geoffrey Holmes, restoring paperbacks and a selection of covers from the Avon Fantasy magazine from the forties. I'm not sure I knew what lurid meant until I saw these. :) Well worth your money and time.

--------------Suzanne Somers, ...

The Agent From Hell

I got an e mail yesterday asking me if I'd ever had trouble with an agent. I said that in almost thirty years I'd had trouble only once. I've had five agents and they've all done well for me with the usual ups and downs. The one exception was the agent who almost was. This is an archive post.

THE AGENT FROM HELL
April 07, 2004
Last night I talked a little about my early days as a writer. While I'd sold a good number of cheesy stories to low-scale men's magazines, and an equal number of unme...

Glad Tidings

Ed here: This may have happened before tbut if so I can't remember when or where. Tom Piccirilli has been nominated twice in the same paperback original category for the International Thriller Awards. Congratulations, Tom.

Best Paperback Original:
SHADOW SEASON by Tom Piccirilli
URGE TO KILL by John Lutz
VENGEANCE ROAD by Rick Mofina
THE COLDEST MILE by Tom Piccirilli
NO MERCY by John Gilstrap

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Ed here: I realized when I saw this on No Fear Of the Future that I...

Turner Classic Movies: Odds Against Tomorrow

Ed here: I watched this last night, thought the TCM summary said it best.

Odds Against Tomorrow

Three men - an embittered ex-con (Robert Ryan), a former cop (Ed Begley) who was fired from the force for illegal activities, and a chronic gambler (Harry Belafonte) - try to change their lousy lot in life by forming a partnership in crime. But a plan to heist a payroll from a small-town bank in upstate New York is doomed from the start because of the racial tensions within the group.

Odds Against Tom...