Ed Gorman's Blog, page 254

Leigh Brackett-Edmond Hamilton -The Big Sleep

Dave Truesdale at Tangent on-line has posted an extraordinary and very long 1976 interview with Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, the last before their deaths. The interview is accompanied by appreciations from jack Williamson and James Gunn.

Here's an excerpt with Leigh Brackett discussing her work on the first film of The Big Sleep:

TANGENT: In The Big Sleep, Leigh, there's always a question Bogart fans seem to ask: Whatever happened to the chauffeur? He just dropped out about halfway thro...

Stuff

We've always assumed that our eldest granddaughter Shannon was the family's drama queen. Most of the time she kids the role which makes it funny. We hadn't counted on her five year old sister Maggie upstaging her. They stayed with us and Saturday morning Carol introduced Maggie and her seven year old sister Reagan to Go Fish. My God, those silent screen ladies had nothing on Maggie when it came to dramatically demonstrating her various reactions.

When Maggie was doing all right she laughed an...

Available now: A wonderful novel by a truly wonderful guy

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From Gravetapping: Ben Boulden

TICKET TO RIDE by Ed Gorman

The eighth, and reportedly last, Sam McCain novel opens in 1965 at a Vietnam peace rally in Black River Falls, Iowa. The rally is held in the local Presbyterian Church and after 90 minutes of the same arguments—being spoken by different people—McCain is ready to leave the rally for the comforts of a double feature at the drive-in. But then as the newest local superstar, a pretty boy named Harrison Doran, is speaking a man takes the stag...

Mystery.File.com; The Thrilling Detective site

This is a shout-out to two of the finest mystery sites on line. Steve Lewis' Mystery.File.com is as close to a mystery history course as anything I've ever seen. Same for Kevin Burton Smith's Thrilling Detective site.

In the last week or so alone on Mystery.File we've seen pieces on a Mary Pickford mystery film, a Wade Miller novel and a very funny piece on Bill Pronzini's hilarious Gun In Cheek. And the start of an overview of early films about Women In Prison, a sub-genre of great interest ...

Mystery.File.com

This is a shout-out to one of the finest mystery sites on line. Steve Lewis' Mystery.File.com is as close to a mystery history course as anything I've ever seen.

In the last week or so alone we've seen pieces on a Mary Pickford mystery film, a Wade Miller novel and a very funny piece on Bill Pronzini's hilarious Gun In Cheek. And the start of an overview of early films about Women In Prison, a sub-genre of great interest to dudes I'd guess.

Do you yourself a favor. Not only give the current o...

John Trinian

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John Trinian

I keep trying to remember where I saw a relatively recent review of North Beach Girl. The writer likened the novel to Malcolm Braly's Shake Him Till It Rattles, noting that both books deal with the intersection of Beat culture and crime in the late 50s and early 60s.

Two of you have asked me off-line to recommend a couple of Gold Medals that I consider noteworthy despite the fact that they get overlooked in most GM overviews.

Try North Beach Girl and Shake Him Till It Rattles. Fine...

Forgotten Books: Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

In the summer of 1958 I was sixteen years old and going through my first real heartbreak. My only solace was in books and movies. Seeing people was too painful. I mention this because my state of mind had a good deal to do with my reaction to a slender Dell paperback I'd been hearing about.

Bonjour Tristesse had been written by a seventeen-year-old French schoolgirl and it had the good fortune to become a scandal in both Europe and the United States. The stor...

E-books: Richard Curtis, Nat Sobel

Ed here: I've always thought that two of the coolest guys in publishing were agents Nat Sobel and Richard Curtis. Their track records speak for themselves. Here's Curtis writing about Sobel on E-Reads.


MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2009

Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Reprints
Literary agent Nat Sobel, one of the most respected figures in his field, has issued an appeal to book industry leaders urging them to resist the temptation to release e-book reprints of hardcover books too earl...

The New Pulp Press

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The New Pulp Press:
An interview with publisher Jon Bassoff

First of all what made you decide to become a publisher in these economic
times?

I have a history of buying high and selling low. Actually, the state of
the economy didn't play a big role in my deciding to go through with this
enterprise. My goal has always been to make just enough money to replace
the stolen hubcaps on my '83 Toyota Tercel. I've got one replaced already.
Truthfully, our company is not an extremely high risk venture. The
ad...

How low can you go?

An old friend of mine sent me a link to a brief overview of bottom line studios such as Monogram and PRC. I've always known there were studios even more bottom line than these two but I'd never heard what they paid for their movies. Wow

"Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) was founded by a former film exchange manager, Ben Judell, in 1939. PRC's first release was the timely Beasts of Berlin (1939), one of the first dramatic films to deal with Hitler's Germany. PRC profited even more when it ...