Ed Gorman's Blog, page 70

Breaking News Len Levinson in his black leather jacket

CRAZY OLD DUDE MODELS BLACK FAUX LEATHER JACKETFrom:LEN LEVINSON To:LEN LEVINSON Date:Wed, Oct 8, 2014 7:20 am[image error]
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Len Levinson and his history with Black Leather jackets.

Len Levinson:
I worked in advertising and PR for ten years after I graduated from college, Michigan State University, class of 1961.  First I wrote direct mail letters and brochures for Prentice-Hall, a publishing company in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.  Then I was pressbook editor for Paramount Pictures, which involved writing articles and feature stories based on information supplied by publicists assigned to movies being filmed.  Next I was pressbook editor for 20th Century-Fox, but soon was promoted to trade press contact, which involved writing daily press releases and dealing with reporters and editors who worked for publications like VARIETY, BOXOFFICE, MOTION PICTURE DAILY, FILM DAILY, and others that I don’t remember.  Finally I was a press agent with Solters and Sabinson, an agency that had many clients in the entertainment industry such as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Flip Wilson, Bob Hope, Benny Goodman, the Playboy Organization, all the David Merrick Shows, numerous movie clients, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Holiday on Ice, Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and others that I don’t remember.  I resigned my position at Solters and Sabinson to become a novelist.
Throughout most of my life, I’ve always believed that if I wore a black leather jacket, I’d be irresistible to woman.  Perhaps the seed of this idea was planted when I first watched Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONES.
But I never bought a black leather jacket for three reasons:  (1)  The good ones seemed extremely expensive compared to other jackets, and I never could justify spending that much money on a mere jacket.  (2)  I thought they were too ostentatious, too flashy, like wearing a sign that said LOOK HOW SEXY I AM!  (3)  I felt like I’d be an accomplice to the murder of an animal and theft of his coat.
I’m aware this latter excuse is irrational, because I wear leather belts and shoes, and occasionally eat meat.  But you can’t expect consistency from a crazy old dude.
In recent years, relatively inexpensive faux leather jackets that look just like real leather have come onto the market.  The temptation to buy one became too great to overcome, because I still want to be irresistible to women at my advanced old age of 79.
Finally I bought a black faux leather jacket by Guess from the Macy’s website.  The price was only $119.00.  My heart  filled with trepidation while waiting for it to arrive.  Would it fit?  Would it look cheesy?  Would I need to go through the bother of returning it?
It arrived around six days later, fit perfectly and looked great, without all the extraneous bells and whistles that black leather jackets often have.  I was amazed at how well it was designed and constructed, featuring subtle epaulettes not visible in the ad.
The time had come to test my theory.  Would I be irresistible to women?
If I still lived in Manhattan, I’d simply go outside and walk the streets, observing with amusement as women fell at my feet.  But now I live in a small farm town on the Great American Prairie, population 3100, and one seldom sees people on the streets.
So I drove 35 miles to Rockford, 3rd largest city in Illinois, and parked in a lot adjacent to its one and only mall, the Cherryvale Mall.  Because malls are the modern downtowns of cities, with people strolling past store windows, dining in restaurants, and checking out each other.  I was about to put my lifelong theory to the test.  Would I be irresistible to women?
I straightened my backbone, squared my shoulders, tucked in my chin, and marched into the Cherryvale Mall.  To cut to the chase, no women fell at my feet.  No women even looked at me and my black (fake) leather jacket.
No college cheerleader in civilian clothes smiled invitingly.  No unhappily married woman slipped me her phone number.  No athletic chick in yoga pants fainted dead away.  No elderly lady in a wheelchair winked.
Then I spotted a twenty-something woman in black leather jacket, and thought for sure she’d recognize me as a kindred spirit, whereupon she’d flirt outrageously.  Well, she didn’t even glance in my direction.
Out of desperation, I walked into the Barnes and Noble.  Surely a lonely poetess might view me as the answer to her Jack Kerouac fantasy.  Not one soul was in the poetry section.  No other women looked at me with the least bit of interest.
I was crushed.  My black leather jacket theory, which I’d believed all my life, proved erroneous.  It was almost like losing faith in God.  I couldn’t help wondering what other beliefs I hold dearly that are similarly false.
But my black (fake) leather jacket isn’t a total loss, I don’t think.  Because for some strange reason, I feel great when I wear it.  I feel like a heavy hitter, although I never was very good at sports.  I feel like a top gun, although I hate to fly.  I feel like a hit man, although I never could shoot anybody for money, I don’t think.  I feel like a movie star, although I can’t portray any character except the crazy old dude that I evidently am.
Now I need to find someone to photograph me in my black fake leather jacket, so you can see what I’m talking about.  Stay tuned.

The Great Charles Paris

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2008Charles Paris(Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the link here)

-------------------------CHARLES PARIS
Gillian Reynolds Telepgraph UK

"Charles Paris, the original creation of Simon Brett, exists in 17 novels. Brett was 28, working as a producer at BBC radio, when he first imagined him. Surveying his small pile of unpublished manuscripts he thought he’d try writing something other people might want to read. Up to then he’d been terrified of crime fiction, the perils of holes in the plot, the matching of character to dialogue. From his day job, working with lots of actors, came the idea of a fictional actor, middle-aged, resting more often than working, with a hopeless private life but the kind of cunning that solves crimes."

for the rest go here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main....

Ed here: F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted that his sometime friend Ernest Hemingway spoke with the "authority of success" while he, Fitzgerald, spoke "with the authority of failure."

I've always imagined that Charles Paris was a background player in Fitzgerald's best work--a man of no particular note who drank at Gatby's mansion, perhaps. A bit old for the rest of the crowd but earnestly pursuing young women who, like him, were of no particular note, either, his charm not nearly as frayed as his suits. A man who knows all about "the authority of failure."

Most of us have favorite fictional detectives and Charles Paris has always been one of mine. He's a decent man adrift in drink and long years, the very things that help him solve crimes. He's drunk it all and seen it all so it's dfficult to deceive him.

Most of the early Paris novels I've read three or four times over the years. The later ones are very good, too, but I'm partial to the first five because Simon Brett was learning about Charles right along with his readers. If Charles was a bit inconsistent from book to book on occasion, that just made him more human.

The books are packed with the lore of theater and radio in particular. Brett is such a deft storyteller that his backgrounds never slow the pacing even though they always play vital roles in the plot itself. Brett obviously reveres working actors like Charles. The pubs where they drink, the dusty offices of their agents, the old friends who still manage to get the kind of work that eludes Charles... Brett makes the workaday world as interesting and entertaining as the murders.

Brett has a good ear and a good heart and it's always amusing to watch him go up against some of the more irritating aspects of modern media culture. God knows he never wants for targets.

It's a funny thing about Charles Paris. Of all the fictional detectives I've encountered over my lifetime he's the only one I imagine to be a real person. Brett has given him vivid life and me a long shelf of excellent mystery novels.
POSTED BY ED GORMAN AT 2:51 PM 1 COMMENT: LINKS TO THIS POST 

great Cullen Gallagher review of The Scarf by Robert Bloch

by Cullen Gallagher
rMost famous for writing the original novel of Psycho, which Alfred Hitchcock based his movie on, Robert Bloch had a writing career that spanned not only nearly his whole life, but also the 20th century. Born in 1917 in Chicago, IL, Bloch sold his first short story to Weird Tales in 1934 - when he was just seventeen years old! Before his death in 1994, Bloch published twenty-five novels and hundreds of short stories that ranged from horror to mystery to science-fiction, as well many other works for television, radio, movies.
His first novel, The Scarf (Avon #494) was published in 1947. It tells the story of a writer, Daniel Morley, who uses real women as models for his characters. But as soon as he is done writing the story, he is compelled to murder them, and always the same way: with the maroon scarf he has had since childhood. We start in Minneapolis and follow him and his trail of dead bodies to Chicago, New York, and finally Hollywood, where his hit novel is going to be turned into a movie, and where his self-control may have reached its limit.
Bloch uses a first-person narration that puts us not only in the mind of Daniel, but also in his hands as he crafts his stories and wraps the scarf around the necks of his victims. In many ways, it reminded me of Jim Thompson’s psychological noir thrillers such as The Killer Inside Me or Pop. 1280. A key difference is that Bloch is interested in finding the root of the character’s psychology, whereas Thompson doesn’t rationalize psychosis but instead confronts the reader face-to-face with it. Both writers each have their distinct approach, and each of them is disturbing in their own ways. Neither novelist will leave you feeling comfortable and secure – but instead touches something deep and dark within you, that little piece of security that makes you believe that the world will be all right tomorrow. In Bloch and Thompson’s world – nothing is all right tomorrow, and it never will be.
Bloch also seems to have channeled his own frustrations as a writer into The Scarf. Daniel Morley continually doubts his own creative talents, and is particularly pessimistic about the financial and commercial possibilities as a writer. Here is just one such passage, brimming with a young author’s anxieties:
“Did you ever stop to think about this angle? Thousands of guys are beating their brains out every year writing books. Every broken-down hack that ever had a job on a newspaper or in advertising sooner or later gets the idea that he’s going to write The Great American Novel. And hundreds of the damn fools actually do write their books and get them published, every year. How many of those hundreds of novels have you read this year? How many do you think anybody has read? […] You can starve to death in that racket, son. And here’s another encouraging thought: you’ve written one book, but how do you know you can write another? The woods are full of one-book authors…”
Below are a few more of my favorite quotes from the novel:
“Did you ever try to punch a raw oyster? That’s the way it was, fighting with Hazel Hurley.”
“As I turned and ran down the steps, I thought I could hear her scream. But it was only the grinding halt of the train.”
“Her voice gurgled like water in a faucet. I turned it off.”
“I open the notebook and take up the pen, and here I am, playing with words again. Even in crisis and despair, I play with words. Crisis…despair – they’re words, too.”
If you’d like to read more Robert Bloch, head over to Hard Case Crime and sample chapters from Shooting Star and Spiderweb– two other excellent novels worth picking up, and published together in a cool, vintage “back to back” format!
You can also find several interviews with Bloch online, essays about him, and links to his stories, at The Unofficial Robert Bloch Homepage. Petri Liukkonen and Ari Pesonen have also written an informative essay and bibliography.

The great Jake Hinkson on D.O.A.

D.O.A was the first film noir I ever saw. I couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old when I stumbled across it in a videocassette bargain bin at Wal-Mart. I’m not sure why I bought it. I had no idea what “film noir” was, had never heard of Edmond O’Brien, and had not yet developed an affection for any movie that predated Star Wars. But the plot sounded interesting: an ordinary guy on vacation in San Francisco discovers he’s been incurably poisoned and has less than two days to track down his own killer.
Since D.O.A is the film that began my love affair with noir, I have to admit I’m pretty biased in its favor. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is an exceptionally entertaining piece of work. It stars Edmond O’Brien in his most famous role as Frank Bigelow, a small town accountant who’s starting to feel boxed in by his girlfriend Paula (Pamela Britton). Paula wants Frank to marry her; instead, Frank buys Paula a beer and tells her he’s going to San Francisco to do some sinning before he settles down with her. When he checks into his hotel in the big city, he finds plenty of opportunity for sin. His neighbors are a rowdy bunch of salesman who throw liquor (and their wives) at Bigelow and take him along to a jazz club called The Fisherman. After a blistering jazz number, Bigelow tries to pick up a sexy girl at the bar while an unknown man with a flipped up collar and turned-down hat sneaks him a drink spiked with poison. When Bigelow wakes up with a stomachache, he heads to the doctor. The prognosis: “You’ve been murdered.” With time running out, Bigelow darts around San Francisco and then down to LA in search of his killer.
The exact who and why of the murder aren’t really the point of a movie like this, and to be honest I’m rarely interested in the exact who and why of murder plots, anyway. As Raymond Chandler once noted, a good mystery is one where you don’t have to read the last page to be satisfied. A murder plot is just a puzzle, and D.O.A isn’t really a puzzle. As directed by former cinematographer Rudolph Mate` and written by the longtime screenwriting duo of Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, D.O.A is more like a sprint through the dark environs of film noir. 
It is a movie of surfaces, and it belongs to a genre of surfaces. Great noirs dig deep, of course, but the cosmetic elements are what we love about these movies. It was the elements of D.O.A that I fell in love with the first time I saw it: the ties and coats, the casual location shots of San Francisco, the constant pouring of alcohol and lighting of cigarettes, the intensity of the jazz scene and the way the music from that scene echoes into the next. The very artificiality of the thing—the beautiful harshness of the black and white cinematography, the hardboiled poetry of the language, O’Brien’s frenzy—all of it was like a smack needle for me. Once you become a noir junkie, only another dose will do.
Now as I said before, D.O.A has its flaws. Dmitri Tiomkin was a great composer, but the scenes of Bigelow ogling girls at the hotel are scored like a Pepe le Pew cartoon. These scenes are silly, but a bigger problem for the film is the awful performance of Pamela Britton as Paula. Britton’s specialty was light comedy, and she had a successful career on television in the early fifties. Here, though, she’s weepy and annoying. You can't fault Bigelow for wanting to get away from Paula. She’s a cipher, a soppy, clingy mess. When Bigelow declares his love for her at the end, we just have to figure it’s the poison talking.Luckily, the rest of the cast is superb. Luther Adler is silk-smooth as Majak, the gangster at the center of the mystery. And as Majak’s psycho henchman, Chester, the great Neville Brand is simply my all-time favorite noir nutjob. Brand only has a few scenes, but his orgasmic you-don’t-like-it-in-the-belly-do-you-Bigelow sniveling just about steals the whole damn show. I say just about because at the end of the day the film still belongs to Edmond O’Brien. This guy was the King of the Downward Spiral (see his other great crack-up performance in Shield for Murder), and here he’s all sweaty urgency in the face of certain death.
It was that certainty which drew me to this movie in the first place and which continues to pull me deeper into the noir universe. Frank Bigelow dies at the end of D.O.A. By saying this, I’m not giving anything away; it’s the title of the movie. There’s never any doubt that he’s going to die, just like there’s no doubt that I’m going to die, yet D.O.A is about as fun as a movie has any right to be. And that’s the big trick of film noir, the magic. How can a movie—how can an entire genre—be predicated on making fatalism as fun as a night at a casino?

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

Court Spares Life of Dog That Bit Man...

Cop who tortured more than 100 blacks leaves prison after only 4 years
(that good ole merican justice system)

GOP candidate from 'Duck Dynasty' clan blames Richard Dawkins, atheists
for Sandy Hook massacre

Oops! Cops raid Georgia man’s home after mistaking okra for weed

Cops kill Georgia grandpa in no-knock raid triggered by burglary
suspect’s tip

Jefferson would be repulsed by Justice Scalia — and Cenk explains it
perfectly

Deathpocalypse now! Stephen Colbert ridicules Fox News’ fear-mongering
Ebola buffoonery

Foster parent filmed himself sexually abusing a 6-week-old premature
baby: FBI

‘Sovereign citizen’ tells traffic court he doesn’t exist: ‘My mom never
gave birth to me’

Rachel Maddow dissects multiple ‘unsettling’ missteps in handling of
first US Ebola case

Fox host blames Obama and Holder’s Ferguson comments for 20-year-old
‘Copwatch’ group

Jon Stewart: GOP is distracting you with non-problems instead of actual
‘bad sh*t’

Upper West Side residents take aim at outdoor wine bar where ‘Internet
people’ meet up

WV cop filmed videos of daughter dressed as police officer and marching
to Klan anthem

ANOTHER couple arrested for public sex at FL retirement community...

TWO GLASSES OF WINE A NIGHT? YOU NEED HELP...

TV documentary reveals lucrative dog meat trade in Vietnam...

Teens arrested in 920 chicken deaths...
.
Nik Wallenda Adds Blindfold To Skyscraper Tightrope Walk...

Two Teachers Accused In Sex Abuse Of Same Student

Applebee's Customer Punches 80-Year-Old: Cops

Girl Missing For 12 Years Rescued Near Mexico City

Woman Spends A Month In Jail After Cops Mistake SpaghettiOs For Meth

Couple Who Allegedly Had Sex On Murdered Bodies 'Couldn't Get Off'

Bodybuilding Christian Swingers Start Sex Website

Fish With Human Teeth Caught In Russian River

New from John Lutz FRENZY

 

Forgotten Books: Charlotte Armstrong Night Call & Other Stories

New from Crippen & Landru

   I first read Charlotte Armstrong after seeing a 1952 movie called "Don't Bother To Knock." The stars were Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe plays a seriously disturbed young woman asked to babysit the child of Widmark and his wife. Monroe is terrific--terrifying. Will she kill the kid?   I'd seen the name Charlotte Armstrong on the metal paperback racks. She always seemed to have a new paperback out. And she was in Ellery Queen a lot. I tracked down Mischief which the Monroe movie was based on and became an Armstrong fan for life.   If she was not as phantasmagoric as Dorothy B. Hughes sometimes was or as Elizabeth Sanxay Holding almost always was, Armstrong, as a critic recently noted, updated the gothic tropes of the previous generation and made of them tart and contemporary popular art.  No critic of the time was a bigger promoter of Armstrong's work than Anthony Boucher. He noted that she was the creator of "suburan noir" and he was right.
  Though she used the tropes of what was dismissively called "women's fiction" she took them into a nether realm that was riveting and terrifying.
  Editors Rick Cypert and the late Kirby McCauley have collected here a collection of short and long stories that are a tribute to the Armstrong finesse and darkness.
  None of the pieces here have ever been collected before and there is also unpublished material.
  Everything in the book is packed with excellent storytelling but my favorite has to be the long novelette "Man in The Road") about a "career woman" (yes that was how they were divided from "real women" :) ) who returns home to a small bleak desert town only to find herself accused of a sinister mysterious hit-and-run. I'll pay this the highest compliment I can--this is the kind of twisty crime story Richard Matheson excelled at. It would have been perfect for the long form "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."
  My favorite of the shorter pieces is "The Cool Ones" which concerns the kidnapping of grandmother
and makes as contemporary a statement  as the Flower Power era she wrote it in.
  This is not only a major collection of a major writer  (thanks to Sarah Weinman for bringing so many overlooked women writers back to our attention) but is also the most beautifully jacketed and produced
book Crippen & Landru has ever published.   

Fresh Meat: Riders on the Storm by Ed Gorman The Criminal Element

Fresh Meat: Riders on the Storm by Ed GormanTERRIE FARLEY MORAN The Criminal element

Riders on the Storm by Ed Gorman is the final mystery in the suspenseful and politically charged Sam McCain series set in Iowa during the Vietnam War (available October 8, 2014).I first met Sam McCain in The Day The Music Died, which is set in 1958, a year I remember well. It was the year I turned twelve, but Sam was that mystery of mysteries—an adult at a time when adults were revered and respected by virtue of their age. Author  Ed Gorman  captured the atmosphere exactly in his depiction of Sam’s home town, Black River Falls, Iowa. I was immediately captivated and have followed Sam and Black River Falls in each succeeding mystery novel.Book ten of the series, Riders on the Storm, is set in 1971, a year I also remember well. On a personal note, it was the year my second child was born. For America, it was the year of The Pentagon Papers and the year the Twenty-Sixth Amendment of the Constitution was ratified, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. It was a year I spent much of my time gathering support to lobby for the release of American POWs being held in North Vietnam. Turbulent times.Before Riders on the Storm opens we already knew Sam was anticipating his reserve unit being called up. We did not know that he and some friends decided to enlist, and now we first learn that he was in an accident in Boot Camp that nearly took his life. During a lengthy recuperation, Sam receives a Dear John letter from his fiancée and eventually, a discharge from the army. So he wanders home again to Black River Falls where the atmosphere clearly reflects the times.Sam explains right up front. “The war was not only destroying people overseas, it was destroying them back in my hometown.”A friend of Sam’s named Will Cullen is having trouble dealing with the memories he has of actions he took while in Vietnam. Sam frequently spends time with Will trying to help him resolve his emotional trauma, but when Will joins an anti-war veterans group, he comes under fire from veterans who disagree with his stance, most notably political up and comer Steve Donovan who give Will a very public physical beating. So when Donovan is murdered, Will Cullen is the most obvious suspect.Sam doesn’t want to believe it, but the case against Will seems quite strong. Another Vietnam vet calls Sam. The veteran is named Greg Egan and Sam describes him this way:

In some respects he was the conscience of a small group of vets who’d had physical and mental problems in assimilating back home. The wife he’d left behind him when he’d gone to Nam was still behind him. She drove him to the VA three times a week. They were starting the prosthetic process.

With prodding from Greg and from Will’s wife Karen, Sam takes a closer look and discovers political intrigue, clandestine romances and heroin smuggling. But can he prove that any of these things have to do with murder? Still, it is in Sam’s nature to try to help a friend in trouble.Ed Gorman manages to wind every messy and unruly concern that plagued America in 1971 into one taut story. I have always know that one of the things I love most about the Sam McCain novels is that Gorman grabs a moment in time and doesn’t let go. But now he is letting go. Riders on the Storm is the final entry in the saga of the folks of Black River Falls during a time of great change spanning from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. I have to say that I sniffled more than a little at the thought of never hanging out again with Sam. Then I brightened at the thought of reading the series again from start to finish. Maybe I could make that an annual event—a visit to Black River Falls. And if you have never been there, what are you waiting for? The Sam McCain books are not to be missed. Treat yourself to a trip back in time. As written by Gorman, the Vietnam Era in small town America stands on its own as a time and place not to be missed. Wrap yourself in the mystery and the history of Riders on the Storm. See more new releases at our Fresh Meat feature page. To learn more or order a copy, visit:

New Books Turnabout by Rick Ollerman

TURNABOUT / SHALLOW SECRETSa new books piece by Rick Ollerman
  For a long time the world of literature has faced the dreaded  “question that must not be asked,” as Neil Gaiman put it. Where do you get your ideas? Harlan Ellison jokes he gets them from an idea service in Schenectady. Other writers have similar answers. I wondered why this was so and I thought, you know, I’ll actually say it. Out loud.  You start by being observant. This is nothing new. If writers were not observant, they’d miss the same sort of life they need to instill in their books. You see the absurd things, the mundane things, the things that would never occur to you in a million years. And then you start asking, “What if….”  What if that barfly hanging off the telephone pole in front of a bus stop just–did what? Lost his car? Had the love of his life drive off on the number seven? Doesn’t remember where he’s been? Got off the bus not caring where he is or what happens to him?  Ask another “What if…” question. What if there were a condemned hotel, home to a commune of squatters, on a street where serious crimes were afoot.  What if there were a dirty cop, driving his car, looking for someone interesting to pull over? Not for breaking the law, but for something else known only to him?  Take the “What if…” questions and see where you can come up with answers that can tie the questions themselves together. You end up with the start of a plot. Once you have that, think of the most interesting characters you can that can exist in that plot and do things that are really interesting.I have two books coming out this month, “Turnabout” and “Shallow Secrets.”  The first was written a while ago, the second more recently. My third book, slated for next fall, started with this notion: according to the FBI, stalking is the only real predictor of murder that we have. Now add a “What if…” question: what if someone were stalking someone you cared about? What if you had the knowledge to not only recognize this, but do something about it? What if the person you save knows what you’ve done and can never look you in the eye again. Was it worth it? Why won’t she forgive you?  Another “What if” question I had, more of a “why” question, really, is why is prostitution illegal and making pornographic films not? As a writer can I put all this together, add the right kind of character, the kind who has the background and the personality traits to navigate all these questions and sub-questions that come out of the first few questions?  “Turnabout” is a Florida novel, where the action can only take place in Florida. Set back in the days when there was an internet but no world wide web, what happens to the money when the Feds take somebody down? What happens if all those records are kept on a computer network with actual storage encrypted and living god knows where? What happens when some bad people recruit a good one to help them get some of that “lost” money? Murder, kidnapping, and layers of deceit drive the story, where a good man gets put in a bad situation but comes out of it, able to resume his life where he had left it, something he thought he’d never be able to do.  “Shallow Secrets” is the story of a cop investigating a series of murders. A suspect is arrested and it turns out that not only did he have an acquaintance with the cop, he implicates him. Was he guilty? If it can’t be proved certain either way, can he still remain a cop?  Years later another string of murders pulls him into a different part of the state. He agrees to help on a limited basis only, until he learns that there could be a strange, unexpected connection to the earlier crimes. Navigating one investigation while trying to explain the other from years before is something that seems impossible, and yet….  Stark House Press is publishing both books in a single volume. To me, the only really important question I have of a reader is, “Would you read another book by this same author?” I want the answer to be “yes” and I don’t want them to have to wait until next year for another book.  Both of these are written differently, with different structures and style. Hopefully after you read one you can ask yourself, “Would I read another?”  And hopefully you’ll turn a couple of pages and do just that.
-- 
Rick Ollerman,author of TURNABOUT/SHALLOW SECRETSwww.rickollerman.com