Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 55

Protectors Book Signings by Andrew Vachss, Zak Mucha and Michael A. Black

If you’re in the Chicago area in mid-November- bring a coat, and visit one of two bookstores hosting signings of Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT -

On November 15th, at Open Books, Andrew Vachss, Michael A. Black, and Zak Mucha will be there to sign Protectors and other books. Artist Geoff Darrow will also be there to sign Shaolin Cowboy. They have a limited number of copies of Protectors on hand. Sales of all books will benefit PROTECT and children’s literacy in Chicago.

On November 16th, the same crew is heading to Centuries & Sleuths in Forest Park. C&S also has copies of Protectors on hand for purchase. The full event details are available here.

Tagged: Andrew Vachss, Book Signings, Books, Michael A. Black, PROTECT, Protectors Anthology, Zak Mucha

Happy Halloween!

That’s me, age seven or eight, as the Hulk. I was strong enough to pick that table up over my head, but the adults freaked out and wouldn’t take the photo.

Have a safe and happy Halloween all- maybe share some candy bars with the neighbors out on your soggy porch. We’re gonna bring hot coffee to some family without power. This storm was scary enough.

 

Tagged: Halloween, Hulk

Awake and Sing!

I like theater, and don’t see enough of it. I worked stage crew in high school and at the local Nutley Little Theater, which helped me appreciate live performance. I love movies, but they can’t compare with the passion of the stage.

Last night Firecracker and I went to see her friend Mark in a performance of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing!, about a family surviving the Depression in the Bronx. Mark played the sad sack father. The characters were big and broad and it felt like good crime fiction, or the “social” stories that literature used to tell. Sean Weil – Liam from “Boardwalk Empire” – had the meaty role of Mo Axelrod, a war vet who lost his leg and any illusions he had about the world. Mrs. Berger is the bombastic mother who is every bit his match, caught between crooks, poverty and her heartless businessman brother Mort as she tries to raise a daughter and son in a country that has failed her.

“Life is not printed on dollar bills!”

The show is at the Axial theater in Pleasantville, New York, until November 4th. It’s twenty bucks for a seat, and you’re right there in the action. They put on a great show, as good as anything I’ve seen on or off Broadway.

Here’s a clip from the film version.

Tagged: Acting, Broadway, Clifford Odets, Simon Weil, Theater

Belly up to the Bar with Anonymous-9

Hey folks. Welcome Anonymous-9 to the bar. Spinetingler Award winning writer of “Hard Bite,” which she’s just expanded into a novel for Blasted Heath.

Tom:

Good evening… Anonymous-9. What are you drinking?

Anonymous-9:

Santa Barbara Landing Chardonnay, 2009. It’s $3.99 a bottle. After a decade of Two-Buck Chuck, I upgraded, even though I have to drink half as much to stay in my budget. Note to those who do not shop at Trader Joe’s: 2-Buck Chuck is a cheap bottle of wine made famous by the grocery chain. I try to work just enough to keep body and soul together plus pay the rent, so I have time to write as much as possible. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for fancy taste in wine. I haven’t enjoyed a beverage that cost more than 5 bucks a bottle (unless somebody else was paying) in years. But my impoverishment won’t last forever. Either the writing starts to pay for itself or else. It’s a real investment, and things get incrementally better every year. “Don’t quit early,” is my motto.

Tom:

So your novel Hard Bite is out today, about a paraplegic with a homicidal monkey named Sid. Hard not to be interested in a setup like that. What made you write it?

Anonymous-9:

HARD BITE started out as a short story. It was the third short story that Beat to a Pulp ever published and I submitted it because the site was still finding its footing and there wasn’t that much material to choose from. Patti Abbott had given David Cranmer THE INSTRUMENT OF THEIR DESIRE for the kick-off story and it just blew my socks off.

This was back in early 2008, I believe. HARD BITE got a big reaction out

of people and won Spinetingler Magazine’s Best Short Story on the Web 2009. I didn’t even know I’d been nominated until Cranmer emailed to tell me. Anyway, it was obvious that the protagonist, a paraplegic with a helper monkey named Sid, grabbed people in a big way. So I slogged for 4 more years and finally got it whipped into an acceptable novel. Many drafts, many rewrites, much hair pulling.

Tom:

David really lit a powder keg with Beat to a Pulp, didn’t he? When I started writing, his zine was one of the first I wanted to crack, because I was impressed with the quality of the stories. I’m not surprised that you and Patti Abbott both got in early. Was the novel a story you wanted to see told?

Anonymous-9:

Yeah I got in early—I was Editor at Large for BTAP the first year and a half of its existence. Great experience. I wanted to see a novel that turned some of the conventions of crime storytelling inside out. I wanted to take risks and break rules and still have the story “work.” As an editor I have only one rule: Break all the rules you want, but it has to “work,” people have to buy into it. My premise is so outré that every agent passed on it and just about every seasoned editor who agreed to read it said something like, “This premise is outrageous. Let’s see if you can deliver.” It took me several drafts and years of work but finally Allan Guthrie and Brian Lindenmuth both decided separately and simultaneously that I had finally delivered.

Tom:

That’s a lot of work. A story takes what it takes until it works. I find that a lot of writers either lose patience or get frustrated and move on to the next project when a good story needs that kind of work. I know you’re an editor, what are your thoughts on that?

Anonymous-9:

The problem with half the writers is they are willing to take criticism but they’re not willing to put in the work. The problem the other half is they’re willing to put in the work but they’re not willing to sit still for the criticism. If a writer can meet somewhere in the middle, it’s a done deal.

Tom:

James Lee Burke says a good crime novel is a sociological novel. What are your thoughts on that?

Anonymous-9:

Mr. Burke isn’t here to defend himself, but if he meant that a good crime novel reflects the mores and values of the society it’s set in, then I’d agree. I’m writing about Los Angeles, 2011, and what a sociological study that is. I get it all in from Bel Air to Hawaiian Gardens (not far from where I live) which had the biggest gang bust in US history in 2010.

Tom:

You mentioned turning the conventions of a crime story inside out. What genre trope or cliche drives you crazy?

Anonymous-9:

They don’t get a chance to drive me crazy because they bore me to death first. I love detectives and mysteries but please, please give me something fresh and different about a character I haven’t seen before, a crime I haven’t seen before. And give me visuals, lots of visuals. Writers sometimes forget the reader is not in their head. I like watching a movie while I read and the only way that can happen is if the writer paints vivid pictures. I find visual minimalism incredibly unsatisfying.

Tom:

According to the FBI, violent crime in the US, particularly murder, is at an all-time low. Yet crime fiction seems more popular than ever. Have you experienced crime or violence up close?

Anonymous-9:

I live in a suburb of Los Angeles, right next to Long Beach. It’s famously dangerous and violent. I see crime and violence on a daily basis, in fact right now we have a neighborhood mail thief working the streets and the cops were here a few days ago. Apparently he/she is following the UPS truck and then snatching packages. They actually SIGNED for a package my blind landlord ordered and stole it. I hear gunshots outside at night on a weekly basis. Crime and violence come with the territory when you line in a cheap neighborhood in LA.

Tom:

Well, I’m glad you dodged those. Let’s turn that around. What’s your death row meal?

Anonymous-9:

I wouldn’t want to say in case it came true.

Tom:

Kristine Rusch says the best promotion for your first novel is your second novel. What’s next on tap?

Anonymous-9:

BITE HARDER is in the works. It continues in real time where HARD BITE leaves

off. I’m also adapting HARD BITE into screenplay. I already think Jon Hamm of Mad Men would make a great Dean Drayhart. He’d have to go on one of those starvation diets, but he’s a great actor and has keen instincts plus the perfect eyes for the role. HARD BITE drops OCTOBER 25TH, 2012. First the e-book, then the WORLD.

I’d also like to complain and blast the crap out of my publisher Blasted Heath. But I can’t. They’ve treated me too well and thrown terrific support behind the HARD BITE promotion. I produced my own trailer and paid for it myself, and I got a terrific deal but it was still expensive. I ate hotdogs for a month just to license the footage. So when BH saw the trailer, saw that T. Jefferson Parker was willing to say positive things–I’m one of the few writers who thinks calling my stuff “outlandish” is positive–BH revved everything up a notch. They’re running a contest to win a Kindle Paperwhite over on their website. You are invited to enter.

They’re also running a contest on Goodreads. You’re invited to enter that too!

Tom:

You hear that, folks? Better stock up on Purina monkey chow. It may just save your life.

Tagged: Anonymous-9, Belly up to the Bar, Books, Elaine Ash, Interviews, monkeys, Noir

Hail to the King

In honor of Halloween and scaring the hell out of each other, let me talk about Stephen King.

He wasn’t the first to scare the crap out of me. That goes to Alien, which still gives me bizarre nightmares. Then The Thing, Poltergeist and An American Werewolf in London came along. In 6th grade I started reading bullshit paperback collections that put forth old ghost stories and weird tales like “Gef the mongoose” as true, unexplained phenomena.

And then my mother let me read Stephen King. She’s a big fan of The Stand, but I’m not sure that was first. I think I chose Salem’s Lot, because I flipped it open and saw the word “fart.” I twelve or thirteen, living at my grandmother’s house, where the enormous oak rapped against my window at night like the tree from Poltergeist about to swallow me up and spit out my Hulk wristwatch. I was ripe to be terrified, and Mr. King did not disappoint.

I read The Stand, Cujo, Firestarter. I plowed through his voluminous collections of short fiction, still some of the best shocker and switcheroos and utterly crazy-imaginative tales I’ve read. And then came It, which upped the ante, by bringing horror to kids my age. I sat on the couch reading that book until I fell asleep, then fought nightmares of electric trees and rampaging Tyrannosaurs and undead creeps who could turn the floor into glue as I tried to escape. No clowns, though. Clowns never bothered me. Perhaps thanks to Alien and The Thing, my brain-beasties were always skinned and toothy four-legged monsters that looked like slabs of quartered chicken tied to bloody animal skeletons. (And don’t worry, that novel will be written soon enough.)

King is difficult to explain, except that he is a fantastic storyteller. People apologize for him. They call him a guilty pleasure. I haven’t read any of his books since From a Buick 8, but I loved that story. I also dug The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I was disappointed with the Dark Tower’s resolution, but I respected it. Those novels are as raw and unfiltered a journey through a very imaginative storyteller’s brain as we’re likely to get. I’ll forgive the indulgences, because he bared it all.

Like any big name, he probably should be edited more now that his very name is all that’s required to sell a book. But has he changed, or have we? I’m inclined to think the latter. I’m glad he’s still writing, and I’m glad that the “front of the house is for the fans,” but I still couldn’t step out of my car as we passed through Bangor. He gave me enough back when I first read his work. Maybe some of us have lost patience for moody character tales that descend into hometown horror, but I’m glad he’s still writing and that his books still resonate with millions of readers, including me.

Tagged: Horror, Maine, Stephen King

Belly Up to the Bar with Patti Abbott

I’d like you all to welcome Patti Abbott to a new feature of the blog, where I interview folks at the imaginary tavern in my head. If you’re not familiar with Patti’s work in the crime fiction genre, you’re only hurting yourself. She’s written more than 80 stories, including “My Hero,” the Derringer Award winner for 2009. Her collection MONKEY JUSTICE (love that title!) is published by Snubnose Press, and she is co-editor of Discount Noir. Let’s give her a cheer.

Tom:

Good evening Patti, and welcome to Belly up to the Bar. What are you drinking?

Patti:

White Wine, Savignon Blanc, very cold, preferably from Australia with South Africa being the runner up. Marlborough’s Nobilio is my cheapy favorite. I never pay more than $12 a bottle because I can’t tell the difference. As long as its dry and fruity, I’m good. Hate wines with the oaky taste of Chardonnay though.Or Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale (from Kalamazoo, MI. I like any wheat beer really.

I didn’t start drinking beer until the last Noircon. And I haven’t looked back.

Tom:

Well, beer drinkers are certainly welcome here. I’ve had Two-Hearted, a long time ago. Reminds me of that Hemingway tale, “Big Two-Hearted River.” But enough about beer, it’s for drinking, not talking about.

First let me say that I’ve admired your stories for some time, and the first I remember reading is “The Perfect Day.” It was so far above what I’d been reading that it inspired me to aim higher myself. That’s why I approached you for the Protectors anthology, and your story for it, “The Search for Michael” opens the book. Would you tell us a little about the story and the history behind it?

Patti:

“Perfect Day” was a story I couldn’t get published in a literary zine. I tried a few first since the crime element is so slight that I thought most crime zines would not take it.

I felt blessed when Chris Rhatigan published it in ALL DUE RESPECT and was astounded at the great response. This story will be part of my novel in stories HOME INVASION (Snubnose Press). It is heartbreaking to me that children have to grow up with monsters like Billie and Dennis Batch as parents. The children quickly become the parents and never recoup their loss. However as you will learn from the novel in stories, Billie’s childhood was dreadful too.

“The Search For Michael” is 2/3rds true and happened to a woman I came to know in my book group. She died rather suddenly (although she was a generation older than the rest of us) and another member told me her story after her death. And then, since her husband had taught at the school where I worked, another friend told me the same story. How the parents eventually spent all their money looking for the son who walked out the door in his twenties, all his meds left behind. Everything left behind. The father quit his job, even hired PIs in various cities to look for him. After his death, the mother indeed went to psychics all over the country, taking what comfort she could. The third part is an invention although he did have a sister who was a physician. I felt the story need resolution so I gave it a likely one and then took it back a little. The woman in my book group read a draft of the story and was really angry with me because I had betrayed the woman’s use of psychics, which she thought made her friend look crazy. Not crazy to me at all-I would have done it and cops do it too. I hope she has softened on it by now.

Tom:

I’ve felt an underlying anger in your work, or maybe a disappointment. Am I projecting this, or are you looking at the world and finding it wanting?

Patti:

You are an insightful reader, Tom. If I write in the first half of the day, as I usually do, it is in a black mood. A mood that awakens me every morning and I have trouble shaking off. Maybe the Irish in me. Or maybe the childish belief I harbor in fairness.

The world is not sentient I remind myself.

Yes, I have a lot of trouble with the world we live in and tend to see the dark side of even the most neutral events. I find the world wanting in how we treat children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the mentally challenged. If we are ever judged, it will be on this ground–what we did for the least of them.

Once in a while, I can pull off a cheerier story, but they are not my best usually. I am also more likely to write about victims of crimes rather than perpetrators. I just don’t find perpetrators that interesting with a few exception such as Walt White. His is a journey from goodness to evil and that does interest me.

If you take a show like DEXTER though for instance, is it the serial killers that really interest us? They are almost exchangeable. Did someone give them a rule book?

Tom:

I’m with you on that. The banality of evil has been written about by better thinkers than me, but you’re right, when humans go really bad they tend to a pattern. Psychopaths or severely abused children robbed of any empathy by a litany of pain and neglect. Dexter is amusing for the characters, not the serial killer concept. Would you say we glorify crime more, as society and the law becomes more and more regimented? Or is it mere wish-fulfillment, vicarious violence meted out on our peers (which is what I think of the zombie phenomenon, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms)?

Patti:

In terms of books, television and movies, a lot of people. especially men, like to see violence and power. They identify with and watch those people who wield power–not the ones who are victims of it. I don’t think they are necessarily rooting for the bad guy, but instead rooting for the guy who is in charge, be it a mobster, a super-hero, a cop, a hit man. I think certain incidents bring out our sympathy for the victim of a bully, for instance. But at the same time I think we are suspicious of those who can’t solve such problems. We are about to perhaps elect a President who has said, let these people fend for themselves. And that sort of thinking filters down. If you are not popular or rich or successful, it is probably your fault, many would say. They never seem to acknowledge the fact we don’t all start from the same place in terms of money, color, family, IQ.

I am all over the place here but you get the drift.

Tom:

Writer interviews always go to “influences,” so let’s turn that around a bit. You run a web series called Friday’s Forgotten Books. If you could pick one author who is not generally taught in schools, and put them on the curriculum worldwide, who would it be, and what book?

Patti:

Now that’s a question I have never considered. I think I would chose Margaret Millar. She is a beautiful prose writer with great psychological depth. I don’t think you could go wrong reading her books. Dorothy Hughes and Patricia Highsmith would be two more.

I am not choosing these three because they are women but because they are interested in character and place above plot.

Tom:

I’ve never read Millar or Hughes, but I will. Patricia Highsmith is also one of my favorites.

You’re from Detroit, right? I’m from Jersey, so we both must have a love-hate relationship with our region, because we’re still here and not crazy. What do you love about your city, and what do you hate? And if you could hand me a book that revealed its heart, which one would it be?

Patti:

I lived in New Jersey for five years so I know it a bit too.

I would give you THEM by Joyce Carol Oates, which I think is her finest book even if she wrote it forty years ago. Paul Clemens MADE IN DETROIT is terrific too.

Detroit has all the cultural institutions of a major city–I like that about it. What you may not realize is that Detroit is surrounded by some very affluent suburbs that have art houses, theaters for plays, bookstores, things to do. I like that Detroit keeps fighting back with its music, its attempts to rebuild through attracting younger people to various areas. It is a great food city. A great sports city. We have every ethnic group you can name. If I walk the campus at WSU, I see young people from every region of the world. WSU had the largest Middle Eastern contingent anywhere but also huge numbers of students from Africa, Asia, Europe.

I hate the constant corruption, callousness and incompetence of Detroit politics. I hate that Detroit has allowed hundreds of architecturally important buildings to come down without thought. I hate that only twenty-some percent of students in Detroit itself finish high school. I hate that there are many, many, many city streets where only a few houses now stand. It is ugly outside of a few cultural areas. Although they have begun developing the waterfront, why not years ago like Baltimore? Why did Cleveland build the HALL OF FAME when Detroit has produced tenfold the music? Because, as usual, Detroit dropped the ball. I cannot tell you how much federal money was lost because they could not write the grants or hold on to them. It is a city filled with patronage jobs held by completely incompetent or corrupt people. Witness Kwame Kilpatrick, the scourge of the early 2000s.

Tom:

I will definitely check those books out, and if I make it up to America’s Mitten again, I will ask you for places to visit.

What would you say is the one topic you hope to have the last word in your fiction, and if you can’t be the one… is there someone else you’d be OK with taking that ring from you?

Patti:

At this point, I would say victims. I am really comfortable writing about victims. I am not sure who else victims interest. I don’t read too many stories about them.

Tom:

I think maybe the thriller genre has a lock on them, but I think they have a home in noir and the crime story, and I’m glad you’re telling their side.

It’s getting near closing time, so what do you have out there

that readers need to check out, and what is next down the pike?

Patti:

I have a story coming out in Crime Factory’s Horror Issue. I have a story coming out in Ed Gormans’s latest anthology. One in Mysterical-E, one in an anthology on Lee Marvin, one in a new Beat to a Pulp anthology, one in Katherine Tomlinson’s new anthology on the last day, one in Shotgun Honey next month. Probably too many.

Have you noticed how bees become very active just before they die?

Tom:

I know I’m not the only one who hopes you’ll be buzzing for a good long time, Patti. Thank you for dropping by. I’ll keep a case of Two-Hearted Ale cold for you.

Tagged: Belly up to the Bar, Books, Interviews, Patricia Abbott, Protectors Anthology, Writers, Writing

Allagash Brewery Tour

The first craft beer I really enjoyed, and still enjoy, is Ramstein Blonde by High Point Brewing company. My palate has turned toward stronger flavors like double IPA’s and coffee stouts, but I still love a good lager and also wheat beers and Belgian whites. The best-known Belgian white or witbier is Blue Moon, and then perhaps Shock Top. The latter is better, but my favorite is Allagash White, and while Firecracker and I visited the northern corner of the States, we dropped by their brewery for a tour.

Allagash is best known for the White, but their Black is making the rounds of east coast taps. They stick to Belgian styles and modern variations. They made a traditional sour, made with wild yeast in from the air. It’s not very strong for a sour, but has a good flavor and is a good entry into sour beers. They are sour like a tart Jolly Rancher or a green apple, very crisp and refreshing.

They give a scholarly tour and let you sample their beers at the beginning of the tour. If you miss out, you have to wait until the next one. The Lonely Planet New England book has incorrect hours for their tour, so call ahead.

You get a walkthrough, which is exciting if you’ve never been to a brewery. It’s nice to see they run a very clean and professional shop, as you’d expect from a brewery that makes consistently tasty beer. If you haven’t had the White, I’d highly recommend it. It is smooth and tasty and not too heavy, with lingering flavors that cool you on a summer day and refresh the palate all year long. One of America’s best beers.

An amusing sign in their rest room.

Tagged: Allagash Brewery, Beer, Brewery Tour, Maine

Hills of Fire: Bare-Knuckle Yarns of Appalachia

I’m very proud to open Hills of Fire: Bare-Knuckle Yarns of Appalachia with my story “Rockridge Ringer,” where Jay Desmarteaux finds his old cellmate fighting for a crooked sheriff in a mountain town… and busts things up the only way he knows how, with his two quick fists. You won’t want to miss this one.

I was a big fan of the Dukes of Hazzard as a kid, and since then “Justified” and the Appalachian tales of Manly Wade Wellman and many others have intrigued me. I visited West Virginia a few years ago on a road trip- we stopped at Hillbilly Hotdogs and the Mothman Museum, and found folks as friendly as you could want- and I felt a kinship with the state, because like New Jersey, it is sometimes the recipient of jokes from those who’ve never stepped foot there. It’s a beautiful state and I’m proud to be in a collection by Woodland Press, a regional publisher that showcases writers from it.

Now I don’t know if editor Frank Larnerd showed the cover artist my story, but it sure looks like he read it. And while my image of Jay Desmarteaux was a Fred Willard in “Remo Williams” with a nod to author James Lee Burke, I am hard pressed not to see him as the brawler on this cover. And that don’t bother me one bit. I hope you’ll pick this book up, it has stories by Steve Rasnic Tem and a fantastic bootlegger adventure by Amber Keller as well.

Tagged: Amber Keller, Appalachia, Books, Frank Larnerd, Hills of Fire, Jay Desmarteaux, Steve Rasnic Tem, West Virginia, Woodland Press, Writing

Back in Black

If you’re interested in the logistics and difficulties of editing an anthology, I go into some detail over at Elizabeth A. White’s Book Review. I didn’t make Protectors alone, not by a long shot. I give credit where it’s due and talk about the realities of taking on a big project, and how to drive yourself to get it done.

 

Big Maria by Johnny Shaw

“This book is so funny it cured my hangover.”

Yes, I laughed pretty hard while reading this one morning after drinking. It cleared my headache right up. I won’t say it’ll do the same for you, but it did the job a second time when I got a call that my sister, after hours of labor, went in for a C-section with her first child. I am an anxious sort, and I was nearly done with the book at that point. The laughs were over and things got real. This is where a funny story about three guys who try to find a treasure in gold on America’s largest artillery range can take a wrong step. I am a demanding reader who expects solid story structure and few loose ends left untied, and no shortcuts or easy endings.

I said if he messes this up, the next time I see him I’ll punch him in the nuts since I’m too short to reach his face.

Let’s just say that my sister is fine, my beautiful baby niece Alyssa is in her arms, and Johnny Shaw’s nuts will remain intact (for the time being). The ending was what had to happen and he handled it with the plums of a seasoned pro. (No, I didn’t mean “aplomb”). The book is a great read and doesn’t have any “mushy” sections where the story wandered. It never rushes, either. His characters have to make some tough choices, and he never cops out and pretends we won’t notice. No, he makes them face it and the SOB gets them through it with the integrity of the story unsullied. That is not as easy as it sounds. If you’ve ever winced or rolled your eyes during a story, or said “it’s just a movie” when a movie craps the bed… you won’t have to do that here. The guy’s got chops.

If you enjoy the hilarious tales of Carl Hiaasen set in Florida (known as America’s wang) Johnny Shaw is your man in the Southwest. He crafts living characters and tosses them into a tilt-a-whirl of believable but outrageous comedy. Like a goofball Shakespeare, he sculpts the language to his own comedic ends. I never knew what a donkling was. When you find out, it will cure your hangover.

I greatly enjoyed Johnny’s first novel DOVE SEASON and found BIG MARIA

even more entertaining. If you enjoy ribald humor and stories that drunkenly stumble on the edge of belief… Shaw is your donkleberry.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Not only is Johnny Shaw’s story “Gay Street” a star among many in my anthology PROTECTORS: STORIES TO BENEFIT PROTECT, but he was present when I earned the aforementioned hangover. I don’t owe him any money and there is no reacharound expected or implied. We’re pals because I read his first book and stalked him because of it, not the other way around.

Tagged: Johnny Shaw, Reviews