B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 232

Survey and Giveaway

Many of my blog readers already subscribe to the newsletter, but I'm always interested in improving it, to hopefully make it an enjoyable and helpful resource. So in that vein, I've created a simple poll below you can take to let me know which features you prefer in these e-mail newsletters (approximately every two months). You can check as many as you like, and note that there is an "Other" box - you can mention other things you like to see in a newsletter in the comments section.

Speaking of comments - I'm conducting a giveaway for the current newsletter, and all you have to do is take the survey and post your name/e-mail address in the comments area. But if you'd rather not post that info publicly, simply drop me an e-mail at bv@bvlawson.com, and I'll enter you that way. The winner will receive a copy of his/her choice of the top 15 books compiled from the main "best of" lists thus far (Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, etc.). I'll continue to take comments and e-mailed suggestions for a week before drawing one name at random. To see which books made the last, sign up for the newsletter (on the left side of this blog). You can unsubscribe easily at any time.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Director Lynne Ramsey signed Natalie Portman and Michael Fassbender to star in her upcoming project Jane's Got A Gun, and Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty) is also in talks to join the cast. The film follows a woman who is forced to reach out to a former lover when her criminal-husband becomes the target of a deadly gang.

Mireille Enos and Scott Speedman are joining Ryan Reynolds in the cast of the psychological thriller Queen of the Night. The plot follows a father (Reynolds) who has spent eight years trying to get over his daughter's abduction and assumed death, but a series of new and disturbing clues makes him believe his daughter is still alive. Enos will play Reynolds' wife and Speedman a detective.

Director Olivier Megaton (Taken 2) has signed on to the action thriller Taking Gotham, based the real-life secret unit of the NYPD created in response to a string of brutal robberies. The team is forced to go underground to clear their names after being falsely accused following a deadly sting operation.

Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan is rewriting American Desperado, a film created as a star vehicle for Mark Wahlberg. The project is based on the book American Desperado: My Life As A Cocaine Cowboy by Jon Roberts, who made a fortune smuggling cocaine into the U.S. for the Medellin Cartel.

During a recent press conference, the producers of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy kept hopes alive for a sequel to the espionage thriller starring Gary Oldman, which would be an adaptation of John le Carre's novel Smiley's People.

TV

Co-developer/executive producer of Law & Order: Criminal Intent Rene Balcer is bringing a "cyber mystery series" called DarkNet to the USA Network. The project is described as The X-Files meets The Matrix and follows a pair of cyber-crime investigators who stumble across a far-reaching conspiracy to change the course of human evolution.

AMC liked the pilot for a remake of the BBC mini-series Low Winter Sun enough that it's decided to order a ten-episode series. The show will star Mark Strong (Zero Dark Thirty) and Lennie James in the "contemporary story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption in a world where the line between cops and criminals is blurred." (Hat tip to Ominimystery News.)

"Z," a modern-day version of the legend of Zorro, may be heading to the USA Network, with Naren Shankar (CSI, Grimm) serving as showrunner.  The update would set the tale in Los Angeles and follow the rise of Diego Moreno from orphaned teen to infamous hero fighting to save the city.

Now that AMC appears to have come to its senses and ordered a third season of The Killing, thus rescuing it from cancellation, they're overhauling the cast. Billy Campbell (who played Seattle city councilman Darren Richmond), and Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes, who played the grieving parents of murder victim Rosie Larsen, have been dropped.

The Hannibal Lecter series has added X-Files star Gillian Anderson to the cast, in a multi-episode storyline in which she will play Hannibal's therapist.

A&E released a promo video for the re-imagining of the classic horror story Psycho, which will focus on Norman Bates in his younger years.

Want to know when your favorite show will return with new episodes in January? Here's a handy chart.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

The Mysterious Bookshop, The Mysterious Press and Open Road unveiled the The Mysterious Podcast, available via iTunes. The first episode features interviews with authors David Corbett and Nelson DeMille!

THEATER

A musical version of Woody Allen's crime-comedy film Bullets Over Broadway is actually heading to Broadway. The plot centers on an idealistic young playwright newly arrived on Broadway who agrees to hire the untalented actress/girlfriend of a gangster in order to get funding for his project. The musical is currently scheduled to open sometime in late 2013/early 2014.

One of the original great works of crime fiction, Shakespeare's play Macbeth, is getting a new West End production starring James McAvoy (Atonement) in the title role.

Shia LaBeouf will make his Broadway debut as he joins Alec Baldwin in the cast of the new production of Lyle Kessler's play, Orphans. LaBeouf will play Treat, a thief supporting his younger brother, while Baldwin plays an older gangster. The play originally premiered in 1983 and has had many staged versions and one film adaptation.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Ambush for Anatol

British author John Herman Mulso Sherwood (1913 - 2002) was known primarily for his 11 cozy mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Celia Grant, a professional botanist and horticulturist who operates a retail nursery. Sherwood also penned half a dozen standalone crime fiction novels, including Undiplomatic Exit (1958), shortlisted for Gold Dagger Award.

Another series Sherwood created was the five-book series with Charles Blessington, an official with the Ministry of the Treasury. Blessington is a middle-aged civil servant who enjoys his sedentary lifestyle and dull routine in his drab, gray little office wearing his plain gray suits. However, his sharp intelligence, logical outlook, stubbornness and keen perception allow him to see clues others don't. He can even be deadly when he has to.

The 1952 installment Ambush for Anatol (also published as Murder of  Mistress in the U.S.), is set in post-World War II Britain and follows young married couple Philip and Diana Abinger, who want to keep up appearances despite being strapped for cash. Philip, a dashing former Air Force piliot, is particularly desperate in his search for a job that isn't dull or routine like everything else in post-war Britain. 

Their prayers seem to be answered when Philip and Diana bump into an old wartime flying acquaintance of Philip's, the Polish Count Jan Piatovksy, who is with his lady friend, Lena Watson. The Count has a financial proposition for the Abingers, and arranges for them to meet a man named Anatol on Bank Holiday Monday at Hampstead Heath. At the last minute, however, the Count has a change of heart and refuses to introduce the couple to Anatol.

Annoyed, Philip and Diana secretly follow the Count and Lena to some bushes in the Heath where they are seen meeting with the mysterious Anatol, although the Abingers wind up leaving empty-handed. Not too long afterward, the bodies of the Count and Lena are discovered behind those same bushes.

Blessington reluctantly gets dragged into the mess, leaving his quiet desk at the Treasury as his investigation uncovers currency fraud, illegal mercury trade, sexual deviance, kidnapping and ultimately involves a chase by train across Italy and France ending up at the Louvre.

Top Six TED Talks for Writers

If you're not familiar with TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), it's a nonprofit founded in 1984 as an organization devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading." It began as an annual conference and branched out to include a lot of other initiatives, including TED Talks, 18-minute videos that have a global audience with one billion views to date. The talks are wide-ranging but include several relevant to writers and authors, including the following Top Six, using my own subjective criteria. (NOTE: If you can't view the videos due to browser conflicts, click on the hyperlinked lecture titles instead.)

1. Novelist
Amy Tan has a number of bestsellers translated into 35 languages, including The Joy Luck Club (adapted into a film), The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Bonesetters Daughter. This video from 2008 covers the ups and downs of the creative process in a talk titled "Where Does Creativity Hide?"





2. Filmmaker Andrew Stanton is the imaginative writer behind the three Toy Story movies and WALL-E. Although he writes for animation, his talk, titled "The Clues to a Great Story" is relevant to all fiction writers as he discusses basics like "The greatest story commandment is: Make me care" and shares what he knows about storytelling, i.e., starting at the end and working back to the beginning.




3. It may not seem like billionaire author JK Rowling has much to say on "The Fringe Benefits of Failure," but since many of us do experience failure quite a bit in our writing careers, her words may what you need to keep going. "Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you fail by default."





4. J.J. Abrams is best known as the driving force behind such hits as Lost, Alias and Felicity on TV and Star Trek and Mission Impossible III on film. In his TED Talk, "The Mystery Box," he traces his love of and passion for the unseen mystery, his storytelling philosophy and his realization that "In whatever it is that I do, I find myself drawn to infinite possibility, that sense of potential."





5. For most people, the works of Elizabeth Gilbert usually put them firmly in either the love or hate camp, but you can't deny Gilbert's incredible success with the likes of Eat, Pray, Love. Her TED Talk, "Your Elusive, Creative Genius" may get a bit trippy at times, but her enthusiasm is infectious and her thoughts on the nature of inspiration and the fears and frustrations of those who pursue a creative life are sincere and engaging.





6. Julie Burstein
is a radio host who interviewed hundred of artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers for her book, Spark: How Crectivity Works. Her talk arose from that book, and she offers up "Four Lessons in Creativity" that are all relevant to authors, such as "Get comfortable with the fact that pushing up against a limitation can actually help you find your voice."

Santa Biblio-Style

It's time once again for my almost-annual Christmas gift guide for bibliophiles, in which I collect some quirky and some actually useful gifts for writers and readers on your list. But mostly because I'm a sucker for whimsy.



Tired of someone always teasing you about being on the grammar police force? Here's a way to prove it, with the Grammar Police T-Shirt: To Serve and Correct.



The Bulletin Mouse Pad and Pencil Cup, both made out of cork will add a touch of whimsy to any writer's desk. Now you have a use for all those push-pins lying in the back of your drawer.




Dishware that not only looks like lined memo pads, you can even write on it with a removable-ink marker pen. Plus, the high-fired ceramic is both dishwasher and Microwave safe. Try to do that with your paper legal pad.




A mug with the motto: Write Drunk and Edit Sober. Yep, that about sums up the writing process. Also a great gift for writers who like some whine with their wine.




These Haikubes includes a set of 63 word cubes that you roll and use the words that come up to create an "expressive" haiku. (Note, that the "expressive" part is courtesy of the manufacturer. Your poetic mileage may vary.)



A genuine "novel" bookrest - it's a pillow made of shaped polyester suede that props your book at the perfect reading angle. Plus, it's lightweight and even comes with an attached bookmark cord. For you eBook fans, looks perfect for eReaders, too.



Speaking of pillows, why relegate your favorite social-networking icons to bits and bytes when you can snuggle up to them on your sofa? Best of all, you get that "social atmosphere" thing minus the time-vampire suck of actually being on the Internet.

For those of us who can remember using a typewriter, here's a vintage sterling silver typewriter key necklace. You even get to choose the letter you want.



Typing on a modern keyboard make you a tad peckish? The Chocolap is a cardboard laptop with keys made of chocolate. You won't be able to surf the web with it, but can you eat a regular laptop? Didn't think so.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn has been chosen to helm the upcoming film adaptation of The Equalizer. The project is based on a television series from the mid-to-late 1980s starring Edward Woodward as a retired intelligence agent turned private detective who helped clients "equalize" threatening situations. Denzel Washington is in talks to play the lead.

Warner Bros has acquired Boston Strangler, a thriller project Casey Affleck and fellow Boston native screenwriter Chuck Maclean, about the desperate search for the murderer who terrorized the Boston area during the early 1960s. Affleck has plants to star as one of the detectives who were part of the Strangler Squad responsible for solving the crime, and will also serve as executive producer.

Actors Sullivan Stapleton and Ryan Kwanten will play ex-cons who set fire to a nightclub that kills 15 people in Cut Snake, an Australian thriller to be produced by Matchbox Pictures. The film was inspired by inspired by a real-life incident in 1973.

Katheryn Bigelow's hunt-for-Bin-Laden pic Zero Dark Thirty has yet to premiere in most U.S. markets, but it's already racking up the awards, including the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Oscar Isaac and Jason Clarke have signed on to star in William Monahan's thriller Mojave. Plot details are being kept under wraps, although the story is said to involve a desert escape by a criminal.

George Clooney's Monuments Men is being scheduled for a Christmas 2013 release date. The project, which has already signed Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin (and possibly Matt Damon), is a World War II-era thriller about art historians called into Germany to retrieve valuable works stolen by the Nazis.

Silver Pictures has picked up the remake rights to the French crime-thriller Le Convoyeur that starred Jean Dujardin as a father who takes a job with an armored car company after an inside-job robbery kills the man's son.

TV

Karin Slaughter's three "Will Trent" novels featuring the agent with the George Bureau of Investigation are being adapted for made-for-television movies by Yellow Bird, the same production company behind the Swedish film versions of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

NBC is planning a reboot of the classic crime drama Ironside, which aired 1967-75 and starred Raymond Burr as a San Francisco cop confined to a wheelchair after suffering a paralyzing gunshot wound. Person of Interest's Dave Semel will direct the pilot, and Michael Caleo (The Sopranos) will script the project.

Yet another remake, this one of the classic British spy series The Saint (played by Roger Moore in the original TV version and Val Kilmer in a later movie version) is still moving forward, and the project just signed actor Adam Rayner to star as Simon Templar.

ABC has bought a pilot for a half-hour police comedy called Rookie, which follows a woman in her twenties who decides to switch up careers and join the police force and begin to think of her oddball co-workers as family.

Meanwhile, Fox bought a 13-episode animated crime comedy titled Murder Police, from Family Guy's David Goodman and newcomer Jason Ruiz. The project centers on a dedicated but bumbling detective and his partner as they attempt to get to the bottom of crime.

TNT is developing the buddy cop drama Hit, based on an idea by Jamie Foxx. The project centers on two former high school football teammates and best friends who are "drafted" years later by the Miami P.D. and assigned to the HIT (High Impact Team) unit.

Although two series have aired in the U.K. and a third has been ordered of DCI Banks, the series featuring Peter Robinson's Inspector Alan Banks, will air for the first time in the U.S. on public television in January.

Sean Bean has signed on to star in a TNT spy drama from Homeland creator Howard Gordon. Bean will play Martin Odum, an undercover agent with the uncanny ability to assume different personas.

FX announced the official premiere date for The Americans, a cold-war drama that follows two KGB spies posing as Americans during the Reagan administration, as January 30 at 10 p.m.

The CW has set the premiere date of February 19 for its midseason replacement drama Cult. The suspense drama centers on investigative journalist Jeff Sefton (Matt Davis), who teams with the young research assistant (Jessica Lucas) on a popular TV show when his younger brother goes missing and someone starts re-creating the show's gruesome plot twists in reality.

CBS also has a midseason replacement crime drama, the cop series Golden Boy, which will eventually fill the spot vacated by the cancelled freshman drama Made in Jersey on Friday nights. The series stars Theor James as Walter William Clark, Jr., an ambitious cop who becomes the youngest police commissioner in New York City history, and Chi McBride as a veteran detective and James' character's mentor and partner.

Thanks to Omnimystery News for the poster and trailer for the upcoming Cinemax crime series Banshee. The show stars Antony Starr as an ex-con and master thief who assumes
the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pennsylvania, where he
continues his criminal activities while being hunted by the shadowy
gangsters he betrayed years earlier.

PODCASTS/VIDEO

Michael Connelly chatted about his book The Black Box on MSNBC's Morning Joe show and also on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS.

University of Toronto professor Wesley Wark and International Spy Museum historian Mark Stout discuss the history of spy fiction in a SpyCast podcast (with a hat tip to Elizbeth Foxwell over at The Bunburyist).

Mystery Melange

Book sculpture by Jonathan Callan

The holiday issue of Mystery Scene magazine takes a look behind the inspiration for Michael Connelly's latest book, The Black Box, with roots back in the horrifying Los Angeles riots of 1992; Scottt K. Ratner reviews The Return of the Thin Man, two previously unpublished novellas by Dashiell Hammett; Jon L. Breen takes a look at current legal thrillers and courtroom procedurals; Joseph Goodrich takes us on a tour of Stephen Sondheim's work in the mystery genre; Ed Gorman shines a light on often underappreciated character actors in crime films; and Kevin Burton Smith gives Santa a helping hand with the annual Mystery Scene Gift Guide.

This week's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "The True Story of Boy Kaleen" by the fabulous writer Patti Nase Abbott (who is also the driving force behind Friday's "Forgotten" Books and her own excellent blog).

Coming up February 1-2 is the Cape Fear Crime Festival, featuring writers, editors and publishers conducting various workshops and panels, as well as special guests via Skype on the big screen. Proceeds from the event are donated
to the New Hanover Library in Wilmington. This year, for the first time, the conference will be giving away the Gunny Award
for the best book in mystery and suspense for 2012. Registration for
that award will end on December 31st.

The Florida Chapter of Mystery Writers of America is sponsoring Sleuthfest on Saturday, February 16, 2013, at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, FL. The conference will feature intense, hands-on workshops led by bestselling authors Elaine Viets and Kristy Montee (writing as P.J.Parrish), and if you're one of the first 50 registrants, you'll be eligible for a drawing to win one of two 50-page manuscript critiques. Registration is open, but the price will increase after December 15th.

Winners of the National Book Awards in the UK were announced, and included Crime & Thriller of the Year handed out to Lee Child for his Jack Reacher novel, A Wanted Man.

Thanks to Sandra Seamans for noting that Cemetery Dance Publications has opened submissions for their new ebook
line and are looking for novels, novellas and short story collections
in a variety of genres. Manuscripts should be at least 10,000 words (20,000 for collections).

If you haven't had a Noir at the Bar event near you, hang in there, because these popular events are popping all over the place. Handsome Willy's in New Orleans will host the next event on January 12th, featuring Greg Herren, Jason Stuart, Bill Loehfelm, Peter Farris, Ted O'Brien and Kent Westmoreland.

This week's Q&A roundup includes J.D. Rhoades over at Chuck Wendig's Terible Minds blog; and Michael Connelly stops by Omnivoracious, giving his the elevator pitch for The Black Box as well as listing his favorite books of all time.

Boxed In for Christmas

Boxed sets are a mainstay of Christmas present giving, so now is a good time to take note of some recent (and a few slightly older) boxed sets for the mystery lover on your list.



The "Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set: The First Four Novels" was just released at the end of November. If you've discovered Sheriff Longmire from the TV series, here's your chance to get to know the character from the novels that inspired it all. (Format: paperback)



Three of legal thriller master John Grisham's most famous novels are included in the "John Grisham 3-Copy Boxed Set: The Firm, The Appeal, The Chamber." Grisham is a recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. (Format: paperback)



"The Ellie Foreman Mysteries - Boxed Set" bundles together the first four novels in Libby Fischer Hellman's series about a documentary producer in Chicago, described
as "a cross between Desperate Housewives and 24."  (Format: Kindle digital)



"J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 2" features the authors's series with ex-newscaster and divorcee Ali Reynolds set in the desert Southwest. (Format: Kindle digital)




As the blurb says, meet Detective Dave Robicheaux again for the first time in "A Dave Robicheaux Ebook Boxed Set" by James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and a former Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. (Format: Kindle digital)



If you've yet to read a novel by perennial bestseller and multiple award-winner Michael Connelly, you can start at the very beginning with a "Harry Bosch Box Set" that includes the first three Detective Bosch books, as read by Broadway veteran Len Cariou. (Format: audio)

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Vintage Bradbury

Patti Abbott chose Ray Bradbury to be the focus of this week's Friday's "Forgotten" Books feature. Although best known for his science fiction classics like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury also wrote numerous stories of suspense and crime, as well as a trilogy of surreal, noirish mystery novels, Death is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics and Let's All Kill Constance.

William F. Nolan compiled  "The Crime/Suspense Fiction of Ray Bradbury: A Listing," for Armchair Detective in the April 1971 issue (unfortunately, I don't have a copy, and it's hard to find now). Of course, Bradbury continued to write prolifically until his death this year, so Nolan's listing is hardly complete.


Many of Bradbury's 600+ stories were published in dozens of collections including A Memory of Murder (which fellow author/blogger Bill Crider chose for a previous "Forgotten" Books day). Another early collection was The Vintage Bradbury (subtitle: The greatest stories by America's most distinguished practioner of speculative fiction), with 22 classic stories plus four chapters excerpted from his first mainstream novel, Dandelion Wine.

Bradbury chose all the stories for the 1965 publication by Vintage, even though his career as an author was only 15 years old at the time. Stories include "The Small Assassin," one of Bradbury's most re-published stories about a couple whose new baby may be a killer, later adapted as an episode of the television series The Ray Bradbury Theater; and "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl," in which a murderer becomes obsessed with evidence he may have left behind.

Bradbury once had this to say about his contributions to crime fiction (In his preface to A Memory of Murder), "I floundered, I thrashed, sometimes I lost, sometimes I won . . . I hope you will judge kindly, and let me off easy." In an interview with CBC Radio, he talked about dedicating his novel Death is a Lonely Business to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald and James M. Cain. He said (about 17:50 into the interview) that he wasn't intending the book itself to be a hardboiled novel, but he simply wanted to dedicate it to them out of love. "I re-read their things every year just about. I go back through Macdonald, Cain, Chandler, Hammett, and the stuff holds up . . . It's good American literature, it's not mystery writing, it's just good literature. I'd rather read them than Norman Mailer, quite frankly."

Mystery Melange

Illuminated books art installation by Korean artist Airan Kang



Congratulations to Ken Follett and Margaret Maron, newly-named as Mystery Writers of America Grand Masters, an award for contributions to the genre that are significant and of consistently high quality. Winners of the 2013 Raven Award (recognizing outstanding achievement in the mystery field other than fiction writing), are the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore and Oline Cogdill, longtime journalist and the mystery columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The MWA also honored Johnny Temple, founder and editor of Akashic Books, as the winner of the 2013 Ellery Queen Award given to editors or publishers who have distinguished themselves in support of the genre.

The Wolfe Pack society handed out its annual Nero Award for best crime fiction novel of the past year to Though Not Dead by Dana Stabenow. The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, went to Robert Lopresti for "The Red Envelope."

Goodreads members also voted on their favorite authors and books of 2012, and the winner in the Mystery & Thriller category is Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

Suspense Magazine's end-of-the-year issue is out, with the awarding of "The Crimson Scribe," given
to the Best Book of 2012, and winners in eleven other suspense/thriller/mystery/horror categories. The issue also includes Richard
Belzer, talking about his latest book Dead Wrong, and Simon Tolkien, back with "Order from Berlin." 

If you are attending next year's Cape Fear Crime Festival on February 1-2 and have a suspense or mystery novel you'd like to have considered for the Gunny Award, time is running out. Nominations for the award, given to the best mystery or suspense novel published in 2012, will be taken until December 31st. Send the title, ISBN and book cover to joyce@joyceandjimlavene.com after paying festival registration fee.

Omnimystery News has posted its latest "Firsts on the 1st," in which they introduce readers to new series characters who will make their mysterious American debut in print during December.

If you're a short story writer, take note that several 'zines have reopened for submissions, including Bete Noire , The Crime Factory and Suspense Magazine , while CrimeSpree is temporarily closed (but don't worry; they'll be open again in January). Unfortunately, the news isn't as rosy for Sniplits, the audio story website (and one of the few remaining paying markets). According to Sandra Seamans via her blog My Little Corner, Sniplits publisher Anne Stuessy said that SnipLits is closing up shop as of December 15.

This week's interview roundup includes Lawrence Block, who joined the Mystery Fanfare blog talking his series featuring the hitman Keller and how it all started; and Zoë Sharp interviews fellow author Libby Fischer Hellman about her writing and the current state and future of publishing.