Keith Dixon's Blog, page 6

The Great Elmore Leonard, RIP

I first started taking crime fiction seriously when I began reading the books of Elmore Leonard. A friend had brought a couple back from America in the early eighties and loaned them to me. I'd just begun to include American crime fiction as a staple part of my leisure reading, beginning with George Higgins and - another American import who wasn't published in the UK - K.C. Constantine and his

Get well, Elmore

The Great Elmore Leonard is in hospital having suffered a stroke a week ago.

I'm sure all those who've read his books or seen films made from them (e.g  Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Hombre) wish him all the best.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20...

Stephen Dobyns - unsung hero?

I've been meaning for a while to write about Stephen Dobyns' new book, The Burn Palace. He made his name originally with a series of books set in Saratoga and dealing with the horse-racing set in that part of the US, featuring his laid-back detective, Charlie Bradshaw. He later expanded his purview with The Church of Dead Girls and Boy in the Water. He is also a poet.

The Burn Palace is set in a

Site for New Releases

Publishing my books as I do, I'm always on the look-out for new places to market. I came across this site the other day, which looks very nice and has a page devoted to new releases. You might find something you like there!

e-Reader Recon

The site is run by Dennis Larsen and his own book, The Living Hunger, is available on this page.

Pricing ...

Okay, I've cut the prices of all my books to $0.99 cents (or equivalent in different currencies). This is an early Christmas present to any readers still hesitating whether to buy or not. Of course, this price only applies to Kindle downloads, or any other e-versions downloaded from Apple iBooks, Sony, Kobo or Barnes and Noble.

Hurry hurry hurry ...

The Burke Gang

Just had to post this ... a video interview of Alafair Burke and her dad, James Lee Burke, interviewed by sister/daughter Pamela. It's a bit ropy but it's sweet to see the Burke Gang together.

Ra-Ra Florida!

I'm just reading Carl Hiassen's latest book, Bad Monkey.
A full report later. It continues his tradition of showing the underbelly of life in the Sunshine State, though interestingly there's more focus on a romantic relationship this time, and less concern with describing the antics of comic heavies.

 Coincidentally, the field of crime writing in Florida is covered in Adam Gopnik's article in

PUBLICATION DAY!!

On Saturday 15th June I published my new book, Actress. It has nothing to do with crime fiction and actually seems quite hard to characterise and categorise. In Amazon's publishing key words I've used phrases like contemporary fiction, women's fiction, romance and even new adult, so hopefully some people will find it.

I'm now going to use a link to the book that apparently will take you to the

Searching ...

A quick thank you to anyone who's come here as part of my Facebook Search Engine Optimization experiment. The Facebook Like button is to the right.

You could always stick around and take a look at some of the posts below. They're mostly to do with crime novels, so if that's your bag, dive in.

Thanks again.

An interesting site

For those of you who like reading about how crime writers work (and I guess you wouldn't be reading this site if you weren't), then can I point you to an interesting blog by Scottish writer Tony Black. He's just published a collection of interviews with other crime writers, including Ian Rankin and William McIlvanney, and one of my favourites, Andrew Vachss, than whom they don't come any harder