Paul Bishop's Blog, page 65

THE TROUBLE WITH BLONDES!

COMICS NOW: PIRATE NOIR!

COMICS NOW: PIRATE NOIR!
A MOST COOL CONCEPT ... WRITTEN BY JOE GRAHN WITH COMMANDING ART BY CARL YONDER, PIRATE EYE IS GRIPPING ADVENTURE FOR ANY PIRATE DETECTIVE FAN!


PIRATE EYE: MARK OF THE BLACK WIDOW

Join ex-pirate and now high-seas detective Smitty as he searches for a beautiful yet elusive lass who has stolen the heart of an influential politician. But can he find her before her deadly secret is discovered? Blimey!

A new spin on noir and crime drama are unleashed in the world of Pirate Eye!

PIRATE EYE: A PIRATE'S LIFE IS NOT FOR ME

Pirate Eye returns for another Pirate Noir packed story in Pirate Eye: A Pirate's Life Is Not For Me.

The ex-pirate and now high-seas detective known as Smitty gets a rude reminder of his past when a pirate ship comes to town. With the pirates seeing Smitty as their best chance at recovering a valuable map stolen by a defector, he gets pulled into a deeper, darker world of deceit and debauchery.

Cannon fire meets hard-boiled introspection in the latest chapter of this 'buccanoir' adventure ...

COMING SOON ...

PIRATE EYE: IRON BARS & WRETCHED TALES

The most hardboiled detective around finds himself in a jail cell with three criminals and an agenda, but what is it he wants? Only the ensuing battle of wits will reveal his cellmates secrets – and his own.  One thing is certain ... Not everyone is gets a happy ending ...

FOR MORE CLICK HERE

PULP NOW: HELL UP IN HOUSTON!NEW FROM BEAT TO A PULP AND ...

PULP NOW: HELL UP IN HOUSTON!

NEW FROM BEAT TO A PULP AND GARNETT ELLIOT ... THE SECOND JACK LARAMIE CASE ...

HELL UP IN HOUSTON

Houston has been called "a sprawling city of astronauts and cowboys, in the middle of a swamp." And now Jack Laramie, rural-wandering PI, is headed up that way after his faithless Desoto blows its radiator. Jack's got a bit of a past with the city, in the form of a Cajun PI named Lameaux--a guy who mixes his "investigations" with organized vice. So Jack decides to lay low, holing up in a swanky downtown hotel called the Fulton. It's a splurge after sleeping in an old horse trailer night after night, but Jack figures he deserves a break. Until the Fulton's grizzled house detective shows up with a proposition ...

Jack's way out of his league this time around, and when he discovers a blackmailing scheme involving a famous industrialist, he finds himself bumping gun-barrels with the Federal Government. Survival's going to require throwing the PI code out the window. And some quick thinking. 

Join Cash Laramie's hardluck grandson in this second installment of The Drifter Detective series, "Hell Up in Houston." At around 15K words, it won't take too long – just remember to bring your Colt.

PULP NOW: THE DIME DETECTIVE LIBRARY!

PULP NOW: THE DIME DETECTIVE LIBRARY!

Altus Press today announced an all-new line to their stable of quality pulp fiction reprints. Called The Dime Detective Library, each volume will showcase one of the many hard-boiled characters that ran in the pages of Dime Detective Magazine over the course of that pulp’s 20-year lifespan.

Dime Detective Magazine was second only to Black Mask in the cultivation of the hard-boiled detective genre. DD published over 250 issues and introduced hundreds of characters in that span, most of which have never been reprinted. With the success of Altus Press’ recent collections of Dime Detective characters such as Secrets, Inc., Cardigan, and Max Latin, it was decided that additional DD properties would be fast-tracked for release in quality collected editions.

The first wave of The Dime Detective Library sees seven releases, each containing all-new introductions by pulp historian Ed Hulse. The characters in this first wave include:

•Vee Brown by Race Williams author and Black Mask mainstay Carroll John Daly.

•The Rambler by Fred MacIsaac, one of the earliest of the DD characters to make the leap to feature films.

•Cass Blue, an under-appreciated hard-bolied detective series by DD mainstay John Lawrence.

•Keyhole Kerry by one of DD‘s best authors, Frederick C. Davis.

•The Marquis of Broadway by John Lawrence. The Marquis leads The Broadway Squad, the most brutal of the detective pulps’ crimefighters.

•Mr. Maddox by T.T. Flynn, one of the best—and longest-running—series from the pages of DD.

•Inspector Allhoff by D.L. Champion, surely the forefather of Ironsides.

The Dime Detective Library will commence in the early fall. Future waves of releases will see steady release. The Dime Detective Library will be available in softcover, hardcover, and in the various eBook formats.

FIGHT CARD UPDATE!

FIGHT CARD UPDATE!

Greetings, Fight Card Team!

We have some good stuff happening, which should serve to benefit all of the titles in our Fight Card series.  Our very first Fight Card Romance: Ladies Night has just debuted on Amazon, and we are excited about its prospects.

Our Fight Card Romancenovels are an attempt to reach out to another audience of readers by crossing the heart of the once immensely popular romance pulps with the current popularity of the romance genre, but with a boxing or MMA settings.  While romance will feature prominently, the main story will still center on boxing, the big fight, and a happy resolution to the romance aspects of the tale.

With Ladies Night we welcome the first female author to our team, Carol Malone writing as Jill Tunney.  

FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT

Los Angeles, 1954 ...

Gangsters, crime, boxing – and romance ...

Jimmy Doherty, a hard-luck orphan from the south side of Chicago, was mentored in the sweet science of boxing by Father Tim Brophy, the Battling Priest of St. Vincent's Asylum for Boys. Jimmy’s fists were good enough to take him to LA where he has begun his rise up the local fight-cards. He has big plans to be a contender and even bigger plans for Lindy – his trainer’s only daughter, who's sweeter than apple pie and harder to resist. 

But when Lindy is arrested for killing a boxer with ties to gangster Mickey Cohen, Jimmy is forced to join forces with the arresting detective – who would like to do much more with Lindy than put her in handcuffs – in a desperate search for the real killer. 

Love can be murder – in the ring and out ...



Coming up later this month will be a full two weeks of blog touring and podcasts around the Internet supporting all of the Fight Card titles.  This will be followed by another concerted effort in October. Thx to new Fight Cardteam member Jeremy Jones (who has come on board with a new Fight Card novel set in Alaska for 2014) for his help getting us visibility on a number of high traffic blogs.

The latter part of September will see the debut of Anthony Venutolo’s terrific Front Page Palookafeaturing east coast sportswriter and all round gadabout, Nick Moretti, struggling for survival in the dark corners of Hollywood’s film studios.

October will finally see the debut of my long delayed Felony Fists sequel Swamp Walloper.  I’m currently deep in the swamps of the Bayou Sauvage outside of New Orleans, and Patrick Felony Flynn is in over his head.

Thx as always goes to David Foster, our Fight Card man down under, for his yeoman efforts with our e-covers and his work with the paperback files and covers. 

Hank Brown has beat us to the punch with the first audio version of a Fight Card novel, Tomato Can Comeback, which is available via Amazon/Audible at this  LINK  ... Other audio versions are in progress with more information to come.

Keep Punching ... Good things are coming ...

www.fightcardbooks.com

BOXING AND ROMANCE!

BOXING AND ROMANCE CAROL MALONE ON THE WRITING OF FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT ... I wrote Fight Card Romance: Ladies Night on a dare.   A couple of years ago, my friend and mentor, Paul Bishop, along with his good friend, Mel Odom, created the Fight Card series – fast action boxing tales inspired by the fight pulps of the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Being part of a monthly writers group mentored by Paul, I was familiar with these novels and intrigued by their punchy style.  When Paul offered my husband, Tim, the opportunity to write a Fight Card novella, I saw only one major problem – Tim, raised with four sisters, can’t abide sports. He never played sports of any kind, nor does he like to sit and watch sports on TV He considers it wasting time. On the other hand, I was raised with four older brothers.  When I wasn’t blowing up a Lionel train set with my brother’s dart-shooting-tank-truck, I was outside shooting arrows into a bale of hay, riding my grandmother’s horse, or zipping down sloping hills on my brothers’ sled like my hair was on fire. I learned how to score a baseball game well before learning my ABC’s.  Sports was a way of life with four brothers – ice skating, skiing, hockey, water skiing, basketball, football, bowling, and baseball. Weekends in my family were spend watching Friday Night Fights with my dad, attending my brother’s baseball games on Saturday afternoons, and bowling with the whole family on Saturday evenings. I ran track, played tennis, and was on my college’s volleyball team. I am a die-hard Dodger devotee – and, like Tommy Lasorda, if I get cut, I bleed Dodger Blue. My dream was to be a batgirl – not one who chased after Adam West, but the kind who takes care of the bats for all those hunky ballplayers. I read all the previous Fight Card novels and loved them.  If Tim wasn’t going to take a crack at a Fight Card story, then I wanted to get in the ring. The series to that point was essentially guy sports stories written for tough-minded, fight-loving male fans, so I was a little tenuous, wondering if I would be accepted into the brotherhood. I was determined to approach Paul about an assignment, but figured the best thing to do would be to start writing a Fight Card story and surprise him at our next writers group meeting.  I was already writing romance with some form of suspense and action – I was hoping it wouldn’t be much different. So, without Paul’s knowledge, I started to write Ladies Night in March, 2012, all the while working on other romantic manuscripts. For boxing research, I watched fights from the 50's on YouTube, typing the descriptions of the punches into my computer while announcers describe the action. I rounded out the research with old LA city maps, period photos, boxing statistics, and scads of boxing technique videos. With trepidation, I brought the first chapters of Ladies Night to the once a month writers group and was overwhelmed with the excited acceptance. Paul encouraged me to continue.  He’d had a notion in his head to expand the Fight Card brand – which he’d already done by adding in a series of Fight Card MMA novels – to include Fight Card Romance novels, and Ladies Night looked like it might fill the niche. Working with my book coach Beth Barany (http://bethbarany.com) on my previous romantic fiction, I put aside the prosaic stuff and concentrated on my Fight Card book. Beth kept reviewing the manuscript, teaching me invaluable skills to make the process run smoothly.  With his real world background in police interrogation, Paul knows how to make criminals sweat. I often felt the cold-cop experience of Paul’s suspect-breaking techniques when I wrote a couple of chapters he thought were a crime. Yet, under his tutelage, I experienced phenomenal growth. I went from writing very bad romance to creating a well-turned sports-romance novel. Paul is confident, but time will tell if it will be accepted by the die-hard fans of the great Fight Card stories.  I couldn’t have written Ladies Night without Paul and Beth’s expert influence and their uncompromising declarations, from time to time, that some of my writing did indeed – suck. But they also offered praise and reassurance, and forced me to keep at it until I got it right.  Just like a heavyweight champion needs the right trainer and the right cornermen, so too does a writer. 

AVAILABLE NOW ~ THE FIRST FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT!

AVAILABLE NOW ~ THE FIRST FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT!
FIGHT CARD BOOKS IS EXCITED TO RELEASE THE FIRST EVER FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT BY JILL TUNNEY (CAROL MALONE) ... A TWO-FISTED FIGHT TALE WITH A TOUCH OF ROMANCE ... WE HOPE YOU ENJOY IT ...

FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT

Los Angeles, 1954 ...

Gangsters, crime, boxing – and romance ...

Jimmy Doherty, a hard-luck orphan from the south side of Chicago, was mentored in the sweet science of boxing by Father Tim Brophy, the Battling Priest of St. Vincent's Asylum for Boys. Jimmy’s fists were good enough to take him to LA where he has begun his rise up the local fight-cards.

He has big plans to be a contender and even bigger plans for Lindy – his trainer’s only daughter, who's sweeter than apple pie and harder to resist. But when Lindy is arrested for killing a boxer with ties to gangster Mickey Cohen, Jimmy is forced to join forces with the arresting detective – who would like to do much more with Lindy than put her in handcuffs – in a desperate search for the real killer.

Love can be murder – in the ring and out ...
 

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. MOVIE GOES INTO PRODUCTION!

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. MOVIE GOES INTO PRODUCTION!

AT LAST ... FOR GOOD OR ILL ... THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. MOVIE IS GETTING OFF THE GROUND.  QUIBBLES ABOUT CASTING COULD GO ON FOREVER (AND HAVE), BUT WHILE I'M NEUTRAL ON THE LEADS, I'M ESPECIALLY PLEASED WITH GUY RITCHIE AS THE DIRECTOR, AND AM SIMPLY GLAD TO SEE THE MOVIE FINALLY BEING MADE ...

PER BUSINESS WIRE:

Principal photography will begin on September 9 on Warner Bros. Pictures’ “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” The film is the first to be made under filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s and producer Lionel Wigram’s new production shingle, Ritchie/Wigram Productions, which has a first-look deal with Warner Bros.

Having successfully re-imagined the classic detective Sherlock Holmes in two hit films, the pair now bring their fresh take on the hugely popular 1960s television series by bringing super spies Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin to the big screen.

Henry Cavill (“Man of Steel”) stars as Napoleon Solo opposite Armie Hammer (“The Social Network”) as Illya Kuryakin, alongside stars Alicia Vikander (“Anna Karenina”), Elizabeth Debicki (“The Great Gatsby”), Jared Harris (“Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows”), and Hugh Grant (“Cloud Atlas”) as Mr. Waverly.

“Guy and I have long loved these characters, and wanted to start from scratch with our own take and create a film steeped in the 1960s for today’s audiences,” said Wigram. “We are particularly happy about our cast, who all bring something special to the film. Henry, Armie, Alicia and Elizabeth are among the best and most exciting actors of the next generation. In addition, we are thrilled to be working with Hugh Grant, who we have known and been fans of for many years, and Jared Harris, who did such a great job for us as Moriarty.”

Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin. Forced to put aside longstanding hostilities, the two team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization, which is bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology. The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe.

The screenplay is written by Ritchie and Wigram, who also serve as producers. John Davis (“Chronicle”) and Steve Clark-Hall (“RocknRolla,” the “Sherlock Holmes” films) are also producing. David Dobkin is executive producer.

Ritchie’s behind-the-scenes creative team includes two-time Oscar®-nominated director of photography John Mathieson (“Gladiator”), production designer Oliver Scholl (“Jumper”), editor James Herbert (the “Sherlock Holmes” films), Oscar®-nominated costume designer Joanna Johnston (“Lincoln”) and Oscar®-winning key makeup and hair designer Sarah Monzani (“Quest for Fire,” upcoming “Edge of Tomorrow”).

Filming will take place in England, with location filming also in Italy, in Rome and Naples.

THE TROUBLE WITH BLONDES!

SHE WAS YOUNG, SMOOTH-FLESHED, AND BEAUTIFUL ...

PULP NOW: OPERATION PERFIDIA!

PULP NOW: OPERATION PERFIDIA!

THE UITIMATE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY! 

THE FOURTH BOOK IN THE ONGOING SERIES FEATURING THE COLLECTED PULP FICTION OF LEN LEVINSON ...

OPERATION PERFIDIA

It all began with Operation: Pluto (The Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion) ...

Brockman was a CIA-man, evaluating the reports of Cuban spies, helping determine if an anti-Castro invasion of Cuba could be successful. He thought the refugees, anxious for an invasion, exaggerated the strength of support on the island, and that was what he wrote Washington.

Miralia Guzman was a Cuban aristocrat; and he discounted her estimates of anti-Castro sentiment, but he could not discount the beautiful Miralia. Not when she came to his bedroom and offered her love. Their marriage outlived Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Why had it ended with Operation: Perfidia?