Dave Zeltserman's Blog, page 22
October 13, 2015
Official Release Day!
Oct. 13th is the official release date for the paperback of THE BOY WHO KILLED DEMONS. If you haven't done do yet, it's about time you go demon hunting with Henry Dudlow!
October 8, 2015
Small Crimes for the NOOK
Small Crimes, which was one of NPR's top crime & mystery picks in 2008 and, along with The Caretaker of Lorne Field, is now being developed as a movie by Memento Films, is now available for the Nook.October 6, 2015
What's New
The paperback for The Boy Who Killed Demons is scheduled for Oct. 13th, but looks to be in bookstores now.I have a new psycho noir story "Something's Not Right" in the recently published anthology JEWISH NOIR.
A new Julius Katz story coming! Look for 'Julius Katz and the Giftwrapped Murder' in the next issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
September 30, 2015
September 28, 2015
JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES back for the NOOK
JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES which features my Shamus award-winning story, JULIUS KATZ, and my Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award winner, ARCHIE'S BEEN FRAMED, is now available for $1.99 as a NOOK book.September 20, 2015
Looking again at A KILLER'S ESSENCE
"a memorable winner" Boston Globe
"This eerie thriller deftly blurs the lines between madness and the perception of reality." Star-Ledger
"Zeltserman’s signature creepiness is available here and there, but what really drives this novel is the engaging portrait of an honest, hardworking cop who, on the job and off, gives the best he’s got, knowing how rarely it will be enough." Kirkus Reviews
With baseball playoffs only a few weeks away, I thought I'd look back at A Killer's Essence, which takes place during the most exciting time in recent history for Red Sox fans--the 2004 ALCS
While A Killer's Essence is a dark noirish tale with more than a dollop of weirdness, it's also in a way an ode to those playoffs. Just as The Bad Lieutenant is centered around a (fictitious) Mets-Dodgers National League Championship series, same is true with A KILLER'S ESSENCE and a very real 2004 ALCS Red Sox-Yankees series, and is written from the POV of a diehard Yankees fan (and yes, I had a lot of fun doing that--as the Boston Globe noted "Now, in “A Killer’s Essence,’’ comes the ultimate in empathizing with the dark side. Zeltserman, who lives and dies with the Red Sox, creates a protagonist who - the horror - is a Yankees fan.)
Here's a short excerpt:
The wake started to lose steam around midnight. Word had spread that the Yankees got bombed badly by Boston which only added to the weirdness of the night. It was just a baseball game, it didn’t really mean shit. Inside the restaurant was reality. A good husband, a damn good father, and a hell of a friend dead for no reason that made any sense. I don’t know, though, you grow up with certain absolutes, like believing in the law of gravity, and then learn at age thirty-nine that it’s all bullshit. Yankees are supposed to win championships, Red Sox are supposed to find ways to lose them. Now, after blowing a three to nothing lead, the Yankees end up suffering what could be the worst choke job in the history of baseball, maybe in all of sports. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. While Boston would still have plenty of opportunities to blow the World Series, it still seemed as if the world had been flipped on its head. Maybe hell did freeze over and I just hadn’t gotten the weather report.
August 11, 2015
August 6, 2015
Excerpt from newly written American Cannibal: A Love Story
My plan was to write no more than 1000 words a day, and writing my latest book throughout August, but I caught up in a mad frenzy yesterday and ended up writing 20,000 words over 3 days and finishing it. Working title: American Cannibal: A Love Story, and a simple pitch: Charlie Husk is moving to New York, he's in love, and he's a cannibal. That pitch doesn't really do the book justice, but it's catchy. Like The Caretaker of Lorne Field, it's very noirish with a mythology woven through it. Unlike Caretaker, it's got more crime in it, and the horror is more intense. And there's the love story at the heart of it. I think as far as the pure writing and the drive behind the story, it's my best book. I might need one of the movies (that are so close) to go into production first before I can sell it, but we'll see. Anyway, here's a very short excerpt that I think might give a chuckle to Caretaker readers:
This led to a discussion of some of her favorite recent books (mostly a one-sided discussion, but I didn’t mind.) I’d only read one of them. An allegorical fable about a man who takes on his ancestral duties of weeding by hand a field each day, believing if he doesn’t, the world will end. I’d gotten the book from a man I’d picked up while driving through Boston. He’d been walking alone on a darkened street, and I took the opportunity at the last second to swerve the van up onto the sidewalk, crippling him. In less than a minute I had him in the back with the others that I had already picked up, and less than three minutes after that I had him secured in a burlap sack and was driving away without anyone being aware of what had happened. Much later when I had gotten around to reading the book, I discovered from the photograph used on the book jacket that the man I’d taken was the book’s author. Maybe he was walking around Boston with a copy of the book he had written because he was planning to give it to an acquaintance, or maybe he had another reason. Whichever it was, I never had a chance to ask him, same with missing my opportunity to question him about several things in his book that had left me wondering about their true meaning.
This led to a discussion of some of her favorite recent books (mostly a one-sided discussion, but I didn’t mind.) I’d only read one of them. An allegorical fable about a man who takes on his ancestral duties of weeding by hand a field each day, believing if he doesn’t, the world will end. I’d gotten the book from a man I’d picked up while driving through Boston. He’d been walking alone on a darkened street, and I took the opportunity at the last second to swerve the van up onto the sidewalk, crippling him. In less than a minute I had him in the back with the others that I had already picked up, and less than three minutes after that I had him secured in a burlap sack and was driving away without anyone being aware of what had happened. Much later when I had gotten around to reading the book, I discovered from the photograph used on the book jacket that the man I’d taken was the book’s author. Maybe he was walking around Boston with a copy of the book he had written because he was planning to give it to an acquaintance, or maybe he had another reason. Whichever it was, I never had a chance to ask him, same with missing my opportunity to question him about several things in his book that had left me wondering about their true meaning.
July 30, 2015
new Demons review
"A brilliant contemporary horror novel written in the form of a journal (a la Adrian Mole), the clue being very much in the title."Read the rest of The Compulsive Reader's review here.
July 3, 2015
Julius Katz Case History
A full case history in the order in which they were originally written:
1) JULIUS KATZ, originally published in the Sept/Oct 2009 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Shamus & Derringer award winner, 3rd place in Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award, honorable mention in Best American Mystery Stories, reprinted in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
2) ARCHIE'S BEEN FRAMED, originally published in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 1st place in Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award, reprinted in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
3) JULIUS KATZ & ARCHIE, original novel published May 2011
4) ONE ANGRY JULIUS AND ELEVEN BEFUDDLED JURORS, originally published in the June 2012 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 9nth place in Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award, reprinted in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
5) ARCHIE SOLVES THE CASE, originally published in the May 2013 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 1st place in Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award, reprinted in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
6) JULIUS KATZ AND A TANGLED WEB, originally published in the March/April 2014 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, reprinted in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
7) JULIUS ACCUSED, originally published in the JUNE 2014 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, reprinted in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
8) JULIUS KATZ AND THE CASE OF EXPLODING WINE, originally published in the March/April 2015 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
9) JULIUS KATZ AND THE GIFTWRAPPED MURDER, to be published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
10) JULIUS KATZ AND THE CASE OF A SLICED HAM, originally published in THE JULIUS KATZ COLLECTION
11) ARCHIE ON LOAN, to be published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
12) CRAMER IN TROUBLE, to be published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
