Dave Zeltserman's Blog, page 42

A Killer' Essence -- first chapter

A KILLER'S ESSENCE is now out in trade paperback, and is currently in film development from Braven Films. Here's the first chapter.

CHAPTER 1
Back in 1972 I was seven years old then and always tagging along after my older brother, Mike. This was back before the attention you have today on child abductions and pedophiles—that evil existed, shit, it has probably always existed, but it wasn’t on TV or the news much, if at all. You didn’t have CNN and the Internet to focus on it twenty-four seven, and as a result a lot of parents didn’t think about it. Back then it wasn’t all that unusual for a seven-year-old and a bunch of ten-year-olds to spend their afternoons hanging around their Brooklyn neighborhood unsupervised. And that was what Mike and his friends and I used to do, at least when he and his friends couldn’t shake me, and I was a tough little bugger to shake back then, just as I am now.This one afternoon it was just Mike and me. We had just spent a half hour in Bob’s Drugstore thumbing through the comic books until the owner got fed up with us and told us to buy something or leave. Mike spent a dime on a Sky Bar candy bar. He broke off the caramel piece for me, and we left anyway. While we were walking past the fish market a man came out and offered us five bucks to clean up the backroom. Mike wanted that five bucks, but something about the man made me grab onto Mike’s arm and pull him back while shouting “No!” repeatedly as if I were demon possessed. Mike looked at me as if I was nuts, and I thought he was going to punch me, but that wouldn’t have stopped me from what I was doing. A couple of older men from the neighborhood wandered over to see what the commotion was about, and the man from the fish market started to look nervous. He told us to forget it and he went back into his store.“What’d you do that for, Stan?” Mike demanded, his narrow face taut and angry. “Five bucks! You know what we could’ve bought for five bucks? Are you stupid?”At this point I was crying. I couldn’t explain to him why I did what I did. I couldn’t say it out loud. I couldn’t have him think I was even nuttier than he already thought I was. Anyway, all I wanted was for us to get away from there, so I kept pulling on his arm, using every ounce of strength I had to drag us away from that store. One of the neighborhood men gave me a concerned look and told Mike that he should take his little brother home. Mike looked pissed, but he did what the man asked him to. All the way home he kept asking what was wrong with me.Later at dinner Mike told our folks what had happened and how I cost us five bucks. Pop asked why I did what I did, but I couldn’t explain it to him. He shook his head, disappointed-like, and gave me a lecture about the value of money, but left it at that.The next night while we were eating dinner, Mr. Lombardi from down the hall knocked on our door. Chucky Wilson, who was a year older than Mike, hadn’t come home yet from school and he wanted to know if either Mike or I had seen him or knew anything. We didn’t. He looked tired as he apologized for interrupting our dinner. Pop asked him if they needed any more help looking for Chucky. Mr. Lombardi thought about it, but shook his head and told Pop to finish his dinner and if they still hadn’t found Chucky in another hour he’d let Pop know. After Mr. Lombardi left I told Pop that Chucky was with that man from the fish market.“What?”“That man from the fish market must’ve promised Chucky five bucks also. That’s where Chucky is!”“Stan, quit talking nonsense,” Mom said.“I’m not! I’ll bet anything that’s where Chucky is!”“Stop it now!” Pop ordered. “Christ, I don’t know how you get these ideas.”None of us had much of an appetite after that, Mike and me mostly pushing our food around our plates and Pop staring off into space. After a while of that he got up and left the table and then the apartment. He didn’t bother saying anything to Mom about where he was going. She looked like she was fighting hard to keep from crying.It turned out that Pop collected other men from the neighborhood and they visited the fish market. They broke into the store and found the man who had offered Mike and me five bucks. He was in the back room chopping up what was left of Chucky. I didn’t learn that part until recently, but that’s what they found. It was days after that when Pop asked me how I knew where Chucky would be. I couldn’t explain it to him, so I shrugged and told him I just knew.For years I had convinced myself that none of that happened. That it was a dream I once had, or maybe a story I heard, or something from a movie or TV show that I saw as a kid. After meeting Zachary Lynch, I started remembering more about that day back when I was a seven-year-old kid and thinking that maybe it wasn’t just a dream. I found the old newspaper stories about that man in the fish market and what he did to Chucky Wilson, and then dug out the police reports. My pop had died when I was twenty and Mom is in no shape these days to remember anything, but I talked with Mike and he confirmed what happened. All those years we never talked about it, both of us pretending it never happened.“What did you see that day, Stan?” he asked.I shook my head and told him I didn’t know, and from the look on his face he seemed relieved to hear that. The fact is I did see something. When that man came out of the fish market wearing his stained apron over a pair of dirty khakis and even dirtier T-shirt, for a moment I didn’t see a man but something ghoulish, something from out of a nightmare. It only lasted a second, if that, and then he turned back into a balding and scrawny middle-aged man, but for that moment I saw something else.Later, after talking with Mike, I sat quietly and remembered everything I could about that day and wrote it all down. After all those years I finally accepted what I saw. I still have never told anyone about this other than Zachary Lynch, and he’s the only person I know who would possibly understand.

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One Angry Julius & only $0.99 until Halloween!

Several of the stories in this collection would make perfect Halloween reading, especially the Thriller Award nominated, A Hostage Situation, so I'm putting this on sale for only $0.99 as a Kindle download until Halloween!

MONSTER, featured title

I'd like to thank Dayton Metro Library for making MONSTER their featured title

More MONSTER on the web + New England Book Fair this Wednesday!

"Award winning novelist Zeltserman currently writes crime and horror books and his latest creation, “Monster,” is a compelling read which sensationally seizes the senses."

You can read the rest of the RohnertPark-CotatiPatch excellent review of MONSTER here.

I'd like to thank the Urbana Free Library for making MONSTER one of their weird and frightful picks for Halloween.

At Barnes & Noble, MONSTER has made it into a monster literary trivia quiz.

And finally, I'm going to be at the New England Book Fair (Newton, MA) tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 24th) at 7pm reading & signing for MONSTER.

20 quick reasons to get MONSTER for Halloween

1) "You don't get much more gothic bang for your buck." Los Angeles Times

2) "juicy material for Franken-fans" Booklist, starred review

3) "chilling and captivating" ForeWord Magazine, pick of the week

4) "Magnificently horrific" Barnes & Noble

5) "a must-read" Historical Novels Review

6) "a rich and fun response to Shelley's classic" Publisher's Weekly

7) "there’s plenty going on thematically" NPR (Boston)

8) "imaginative" Newsday

9) "every page a joy to read" Bookreporter

10) "likely one of the best books of 2012" Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm   

11) "gripping retelling of a classic favorite" Style Magazine

12) "I flat out loved it" Crimespree Magazine

13) "A masterpiece of originality, beauty, ugliness, eloquence, wisdom and power. And it's one hell of a page-turner as well." Ed Gorman

14) "a brilliant reimagining of Frankenstein" Roger Smith

15) "MONSTER shocks and rampages as well as it deftly entertains." Paul Tremblay

16) "When awards season rolls around, this one's going to be a major contender." Bill Crider

17) "Monster is a dark, harrowing tale steeped in grue" Frankensteinia

18) "I'm not usually a fan of retellings of the classics, but this one is terrific—a story well told." Fang-tastic Fiction

19) "Monster is a gripping gothic horror tale, brilliantly told." Between the Covers

20) "If you’re a fan of Frankenstein and the mythos that surrounds it, and love literary horror, this one’s for you. Highly recommended!" MyBookishWays
   

Buy from Amazon Buy From Barnes & Noble  

The film company working to make A Killer's Essence

A Killer's Essence is currently in development at Braven Films

About A Killer's Essence (from publisher): In A Killer’s Essence, already optioned for the movies, Zeltserman's unique talent (“deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy” –Publishers Weekly) is back with full, sinister effect. Stan Green is a jaded New York City cop assigned to the most shocking homicide of his career–and he finds only one witness, a neurologically damaged recluse subject to demonic hallucinations. Then the murderer strikes again. Stan’s best hope is a man who claims to be surrounded by ghoulish apparitions. And there’s just a chance this witness isn't insane, but instead terrifyingly perceptive…

Dave Zeltserman's grisly crime novel is backgrounded by the 2004 ALCS playoffs, when the Red Sox triumphed over the Yankees. A knuckle-whitening, surprising, and compelling trip into Stan’s obsession with a brutal case, this serial-killer mystery is Zeltserman's darkest, most gripping work yet.

What the reviewers have said:

"a memorable winner" Boston Globe

"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

“Detective Green is a believable character, down on his luck with little going for him but his job. Nonetheless, he meanders through life, precariously balancing all its myriad and conflicting facets, and coming out on top in this chilling page-turner attuned to the most discerning of avid crime lovers. Well written and well paced. Recommended.” New York Journal of Books

"A scary, keep-you-guessing thriller not to be missed."  Elliott Swanson, Booklist

Horrors tonight in Scituate with Paul Tremblay and myself

As a way to help get people ready for Halloween, Paul Tremblay and I will be at Front Street Book Shop in Scituate tonight at 7pm reading & signing our latest horror and fantasy novels. I hope folks show up!

Archie's all abuzz!!

The following from Publisher's Weekly's review of The Interrogator and Other Criminally Good Fiction (edited by Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, Cemetery Dance) has left Archie all abuzz:

Heavyweights of the genre such as Lee Child, Laura Lippman, and David Morrell headline this strong anthology of 26 crime stories. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a dud in the bunch; surprisingly, the best entry may be a comic riff on Rex Stout—Dave Zeltserman’s “Archie’s Been Framed.” 

While people in the Boston area know that Julius Katz and Archie are very real, and that all I'm doing is cleaning up some of the language in the cases that Archie has been transcribing, for whatever reason people outside of Boston think that what I'm coming up with are fictional stories as opposed to nonfiction pieces of actual detective cases. What the hell. So far this confusion has been good to me, winning me a Shamus, a Derringer, an Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award, and both honorable mention and inclusion in three best of the year anthologies. So I'm not going to complain, and besides the whole thing has been giving Julius a good chuckle, although this latest review from Publisher's Weekly has left Archie so insufferable (according to Julius) that Julius had to turn him off for now. Eh, I'm sure Archie will be fine once Julius turns him back on.

For those who want to start reading these case, I've got as Kindle ebooks Julius Katz Mysteries, which cover the first 2 in the series (Julius Katz, Archie's Been Framed), Julius Katz and Archie, which is the Kingston case, Julius's most dangerous, and is the size of a typical novel, and One Angry Julius & Other Stories, which has the latest case I wrote up, plus five actual crime stories from me (as opposed to these nonfiction pieces!). Ellery Queen in their May 2013 issue will have the next case, Archie Solves the Case, and I still have a dozen or so more cases to write up from Archie's transcriptions.

More MONSTER reviews

I came back from Cleveland/Bouchercon to find three more excellent MONSTER reviews.

Frankensteinia, which is the number #1 source for all things Frankenstein, said in part in their review:

"Author Dave Zeltserman is best known for his hard-hitting noir crime novels. He approaches horror with the same take-no-prisoners attitude. Monster is a dark, harrowing tale steeped in grue, and an unrelentingly grim alternate take on Mary Shelley’s classic, as the man who is made Monster seeks revenge, while still desperately clinging to the last shreds of humanity within himself."

Fang-tastic Fiction summarizes their review with "I'm not usually a fan of retellings of the classics, but this one is terrific—a story well told. "

And from Thommy Ford Reads offers as part of their review:

"The result is a fun read. The gloomy German settings have the right atmosphere. Zeltserman’s monster is a fully fleshed character—uglier, tougher, and less innocent than Shelley’s, but still sympathetic. Besides the nefarious Marquis, Zeltserman adds vampires and satanists to the mix as well, seemingly just for some added adventures. And if the end result seems a little too episodic and a little bit too seedy, I’m willing to set that aside as an homage to those earliest Gothic novels.  If you’re not the squeamish sort give Monster a try. It’s certainly appropriate October reading."

A MONSTER sighting in Baltimore

"Monster is a gripping gothic horror tale, brilliantly told."

I'd like to thank Jeanne over Baltimore County Public Library's blog, Between the Covers, for her review of MONSTER.