Eric Beetner

Nerd approved

2012-01-05T16:10:00.001-08:00

Imagine my joy when I saw that the one and only Nerd of Noir had reviewed Dig Two Graves over at Spinetingler. The Nerd has the most unique book reviews out there and also happens to be someone who I can always count on for books I know I will like so to get a positive review like this is really amazing. This review has so many lines that make me so pleased I'm tempted to reprint the whole thing here but better to follow the link and check out some of the other reviews and all the great content on Spinetingler.

Digging it

2011-12-30T22:33:00.001-08:00

Sick of talking about myself so I'll let someone else do it for a while.

http://www.elizabethawhite.com/2011/12/30/dig-two-graves-by-eric-beetner/

Another favorite

2011-12-29T23:36:00.000-08:00

Dig Two Graves continues to get a great response, this time making Sabrina Ogden's 'Favorite Reads' of the year. First off, I love that she says Favorite instead of "best". How do you know what's best unless you read everything (which no one has)
Anyway, it is a great list with authors like John Horner Jacobs, Matt McBride, Josh Stallings, Chuck Wendig, Thomas Pluck, Stephen Blackmoore, Frank Bill and Anthony Neil Smith. Seriously. Wow.

I'll try not to mention the fact that Sabrina muses on whether or not I should have included a Blowjob 101 instruction manual with the book. Umm . . . I'm not qualified. Although the research would be fun.

I also had a guest post today over at the All Purpose Monkey site of Elizabeth A. White. And, in a what is surely a guest blog faux pax, I appeared at Patti Abbott's blog too.

We got deals!

2011-12-20T00:21:00.000-08:00

Two things you should know about: Pulp Ink is on sale and D*cked is on sale! Even the print version of D*cked is on the cheap (and it looks GREAT!) These deals won't last forever so get on it.

In bigger and better news, Jake Hinkson's Hell on Church Street is out earlier than expected! I have waxed poetic on this amazing novel in several places around the web. Even picked it as a best of the year. Well, it's out now and you NEED to go get it. Thank me later. Better yet, thank Jake for writing such a great book.

Grimm Tales

2011-12-20T00:05:00.000-08:00

"What? More?" You say, exhausted. Yes, more. Grimm Tales is here. This collection has been a long time coming and now it is finally live. The brainchild of John Kenyon, he of The Grift online zine, these tales are all inspired by the Brothers Grimm. Each author was told to pick a story and do a riff on it in the crime genre. The results are inspired.

From the publisher: Grimm Tales is a collection of stories by some of the top names in online crime fiction, all based on classic fairy tales. As novelist Ken Bruen writes in his introduction, "Ever imagined what would have come down the dark pike if The Brothers Grimm were more Brothers Coen and wrote mystery?" The collection is edited by John Kenyon, editor of Grift magazine, and contains 17 stories by Patricia Abbott, Absolutely*Kate, Jack Bates, Eric Beetner, Nigel Bird, Loren Eaton, Kaye George, Blu Gilliand, Seana Graham, Eirik Gumeny, R.L. Kelstrom, John Kenyon, BV Lawson, Evan Lewis, B. Nagel, Sean Patrick Reardon and Sandra Seamans.

And hey, look at the cover. Who's that there? Yep. Me. Now, while it is obvious this is an alphabetical list that only had space for three names I will take it as a badge of honor and delude myself into thinking that someone, somewhere thought my name could sell a few books.

You should know this - the publisher, Untreed reads is also the publisher behind Discount Noir. Several of the authors are featured in both collections and they have offered up a special: if you order both books from the Untreed reads website, you'll get 50% of Discount Noir! It's a great collection so get it now and get it cheap.

And my story? It is inspired by a very familiar story, especially if you have young daughters like I do. My take on it is decidedly un-Disney however. What story did I choose? You'll have to read and find out.

Split Decision

2011-12-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

And Split Decision is out! Don't know what it is about this December that has so many books of mine coming out but I'm not complaining. Well, I'm sure I'll think of something to complain about.

Split Decision is book #3 in the Fight Card series and I am so proud to be involved in this series. Each book is written by a different author and unified under the pseudonym of Jack Tunney. Books #1 and #2 are great reads, but there is no need to read them in order. Each is a throwback to the pulp fight novels of the 1930s and 40s. I know Felony Fists and The Cutman got it right and I only hope I did too. So far the response has been great.

Good news too is that in addition to the ebook there will be print versions with alternate covers featuring each author's own name, which is cool.

Dig Two Graves continues on with three 5-star reviews now on Amazon and an appearance on a best of 2011 list! British author Nick Quantrill (Broken Dreams and the upcoming The Late Greats) had some very nice things to say abut the book. Nick's work is one you should seek out. Get in on the start of his series because I'm sure it will be a long running one.

I was also thrilled to see One Too Many Blows To The Head still lives on and made Nigel Bird's Best of 2011 list. Sure the book is older but all that matters is that it is new to you and I'm glad Nigel enjoyed it so much.

I noticed that on the Dig Two Graves amazon page under the 'customer's also bought' (which I always love to see) that Borrowed Trouble and One Too Many were both in the mix. Hey, this is working the way it's supposed to. Someone reads a book, they like it, they seek out your other work. I'm thrilled to see the older books get a chance. I'm still so fond of them. And I know I'm speaking of them like they're in a retirement home but sometimes in the book world two years might as well be retirement age for a book.

Anyway, I'll be trying to blog around in guest spots and I'm enjoying my end of December not writing a thing (other than publicity stuff). I definitely like writing books better than sales pitches. Back to it soon.

Dig Two Graves trailer

2011-12-05T23:43:00.001-08:00

So I made a little trailer for Dig Two Graves. I know book trailers don't do squat for sales, but I had fun and it keeps my filmmaking muscles flexed, even when I only have a half hour to make something like with this. It makes me laugh anyway. Pass it around if you like it, put it on your own site, send it to your grandma. The point is, get it out there.

Start digging

2011-12-01T21:34:00.001-08:00

Today my novella Dig Two Graves hit the digital world courtesy of Snubnose Press. I'm proud and honored to have them on my side as this book makes its way in the world. We didn't do a special thanks page but if I had it would have thanked:

Jennifer Busskohl for early reading and not being shocked.
Brian Lindenmuth for taking it on and giving great notes. Yes, I even changed the ending for him.
To Sean Doolittle and Scott Phillips for giving great blurbs that humble me.
And to Sean Doolittle again for giving some 11th hour notes that made the book that much better. Thanks for not holding your tongue.

Thanks also to everyone who helped spread the word today. I'll try not to be too obnoxious with the self-promo but if anyone is going to know about this book I need to start the ball rolling. Hopefully others keep it moving downhill from there.

And Off The Record continues out there with every sale providing money to children's reading charities. Don't be a tightwad. What, you don't want kids to read? If they don't start now, who is going to buy my books about prison blowjobs when they grow up? Come on! (the new 5-star Amazon review singles out my story, California Dreamin' as "fabulous")

As a bonus, Keith Rawson has foolishly offered to give away a copy of him amazing short story collection, The Chaos We Know (also from Snubnose) with proof of purchase for Dig Two Graves. Take the fool for all he's worth! And damn, that collection is worth it.

Cavalcade of covers!

2011-11-21T21:58:00.001-08:00

With so much work coming out in the next month (not sure how that happened) I have been seeing and also creating covers for the books and now they are almost all done.

First up is my own design for Dig Two Graves, my novella with Snubnose Press that be will out very, very shortly. See the post below for that one.
The cover for my entry into the Fight Card series is in. Check this baby out! and then check out the first two books in the series, Felony Fists and Cutman. (yes they are all written by "Jack Tunney", but using that pen name are some fantastic writers like Paul Bishop, Mel Odom and soon Gary Phillips and more!)

Next up are two antholgies that are going to be great. First is Grimm Tales out from Untreed Reads (who also put out Discount Noir) Then there is Off The Record, a collection of song-themed short stories to benefit charity. It's a great collection of authors and I can't wait to read all the stories.

I need to get approval to post those covers but they both look great.

Of course I'll let you know when they are all available for purchase. In time for Christmas, that much I know!

Final Drafts and more Final Drafts

2011-11-16T23:19:00.001-08:00

Whew! I know I have been absent from any short story sites, or much of anything lately. I do have work to show for my head-down work ethic. Just handed in my second final draft in a week. Two different project each coming out by the end of the year.
Now to turn back to the novel I finished but need to clean up/rewrite/polish.
For a little fun break I have the Men of Mystery one day conference this weekend. Should be a fun time. Lawrence Block is the keynote speaker so I am looking forward to that for sure.

One of the drafts I handed in is for my entry in the Fight Card series that has just launched with two great novellas by Paul Bishop and Mel Odam, writing as Jack Tunney, as I will be soon. These are short, fast throwbacks to 40s and 50s boxing pulps and I have been lucky enough to read both books in advance and they are great. So up my alley I am incredibly pleased to have been invited along for the ride. I really hope my entry, Split Decision, holds up the standard. I will say that Paul Bishop (who invited me to play) said in his feedback on my first draft gave me the best compliment I bet I'll ever get when he said, "Made me feel like I was reading a vintage Gold Medal original." Yeah, so I'm happy with it.

The other project is my Novella for Snubnose press, Dig Two Graves. Below is a sneak peek at the cover. I'm 3 for 3 in designing my own covers after designing but not painting One Too Many Blows To The Head and doing all of Borrowed Trouble. (Split Decision will be someone else). Once it comes out I'll post my other design ideas and you can tell me if we chose the right one. Maybe time to hang out my shingle for cover design work. Like I need another job to do at night...

On a hot streak

2011-11-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

I'll dispense with the usual apology for not posting more and get right to the reasons.
Finishing drafts of a number of projects. The novella Dig Two Graves comes out soon on Snubnose Press. By the end of November if all proceeds as planned.
My other novella, Split Decision is set for December. More on that later.
Almost done with this novel that I love. Jennifer and I have finished our new collaboration and are waiting to hear the response.
But really, I've been reading. Damn, have I been reading. Flush from Bouchercon with a stack of new books I dug in and got lucky enough to get a few advances thrown my way. I'm here to tell you, some hot stuff coming your way soon.
First off, one that is out now is Already Gone by John Rector. I completely adored Rector's last book The Cold Kiss and Already Gone did not disappoint as a follow up. A white knuckle ride, all the cliches. Anyone who knows me knows that the quality I most admire in a book is not knowing what is coming next and Already Gone spun out of control so fast I could not keep up let alone try to predict what was coming next. Fantastic.

The there is Abide With Me from Ian Ayris. Ian is British and I've been a fan of his shorts for a while now. Ian stood out to me as having a very distinct voice. Very British and one I could always hear in my head as I read, you know? I was thrilled to hear he had a novel coming out and I was so keen to have one I ended up slipping through the Amazon cracks and ended up accidentally with a copy of the book a full five months (I think) before it comes out. Since I told Ian I got one in the mail they have stopped the presses and no more will be let loose in the wild until the actual release date.

Well, keep your eyes out for that because Abide With Me is one you will want to add to your list. I guess technically it is a novella. It's short anyway, but it reads very deeply. It is a crime story of sorts, but really it is quite a bit more and the crime tag will do it a disservice. It is a finely drawn character study of two young men in a working class British neighborhood growing up in the turbulent 70s and 80s.

John, our narrator, is a fully realized character with flesh on his bones and blood in his veins. The details and finely drawn characters let me immerse myself in a world I don't know at all but completely understood through the writing.
And then that voice! Ayris creates a world of language that transported me. And isn't that what fiction is all about? John's simple street language isn't fancy but it fits the character. Whenever I would dig into Abide With Me, I left Southern California and was dropped into a rain-soaked neighborhood of row houses and school yards, prisons and football pitches. I didn't always know what John was saying, though the slang became more clear as I went along and I feel like I could hold my own if I was dropped in a London suburb tomorrow. Sure, there's too much soccer...I mean football. But that is the world of Abide With Me and I wouldn't change a thing.
It really isn't until the last third that it becomes a true crime novel and by that point you have such an investment in the characters that what they go through in the finale is that much more heartbreaking.
It's literary, it's crime, it uses the word 'fuck' more than anything I've ever seen in my life. It is so much more than what the 150 page count will make you expect. Expect to be moved and taken to a whole different world that is as real as your own.

Then is Hell On Church Street by Jake Hinkson. I won't spoil my upcoming review in Criminal Element but suffice to say this book was one I'd been looking forward to and that is usually a set up for a big fall. Hell On Church Street was not a disappointment by any stretch. It may well be my favorite book of the year. This one is a keeper for a long time. I'll re-read it for sure and this one is going to be getting a lot of copies given out as gifts by me. It deserves to be a blockbuster and next time anyone asks what is a book that is exactly what I love about crime fiction, this is the one I'll tell them about. I could go on, and I will at Criminal Element. It comes out in December. Get it.

Yikes. Been a while.

2011-10-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

The trouble with having multiple places on the web to say things, share things and write things is that my own site gets neglected. Its hard enough for me to talk about myself at all so I tend not to do it in more than one place at a time.
But I do have more and more stuff out there.

First, I'm blogging officially for Criminal Element.

So all the lost posts that would go here have gone there where way more people will see them. I've done pieces on Breaking Bad, Mickey Spillane, Tom Waits and even my Boucheron recap. Swing by and leave a comment. I love comments.
I have a new story up at The Flash Fiction Offensive. It's been a while since I've had a short story out there so I'm grateful to David for accepting this one. I quite like the way it turned out.
I just turned in another story for a new anthology. That will be out later this year. Grimm Tales is still coming soon and until then John Kenyon can tide you over with his all-new Grift magazine.

D*cked is out, Pulp Ink is still going strong. Dig Two Graves is coming soon. Sheesh. Sick of me yet?
The Crime Factory: The First Shift anthology is stellar. And hey, I'm not in it. Read without risk of overexposure. Seriously though, some great, great stuff inside.

And this coming Sunday October 9th is the second Noir at the Bar L.A. featuring Pamila Payne, Jimmy Callaway, Matthew C. Funk, Lisa Brackmann and Christ Faust! What a lineup.
So come one, come all and bring a friend.

Sign here

2011-08-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time before someone figure it out, and thankfully the guy who did decided to put it out there for free. I signed up for Kindlegraph so if anyone out there wants a digital "signature" of a Kindle edition of anything I've written, just look me up. I apologize for my sloppy digital signature but my mouse skills are not the greatest, then again if anyone has my real signature, you might not be able to tell the difference. Legibility is not my strong suit.

Shockingly to me, as soon as I signed in I had a request waiting. It may be the only Kindlegraph I ever sign but it was nice to get one so quickly.

More stuff to sell

2011-08-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

That's right, on the heels of the amazing Pulp Ink collection comes D*CKED, the most twisted idea for an anthology I have ever heard of, let alone been a part of.

Yep, dark fiction inspired by ex-VP Dick Cheney. And that's me in there alongside PATRICIA ABBOTT, CAMERON ASHLEY, JEDIDIAH AYRES, GREG BARDSLEY, TONY BLACK, KEN BRUEN, JIMMY CALLAWAY, RACHEL CANON, HILARY DAVIDSON, JASON DUKE, BILL FITZHUGH, MATTHEW C. FUNK, HARRY HUNSICKER, SCOTT PHILLIPS ,KEITH RAWSON ,MARK RICHARDSON, AL RISKE, MARCUS SAKEY, KIERAN SHEA, OWEN SMITH, STEVE WEDDLE

Can you believe that? I'm in the midst of all that talent. Mssrs. Bardsley, Ayres and Shea are the masterminds behind it and I am grateful to them for inviting me to the table. It was a difficult assignment. I started three different stories. I quite like the one I ended up with. A very unexpected narrator. A first for me, that's for sure.

D*CKED is out as a real book and now has both Kindle and Nook versions. As with Pulp Ink, this is a collection well worth your time and a few dollars. Just when you think you've recovered from the scorching Pulp Ink gave you, get some seriously dark fiction and a few laughs from D*CKED.

Pulp Ink is here!

2011-08-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

The anthology Pulp Ink has arrived. I'm very excited to be included in this collection of short stories inspired by the names of music tracks off the soundtrack from the film Pulp Fiction. Everyone has such a unique take on their inspiration title. And who are those everyones? Just look at this lineup:
Allan Guthrie
Reed Farrel Coleman
Gary Phillips
Hilary Davidson
Matthew C. Funk
Paul D. Brazill
AJ Hayes
Michael J. Solender
Richard Godwin
Naomi Johnson
Jimmy Callaway
Sandra Seamans
Patti Abbott
Jodi MacArthur
David Cranmer
Chris F. Holm
Jason Duke
Eric Beetner
Ian Ayris
Kate Horsley
Matt Lavin
Jim Harrington
Nigel Bird
Chris Rhatigan

Yeah, that's my name in there with so many great writers. Everyone is at the top of their game too. Anthology masterminds Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan have really collected one of the strongest lineups I've ever seen. Hope you like my story, but really I had an unfair advantage. Of all the titles on the soundtrack, I was handed "Zed's Dead Baby" How could I not be inspired?

This starts the late sumer of anthologies for me. Soon will see the release of D*cked and then Grimm Tales drops in Sept. All three of these are collections I am so proud and flattered to be a part of.

In other news I should have written about sooner but acts as excuse for why I didn't: I'm blogging now for Criminal Element. I've had a few pieces up already and I'm working on more. It's great to be a part of that community and a really great site for all things crime and mystery fiction. I'll do better to post links like HERE , HERE and HERE .

Sublime

2011-07-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

When you're a small time author, like me, you take what you can get. Usually what you can get is a bent nose from all the doors slamming in your face, but once in a while you get reminded why you do this. Sure, each night you write something you actually like is a thrill and really is the gas on which the engine runs, but the jolt of Nitro we all need every now and then is knowing that someone is actually reading the stuff.

Enter Nigel Bird – writer, teacher, British person. He and I have exchanged pleasantries over each others short stores for a while now. He even beat me out in a contest and still I like the chap, in a cyber never-met-him way.

He likes our book. He read it on vacation (marking our first official entry into the summer vacation reads category) and he wrote about how he liked it. Reading an unsolicited opinion, where he has nothing to gain at all from writing about our work, is a real thrill. Of course any time someone uses the words "Masterpiece" and "Sublime" in talking about your writing, you're bound to think it's the best book review you've ever read.

Anyway, thanks Nigel. You've given me a real boost.

Noir at the Bar in the books

2011-07-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

And it was a success! We had a great turnout for the inaugural Noir at the Bar L.A. and many requests to do it again so it looks like we're a hit. It was a ton of fun with some great readings including a brand new piece of Noir from our headliner Duane Swierczynski.

Check out the pictures below.

The story I read was a sneak peek of Safety which was published today over at Shotgun Honey. Proud to have another one up there. People seemed to dig it. They laughed in the right spots and were horrified at the other right spots. Check it out.

I also need to shout out to my pal Greg Bardsley for the sale of his book CASH OUT. He's a hell of a writer and has been slugging it out in the trenches for plenty of time. You'll be hearing more about him, mark my words.

My favorite shot I got of Duane. Love the Crime Wave title in the BG. I brought my DVD of old Film Noir trailers and we let that run on the projector all night. It made a great backdrop for the readings.

I introduce the night's events.

Holly O'Neil West graced us with a reading from her unpublished manuscript.

So cool to have a mix of styles.

Josh Stallings gave us a taste of Moses McGuire from his newly published Out There Bad.

Josh read some seriously dark noir. The crowd loved it.

Full house!

Duane reads from Breakneck, an all new in-the-works project.

My co-conspirator Stephen Blackmoore reads his short story from Uncage Me

against a hell of a backdrop.

We are so NOT badasses. (Me, Blackmoore and the Mystery Dawg!)

Holly gets a little help from Ida Lupino.

It was a great night. Onward to the next!

Packing heat

2011-07-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

My goal all along in this writing thing is to have a body of work. More than just one novelty item in the bargain bins. (something I barely escaped in my music career.) And while I have said body lurking in files on my computer, the whole point is to get it out there.
I had plans to let loose a novella that I wrote a while back by doing it myself to Kindle like all the cool kids are doing these days. Then a new imprint popped up called Snubnose Press . It was started by the fine folks at Spinetingler , so immediately I knew it would be quality and I knew the style would suit my own. They called for submissions so I threw this 24,000 word piece at 'em and guess what? They liked it.

So I am proud to announce that Snubnose Press will publish the ebook of Dig Two Graves, a nasty revenge tale with a main character some people will hate, some will love and some with love to hate. I'm really proud to be in the rookie season of Snubnose along with some of my favorite writers and cyber pals like Keith Rawson and Patti Abbott who both have short story collections coming out.

More to come as the sumer progresses. Right now I need to get to work on revisions and add all the spit and polish to make this thing as good as it can be. But dang I'm proud and happy to be part of the Snubnose family.

Solstice update

2011-07-05T23:34:00.000-07:00

Well, 2011 is half over. Is that pessimistic? Does it work with anything beyond glasses of water? Either way there is both nothing new under the sun and lots of tiny things to report.

First off I am proud to be co-hosting the launch of Noir at the Bar in Los Angeles. It's high time we brought this gathering of crime writers and readers to our fair city. We scrambled and snagged a bar that was willing to host us on Sunday the 17th of July so we could get everyone's favorite writer of pulse pounding thrills and off-the-wall speedball-laced prose, Duane Swierczynski to be our featured guest. Whether through guilt or just a lack of anything else to do in L.A. over the pending Carpocolypse weekend, Duane agreed to grace us with his holiness.

Also reading short bits of fiction will be my co-host Stephen Blackmoore, the up-and-comer Josh Stallings (who Elizabeth White is about to anoint with oils) and the as-yet-unpublished-but-give-it-time Holly O'Neill West and your truly.

So come on out and bring a friend. It's free!

I got a pair of rejections over the recent holiday weekend. I really don't mind them. I don't get depressed. It bothers me much more when things are out there and pending.

Of course it did help that mixed in with those No thank you's was an acceptance letter I am really psyched about. It's too early to talk about yet but contracts have been sent and revisions are underway based on the editor/publisher's notes. Watch this space for more.

My reading is keeping up for a record year of books under the old belt. I'm on Fun & Games right now and loving it, as I knew I would. I recently set aside a book I plan to come back to but it just wasn't holding me, surprisingly for this author. And with Duane's latest calling me from the top of the TBR pile I had to put that other book on pause.

Getting close to the big dump of all my anthologies this summer. More on that too as it comes in. All good stuff.

I've long complained that the pace of publishing is glacial. Those big ass ice shelves might move slowly, but they move constantly. As long as I keep up a slow push seaward, I'm happy. Meanwhile, I tap tap tap away at night building the body of work. The next thing is always the best. And I always wish the days were longer. Words - words - more words!!!

We're number 2! We're number 2!

2011-06-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

I am honored, humbled and shocked to have taken 2nd place in The Drowning Machine blog's third annual Watery Grave Invitational with my story Fingerprints.

Naomi Johnson holds this annual event with an eye to giving writers just enough fence to keep it interesting but still allow us to run free. This year's challenge was to use a horse somewhere in the story. How and in what form was up to us. Some people were literal, others more obtuse. The first thing that came to my mind was the phrase, "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on." Sorry, just how my brain works I guess.

From that nugget I imagined two guys after a bad job, one with a missing (or very nearly missing) finger. It spiraled out of control from there. I quite like the way this one turned out. I'm sure I'd rewrite certain sections again but I'm proud of it regardless.

Taking first place was the excellent Chris La Tray and in third was the always fantastic Chad Eagleton. Fourth was the wonderful British writer Ian Ayris and in a tie for fifth was Nigel Bird and Patti Abbott. Can you beat that group? Like I said - honored, humbled and shocked.

Hope you like the story and do take time to read all the winning entries.

Summer is here - challenge time

2011-06-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

Steve Weddle, one of my favorite short fiction writers and online raconteurs, has thrown out a challenge on the fantastic Do Some Damage blog. A Noir-ish story about summer. Well, how could I resist?
I threw this down, no doubt inspired by the hours of time I've spent reading interview transcripts for work.
Steve requested to keep it short, but I can't seem to do that too well these days so mine clock in a little longer - 2,900 words. Sorry. I think it's a quick read regardless, about one Dad's very, very bad day at the beach.
Enjoy and visit Do Some Damage on the 20th for links to all the stories in this challenge. There are sure to be some greats.
QUICK NOTE: the .99 Kindle sale of both of our books - One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble continues until the 21st so if you're reading this on the 20th for the challenge day you still have time to grab two great crime novels for dirt cheap on the Kindle. Check out what people had to say about them on the column to the right.

MELTDOWN

by Eric Beetner

Homicide detective D’Amica handed Max a styrofoam cup of ice water and sat across from him at the interrogation table.

“Thanks,” Max said, lifting the cup to his lips and slurping at the drink, hunched over since the restraints pinning him to the chair gave very little slack. The handcuffs and chains argued noisily every time he moved his arms.

D’Amica set a pen on top of a yellow legal pad on the table between them and then ignored it. The recorders would get it all and someone else would transcribe it later. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and go from there. That’s usually how this works.”

“Okay. Well, it was so damn hot today.” Max tried tilting the cup for another drop of water, but the angle wasn’t right.

“Yeah, funny things happen when the heat rises.”

“You ever see anything like this, detective?”

“Can’t say I have. But I’d still like to have you tell it.”

“Okay. From the start, huh?”

TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW WITH MAX ELLSWORTH (Suspect)

INTERVIEWING OFFICER: MIKE D’AMICA

Aug. 16 – 5:06 p.m.

Det. D’Amica:

Okay, we’re on record here. Mr. Ellsworth, please tell us what happened today in your own words.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Well, we were at the beach.

Det. D’Amica:

Who’s we?

Mr. Ellsworth:

Me and my son, Izzy. He loves the beach. He’s autistic so it’s hard to find good places to take him, but he loves the ocean. I think the sound soothes him. And when he’s swimming the motion really helps calm him down.

Anyway, He wanted an ice cream. It’s so damn hot out there today. It’s gotta be over a hundred. Is it over a hundred, do you know?

Det. D’Amica:

I believe it is.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Right, so I go to buy Izzy an ice cream from a guy with a cart. The guy is rolling around on the bike path ringing his bell and there’s a few people gathered around. I order a rocket pop, the red, white and blue kind, y’know? I guess that’s more of an icee, not an ice cream, but you get the idea.

The guy with the cart is Mexican or Guatemalan or something so when he says, “One fifty” I can’t understand him at first. I ask him to say it like three times and there’s this other guy, this big douche bag guy who’s getting all impatient. Then Izzy starts in because he wants his rocket pop. He doesn’t even know the meaning of the word patience. The ice cream guy won’t give it up until he gets paid, which I totally understand, so I start digging in my pocket for two quarters to go with the dollar bill already in my hand.

Well, the douche bag guy says something like, “I wanted one of those too. Here you go. Keep the change.” And he gives the guy two bucks and takes the rocket pop and starts walking away.

Izzy starts freaking out. Now, mind you, these freak outs can last up to an hour, which I don’t really want at the end of a long day when it’s a hundred degrees out, right?

Normally I would have just let it go.

Det. D’Amica:

Uh-huh. Instead you chased him down.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Well, I yelled after him, “Hey, dickhead, that was my kid’s ice cream.” The guy with the cart got out another one right away, but to Izzy that’s not the point, okay? In terms of his freak outs we’re at, like, Defcon two. I really didn’t want it to get any worse.

Initially I was going to go give the guy my dollar fifty and take the ice cream back and give it to Izzy. I mean, the guy could see the kid was starting to lose it. I mean, a few people around were starting to stare. An older couple on the sand started packing up their umbrella and chairs and giving me these looks like I’m disturbing them. I guess I was being kinda loud.

But the dude, the guy gives me the finger over his shoulder as he walks away! All I’m trying to do is get my kid the ice cream I promised him and this guy’s got to go and get all dickish about it.

Maybe it was the heat, I don’t know. I went after him. He was all of maybe ten paces away, not even. I didn’t even say anything, I was too pissed off. All I have is Izzy in my ears starting that high pitched noise he makes.

So I get to the guy and I try grabbing him to spin him around, y’know, face me like a man. Only he’s got no shirt on and when I grab his shoulder, right on top of that stupid tribal tattoo, my hand slipped off because of all the sunscreen so I end up more like punching him forward. But anyone there will tell you I didn’t hit him. I was trying to grab him and spin him around.

Det. D’Amica:

We’ve spoken to witnesses.

Mr. Ellsworth:

And they told you, right?

Det. D’Amica:

Please continue.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Well . . . that’s when he . . . I mean, I kinda pushed him forward – by accident! – and he fell. I think he must have tripped up in some of the old couple’s junk. A beach towel or something. Anyway he fell and . . . and then . . .

Det. D’Amica:

Please Mr. Ellsworth. Tell us in your own words.

Mr. Ellsworth:

That old bastard, pardon my language, but that old guy had that umbrella out in front of him like a spike, y’know? And this guy, the jerk guy who should have just . . . should have let my kid have an ice cream . . . (Suspect begins crying) He fell forward and the tip of the umbrella went, y’know . . . into his eye I guess.

(Suspect breaks down. Cries.)

And then the old guy, the fat old guy he kinda falls forward because now his umbrella is stuck in the eye socket of some stranger, and he falls forward and he’s so damn big that when he comes down . . . Jesus, I’ll never get it out of my mind . . . that umbrella comes poking out the other side of the guy’s head.

(Suspect crying)

I mean, all I wanted . . . all I wanted was [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

[NON-INTERVIEW]

Det. D’Amica:

Better now? Let’s continue.

Mr. Ellsworth:

So people start screaming and running all around. I mean, I don’t blame them. I didn’t know what the fuck, excuse me, what the hell to do.

First thing is I look back at Izzy. He’s gone silent. In a lot of ways that’s worse than the fits. His silent phases can last days. He just shuts down like he’s in a trance or something. I forget what the doctor’s clinical name for it is.

I guess I kinda blanked out too. I knew how it looked. Everyone was pointing at me and yelling like I’d spiked the guy’s head with the umbrella myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the old guy. It was an accident. A freak accident.

What can I say? I panicked. I saw the number eighteen bus and I just had that impulse to get the hell out of there. To get my son to safety. I honest to God thought there was going to be an angry mob any second and they would have torn me apart. Really, I did.

So I grabbed Izzy’s hand and we ran.

Det. D’Amica:

That’s when the incident at the bus happened?

Mr. Ellsworth:

Yeah. Do you think I could get another one of those ice waters? It’s just so friggin’ hot.

Det. D’Amica:

We can do that. Keep going, please.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Well, we made it to the bus, but like I said people were starting to get pissed and think I did it on purpose. So I guess this guy, this surfer dude, thought I’d just murdered someone or something. He didn’t even see what happened. All he saw was people screaming and me running away with my kid. Oh, man, I wonder if he thought I was kidnapping Izzy? Do you think that’s what he thought?

Det. D’Amica:

I wouldn’t know.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Anyway, so Izzy is catatonic, the bus is about to leave, this guy is coming up fast behind me. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I got Izzy inside the back door just in time. The bus driver must have been clueless, like they all are.

The doors close and this guy has got his hands around my waist trying to tackle me. I’m thinking, great, the damn bus is gonna leave without me, but this guy is posing a more immediate problem, right?

So I shake him off. I kinda flip him over my hip. I just wanted to get to Izzy and think of something to do. I didn’t have time for some vigilante surfer, y’know?

So he flips over and lands with his butt on the curb and his head in the gutter. And the bus takes off. I mean, this driver ought to be held responsible because he was obviously not paying attention at all. I mean, how could that possibly be my fault?

Det. D’Amica:

Just tell us what happened, please.

Mr. Ellsworth:

The damn bus rolled right over his head, that’s what happened. God, I’ll never get that out of my mind either.

[Suspect is brought water. NON-INTERVIEW]

Det. D’Amica:

And we’re back on record. Mr. Ellsworth, you’ve told us there are now two bodies and you didn’t think to stop and wait for the police?

Mr. Ellsworth:

Look, I know there were two bodies but you gotta understand, now my kid is on a bus that’s driving away from me. Izzy isn’t the kind of kid who can fend for himself. Especially when he’s in shutdown mode like he was. Or if he broke out of that and started a tantrum on the bus – people would have called the cops on him and he could have hurt himself.

I know you probably don’t believe any of this, but I was doing this for my son. I’m all he’s got, detective. I’m supposed to be the one who takes care of him, keeps him safe.

(Suspect crying)

God, I fucked up, didn’t I?

Det. D’Amica:

Tell me about the cab driver.

Mr. Ellsworth:

So I gotta catch the bus, right? I hop in a cab that’s right there. I mean, he’s right friggin’ there. I say, “Follow that bus.”

This guy, he won’t budge. He sees the crowd outside, the people screaming and looking down at the guy who just lost his head under a bus wheel. He says he won’t take me anywhere and I should get out of his cab.

I could have said a lot of things, y’know? I mean they were on the tip of my tongue. The guy was an Arab. Second guy in a row with an accent I couldn’t understand. And he’s telling me what to do?

My autistic son is speeding away to who knows where and this guy won’t give me a ride to follow him?

So I start yelling. I wasn’t thinking straight right then. I told him, forcefully I guess, that I needed to follow that bus. I didn’t say anything racial or stereotyping or anything, even though I could have. I honest to God did my level best to be respectful but forceful, y’know?

So what does he do? Pulls a gun on me.

Fine, he needs a gun for robbers and stuff. All I am is a Dad who’s freaked the fuck out and needs to find my son. Sorry about that. I’ll try to watch the language.

But, okay he wants me out of his cab that bad, I get out. Only then I let slip one of the racial things in my head. I shouldn’t have said it, I know. I don’t even remember what it was, but it was stupid and I shouldn’t have said it.

I guess he was pissed at me or maybe he thought he had a citizen’s arrest on his hands or something, but he follows me out and that’s when I hear the cop cars.

Surely you guys got a hundred calls about what’s going on and so this cruiser pulls up and I think, “Great, I’m fucked.” Excuse my language again.

I put my hands up. Ask anyone, I did. And then these cops start shooting like crazy. Only not at me, at the cab driver. It was insane. I felt like I was in Baghdad or something.

Det. D’Amica:

I think the officers on the scene were thinking terrorist situation at the moment.

Mr. Ellsworth:

I’m sure they were. And I don’t blame them. A guy with a beard and that accent waving a gun and then all those people screaming and a headless body in the gutter and another one on the beach with an umbrella through his skull? I don’t blame them one bit. But you can see how I don’t think I should be blamed either, right?

Det. D’Amica:

Let’s just stick to the facts of the story, Mr. Ellsworth. Is that when you took the cab?

Mr. Ellsworth:

Yeah. All that shooting, people were ducking and diving everywhere. The closest place for me to go was inside the cab. I saw an opportunity to get to Izzy before the bus got too far away, and I took it.

I’m telling you, that’s all I was thinking about.

Det. D’Amica:

So you stole the taxi?

Mr. Ellsworth:

I got away from a shootout in the street, although I sure as hell don’t think that driver got off any shots. I mean, I’m sure those cops thought they were foiling a major terrorist plot or something.

But, yeah, I took the cab and went after the bus.

I knew where the number eighteen was going so I went east away from the beach. Like, three blocks later I saw the bus. Every other time I’m behind a bus while I’m driving I’m cursing them like crazy for being so slow. This time, I was really glad about it.

So that’s when this guy, I don’t even know what his deal was, this guy tries to hail me down thinking I’m a cab driver.

Det. D’Amica:

Wonder why he’d think that?

Mr. Ellsworth:

I know, but . . . sorry. Anyway. He tries to flag me down, steps half way into the street like I don’t see him. He starts cursing me out when he can tell I’m not stopping. I don’t know what was up this guy’s ass. Must be the heat again.

Anyway, I zip past him and he steps out and slaps the back of the cab. I heard it bang on there, loud. He’s calling me names and saying he’s gonna write down my license. I looked in the rearview just because the guy was making such a fuss, y’know? Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen it.

Det. D’Amica:

And?

Mr. Ellsworth:

He stepped out fully into the lane to bitch me out and I guess the guy behind me wasn’t paying attention or got distracted by all the commotion. What I saw was the guy get creamed. He flew up and over the hood and was all flopping arms and legs. I have no idea what happened to him but–

Det. D’Amica:

He’s dead.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Well, again, not really something that could be considered my fault, is it?

Det. D’Amica:

That’s for a jury to decide. Continue.

Mr. Ellsworth:

Oh, Jesus.

[Suspect goes silent for several minutes]

Det. D’Amica:

Mr. Ellsworth, are you ready to continue?

Mr. Ellsworth:

That’s all there is. I caught up to the bus, got out at a stop light and went inside and found Izzy. He was just sitting there like he was watching TV or something. The bus driver started yelling at me about not paying. Guess he finally started paying attention.

I just sat there and held onto my son. I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen.

Then you guys arrested me on the bus. And now I’m here.

Det. D’Amica:

Okay, Mr. Ellsworth. I want to thank you for being honest with me today. And we’re going off record.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

D’Amica glanced at his watch, noting the time. No dinner with the wife tonight. The paperwork on this thing would take all night. He waved in an officer through the two-way mirror.

Max rattled his chains as he drained the last from his cup of ice water. A patrolman in blue unshackled Max from the chair and pulled him to standing.

“We’ll get you back to holding now, Mr. Ellsworth,” Detective D’Amica said.

“And Izzy?”

D’Amica held the door open as Ellsworth shuffled into the hall rattling like Marley’s ghost.

D’Amica nodded a head to a bench where Izzy sat next to his Mom. She held a worried look on her face that deepened when she saw Max in handcuffs. Izzy held a double scooped ice cream cone that consumed all of his focus.

Max smiled, turned to D’Amica with wet eyes. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem.” D’Amica held Max by the arm and walked him down the hall without stopping.

Izzy didn’t notice his father going by.

Busy Hamster

2011-05-31T00:32:00.000-07:00

Now and again I need to remind myself that my idea of being busy isn't always the same as other people's. I've had several friends and coworkers seem genuinely confused that I find time to get things done like write books. These days I remind people that I don't have band practice twice a week any more and the usual response is, "Yes, but you have two kids." Touche.

In our recent interview with Jed Ayres at the Ransom Notes blog my co-author Jennifer even said, "He has more energy than a thousand hamsters on a thousand wheels."

So when I've been taking time to actually enjoy a week off from day-job work and any writing work last week I felt like a slacker. Then to come back to this three-day weekend made me feel even worse.
Tonight though, I wrote chapter 1 of the new book with Jennifer. Step one on a very long road but I am grateful to once again be making the trip with my travel partner.

I also took a little time to poke around the web and found this REVIEW by the wonderful Elizabeth White, or as she calls herself the All Purpose Monkey. She likes Borrowed Trouble and that makes me happy. She is a voice I trust since she likes a lot of the same things I like. And now I can quote lines like, "the story virtually leaps of the page with vivid details."

Also did my requisite reading of The Rap Sheet and linked through to Cullen Gallagher's always entertaining Pulp Serenade for his list of 50 great Gold Medal book titles to find that he gave a shout-out to my piece for Mulholland Books site. Did I mention that here, even? Can't recall. Either way Cullen's list makes certain my eBay watch list will grow a bit longer. Since having kids I have curtailed my Film Noir poster collecting but hunting down cheap pulp titles is truly my kind of sport. I set low price cutoffs for myself and still have managed to find some real gems. Even the crappy books look great on the shelf.

Also this week issue #6 of Crimefactory was welcomed into the world. It features a TON of stuff (200 pages worth!) including my story My Asshole Brother which is not new but finds a wonderful home at the factory. Soon to be in print!

Our Summer Sale on Kindle versions of the books is coming on June 1st and as soon as I have confirmation that the price is adjusted I hope people will help spread the word.

Now I have a story due on the 5th I need to write. A novella to put up on Kindle. A solo novel to finish outlining. A call due to my agent. Revisions on a completed manuscript. Yeah, it's a slow week.

Why I love pulp fiction

2011-05-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

And here's why I love reading vintage pulp fiction on my lunch break:

"The house had once been imposing. Now it was a shabby house surrounded by a shabby yard in a beggarly section of town. Grimy warehouses and factories had pushed up around it like weeds, leaving a tragic relic, pathetic as a bridal gown in a garbage can.

A board walk led to a sagging porch, where the door gaped open like a dead man's jaws. I rapped on the doorsill and peered into a dim room from which issued the bad breath of decay."

The Kiss-Off, Douglas Heyes, 1951

Another great book found through Friday's Forgotten Books (courtesy of Bill Crider who seems to have read everything). If you aren't checking out the weekly posts, you're really missing out. You'll never be short of what to read again.

summer sale a-coming!

2011-05-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

I've been out of town for a whole week. That's five plane trips so far this year, which is unusual for me and I must say I'm over it.
But, back home and back at it. We did a great little interview with Jed Ayres over at the Barnes & Noble site on his great mystery blog Ransom Notes. Jed does the best interviews. Fun, quirky questions. Check it out.

The big news is that Second Wind has graciously agreed to let us run a sale on the Kindle edition of both books for June. From June 1 to June 21 One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble will both be only .99! Three weeks of ultra cheap ebooks!
And that's after Amazon dropped the price to $4.99 to stay inline with the Nook and iBooks price. It essentially means we are forfeiting all profits for that period but that's okay if we get people to sample the books and tell a friend. Word is a few other Second Wind authors may get in on the fun and people can sample a slew of SW books.

Not that anyone reads this blog but if anyone does and y'all want a free ebook in exchange for a review of said book, let me know. If .99 is just too steep for you (or someone you know) let me know and all we ask in return is that you write up a review and post it where other people can see it. If you like it, that is. If you hate the books, keep it to yourself. Unless you hate them so much you feel the world must know to stay away. That would just be funny.

I've been reading some great books lately too. I need to do a wrap-up of those. Some great old-timey pulps. Read my first Gil Brewer and felt like an idiot I hadn't gotten to him sooner. Just got a few in the mail today including Fast One by Paul Cain, an mysterious and enigmatic pulp writer from the 1930s

and I have the first two Mike Hammer novels in vintage paperbacks so I can get off my ass and read some vintage Spillane.

May already?

2011-05-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

So Blogger was down for a while. It was the talk of the web for a day or two. I wouldn't have known of course since I'm so slacker-y about posting.
But now here I am with actual content to post. First, I submitted my story for the upcoming Pulp Ink anthology which is going to be a phenomenal collection. Out later this summer. Really looking forward to reading what the others come up with for that one.
Getting closer to the release of the Grimm Tales anthology as well. Some great stories in that as well. And to round out a summer of anthologies, I've seen the proof copy of D*cked and, dang I'm proud to be in that one as well. My piece plays as more of a trifle but people really ran with the concept on that one (All stories centered around Dick Cheney).

Tony Black has brought Pulp Pusher back from the dead. His excellent e-zine was a real loss when he shuttered it last year but now he's back and he's begun posting archived stories which means my story My First Crime has a home again. So excited because I always liked that one and I love being published by Pulp Pusher.

The next step has been taken in bringing out my first direct-to-ebook thingy, a novella called KNUCKLES. Watch this space for details to come on that one. A summer release, not sure when though.

Jen and I have started on a new collaboration and so far so good. It's a new one, not Ray and Dean again.

And of course I'm still waiting to hear anything on the manuscripts flouting out there in the world. My mantra has become Stay Patient. I am not good at it.

Lastly it looks like the publisher is going to go for my crazy idea to drop the price of the Kindle editions of One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble to .99 for the month of June or at least most of it. Not sure why I would work to stage a sale that means we forfeit all royalties but I just want people to read the books. Forward thinking of me or shortsighted and dumb? Remains to be seen.

Having a Bookgasm

2011-04-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Luckily I am not the one who came up with that term - bookgasm. It is the name of a book review site, and a trustworthy one at that. Good news is they seem to like both One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble. Yay for us.
They called One Too Many, "like a post-modern Gold Medal novel. " and said, "Kohl and Beetner have a real knack for this type of storytelling." Of Borrowed Trouble they said, "The book is a fantastic follow-up"

It's so nice to see reviews start to trickle in, especially good ones. Do reviews work? Yes they do, according to my scientific study which involved checking the Amazon rankings of both books before and after the Bookgasm article. Before both books were hovering between 1.5 and 1.7 million. Now they both sit in the mid hundred thousands.
I haven't written squat in a few weeks which was by choice, but I'm gearing up to finish some shorts that are due as well as plotting out the next novel and starting on a new project with Jennifer. Plus I've started looking into what all is involved with putting up a novella on Kindle. I'm sure it's easier than it seems right now. Above all I need to get it edited. I'm sure there is a bunch of stuff I'm not seeing even after going through it multiple times and I want it to be right.
Should be a fun-filled summer.

Back to the real Left Coast

2011-03-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

So, not much to report from the rest of my time at Left Coast Crime. Sold a few books, not many but that's fine. Met some great new people and once again was welcomed graciously by some old friends who didn't mind me clinging on to them the whole weekend (Thanks Rebecca!)
Sadly none of my friends won any awards but I was glad to see so many nominated.

My panel on Sunday went well. Nice to hang out with Kelli Stanley again and I was dismayed and angered to hear that she arrived home to discover she'd been robbed. They took all her jewelry and some other stuff. There are some cretinous scum in the world. Hope they get what's coming to them.

My pal Rachel Brady wins the outstanding moderator of the weekend award. Her panel was lively, fast-paced and fun. More moderators should take tips from Rachel, who is a sunny personality anyway.

Back home and back to the grind of trying to find a bookstore that will have me and the books for a signing, or even just to carry them in the store! This has proven much harder than I expected. The kind folks at The Mystery Bookstore spoiled me. I still really hate that no one will even write me back. Give me a "No, thanks" or even a simple "No" but reply at least! Those books I sent cost me money. Ah, the struggles of the indie author.

I started the research phase of putting up and ebook novella. I know nothing about formatting and all that jazz so this will take a while. I do love designing covers though so that will be fun. Must finish the revision on the new novel and then go over the novella again and send it out to some fresh eyes for editing. Have to put the best foot forward don't ya know.

Some books this summer that I'm really excited about. I'm making headway on the old TBR pile to get ready.

Left Not-Quite-The-Coast Crime report #1

2011-03-26T00:07:00.000-07:00

Three things I'm already sick of after only one day in Santa Fe for Left Coast Crime:
1. Turquoise
2. Navajo Rugs
3. Discussions about eBooks

I'll ignore how dry it is here and how, as someone who lives on the Left Coast, New Mexico is hardly the coast. But aside from my silly griping Santa Fe is playing a marvelous host to a very well run LCC so far.

As always the big bonus for me is getting to hang with writer friends and this time is no exception. Paling around with Rebecca Cantrell and Deb Ledford. Sharing hugs with Kelli Stanley and looking forward to our panel together. Breakfast with Stephen Jay Schwartz. Bumping in to good guys like Kenneth Wishnia and Mike Befeler who I know only from the confines of conferences is great.

I chose some panels about publishing today to see what people were saying and I have no right to be surprised that people were all a-flutter about ebooks and all that entails. Enough already. They're not coming, they're here. Some people will make a bunch of money off them, most people won't. Books will still exists.
As one agent on a panel put it when asked about the chapter 11 of Borders and the downsizing of B&N being the clarion call that bookselling is dead, "Their demise had nothing to do with publishing or selling books, it had to do with their business model. When GM went under no one said it was the end of the car."
There's more to be said on this but everyone has said it already. I'm sure I'll have something out direct to Kindle this year and I can join in the fun all the cool kids are having.

I signed two books today (wheee!) I bought a few more old pulps. The two I started picking through at dinner didn't catch me right away but they still have great covers and they were cheap.

Tomorrow brings more panels and the awards ceremony at night where we will see Rebecca and Kelli duke it out for the Bruce Alexander award (my video camera is ready) And I keep fingers crossed for Deb Ledford in the Hillerman Sky award and Rachel Brady in the Watson award.

Steve Brewer is the toastmaster and I know he'll be great at it. I'm still such a huge fan of Steve's books I'm glad to see him in the spotlight a little bit.
Other than that, not much to report. I can't sleep for some reason so I figured I'd dash out a little update. I must say I miss my girls at home. I've been out of town four times this year which is unusual for me. Daddy will be home soon girls!

Before I go

2011-03-23T00:51:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything for a while but I've had no real news to report other than frustration and annoyance. But that's no fun. So, the good stuff:

This Thursday I head off to sunny Santa Fe for Left Coast Crime. I had a blast last year so I hope this time around is just as fun. Of course last year was in my home town so this time around is costing quite a bit more . . .
I have a panel on Friday morning at 9am (!) and one on Sunday at 11:00. No booksellers stepped up from the seller's room to order books so I'll be bringing books to consign. Very happy that Southwest doesn't charge for bags! I wish I could just sell them myself but I'm not set up to make change or take credit cards. Plus, I have a feeling they frown on that type of thing, even though no booksellers chose to carry my books. I wonder.

I'm into revisions on my newest novel and the good news is that I really like it. I enjoyed it as I was writing but that glow of discovery can fade quickly. I let it sit for about three weeks so now when I read it through it is all new. Not finding too many mistakes even, which is a bonus.
I have a few short stories that are either due or I just want to write and Jennifer and I are plotting out our next venture. Where does the time go?

All in all I've been feeling very exhausted with the writing thing. With the book still fairly new I'm trying not to take a break from promotion but I've run out of much I can do. Still some guest posts pending and reviews are coming but those take time. Good news spurs me along but hitting a stone wall makes continuing at the same difficult. I know I'm not alone.

Don't you hate it when people don't email you back? As an indie author I have to put myself out there and open myself up to rejection, which I am fine with. But to be ignored is worse in my book. Tell me no but tell me something. That's my complaint corner for this post.

I've been reading some great books lately. A trip to Chicago let me finish off another Steve Hockensmith and it was as good as the rest. Excited that I'm behind in that series and have a few more to go. I read Nobody Move by Denis Johnson and enjoyed it quite a bit. I've been digging in to my old pulps as well (see below). I was liking those so much that I went on the old eBay and bought up a few classics I'd never read. The Asphalt Jungle, The Big Heat and Double Indemnity as well as a few other pulps I'd never heard of but were only .99. I figure if you're going to read an old book, why not read an old book of an old book?
I'm into yet another Victor Gischler, Suicide Squeeze, and loving it as usual. He's one that I purposely have kept a few aside to savor when I know I need a good read. I think this catches me up with his entire catalog though. Maybe after that it's time to finally read the last Duane Swierczynski I've been putting off. But by then maybe Fun & Games will be out!

Fingers crossed I'll have fun stories to report after this weekend. Maybe even a few book sales.

Friday's forgotten books: You'll Get Yours

2011-03-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

FORGOTTEN BOOKS:

You’ll Get Yours by Thomas Wills

When choosing old pulp novels I will freely admit to judging a book by its cover. Both title and artwork factor heavily into picking a book I know nothing about by an author I’ve never heard of. It doesn’t help that so many of the writers in the 40s and 50s wrote under several different names.

This is true of Thomas Wills, pen name of author William Ard, not that his real name would have meant anything either.

As part of a fistful of old pulps I picked up recently You’ll Get Yours was very promising based on the great title and marvelously tawdry early 50s artwork. The same night I bought it I cracked open the first chapter and I was hooked. What a grabber! The rest of the slim novel did not disappoint my pulp fiction loving brain.

Pulp is like the famous definition of pornography - I can’t describe it but I know it when I see it. You’ll Get Yours is pure pulp, uncut. A first-person detective tale told in flashback with a society dame trying to hide her past, a sleazy lothario, a heroin addicted stripper, a chase down to Mexico, a ridiculously short romance leading to marriage and plenty of bullets.

Is it high art? No way. That’s not what I was in the market for nor was the author trying to do. This is rock ‘em sock ‘em twenty-five cent action in a book you can fit in your pocket. The plot is helped along by wild coincidence, the main character is a tough guy in the most clichéd sense but it all worked for me.

The thrill of finding a book like this is the lack of expectations, other than the cover which nine times out of ten is better than the book inside these old barn burners. This one lived up to the come-on.

If you spot a copy biding time on a shelf somewhere, pick it up like I did. You’ll get your quarter's worth.

Scarry Night challenge

2011-02-27T23:32:00.000-08:00

There are A LOT of stories floating around today courtesy of Patti Abbott's latest challenge. Below is my contribution. At 800 words each you can spare the time to read through all of them.

SCARS

by Eric Beetner

As she spoke I knew I should have moved closer and held her but I couldn’t bring myself to. In bed, naked, still warm from making love and still freaked out by what I felt on her back, I listened.

The question must have come in my silence because she started spilling when I hadn’t asked a thing. The story she unfolded was horrific. Thirteen years old, a neighbor, kidnapped for four days, rapes over and over and the knife he took to her back to mark each time he had her. Not exactly pillow talk.

“I really don’t mind the scars,” she said.

Well, I did.

Maybe if she’d told me first. Anyway, I felt like a real shit laying there in the dark listening to her start to cry and not putting an arm around her to comfort or tell her it would be okay. What the hell was I supposed to do? What she went through needs a team of psychologists, not a third date that happened to end up in the sack.

The story kept going. She wasn’t the same girl, but her experience was so much like one on the news from when I was a teenager. It horrified me then and I didn’t have to feel the raised lines of the knife scars across her back.

She made me turn the lights off. I like to have at least a little light, usually, and this girl was hot. Tight little body, what I imagined were great breasts. You know how it is for guys, it’s all about the visual. But, I gave in just to make it happen. We could always turn the lights on later.

My hands traced down her neck and pushed the straps of her bra off and I was not disappointed. All was well until I reached around and slid my hand down her back. I must have jerked my hand away like I had stuck it on a hot plate because she gripped me tighter as if to make sure I couldn’t run away. That’s when she went down on me, a more surefire way to keep a guy from running out on you.

I stuck with it and we made love, but my mind was on those scars. I tried not to be obvious as I snuck my fingertips over them like I was trying to sneak-read some braille.

She started crying deep, heaving sobs. I wondered if it was because I wasn’t touching her or if she did this every night as a way of coping with her nightmare. Surely I couldn’t have been the first guy she slept with since then. She knew her stuff all too well. Damn, I wondered if anyone had the guts to go back for seconds.

She told me about the cell he made for her out of an old laundry room. It had a kids crib mattress in it and a single lightbulb and a dog bowl of water. A sudden shiver ran over me and I pulled the blankets up higher, but what I really wanted was to get dressed and get out of there. I figured that would be even more insulting than lying still and letting her leak tears all over my clean sheets. I could hear her nose running in each sniff and sob. Oh well, I should change them anyway after what we did.

I have some scars. But, like, fell off my bike scars. Ran into the goal post during a soccer game scars. These were . . . I don’t know what they were. 3-D, that’s for sure.

Funny thing was, the more I thought about them – I’d tuned out what she was saying by then – I had to touch them again.

She paused in her story somewhere around the hospital stay after she was rescued by the police. She tried to catch her breath and not hyperventilate. I reached out and touched her back. She jerked once like my hands were made of ice.

I let my hand hover close to her the way I would approach a wild animal. I let it settle again and brought my flat palm down between her shoulder blades, feeling the indent of each rib and bulge of each scar as I moved down to just above her (very nice) ass.

Her crying slowed. I turned my palm and let the back of my hand glide over her flesh before pivoting and moving back down again, trying to count the raised bubbles of skin.

I slid closer to her, let my naked chest cover her back, feeling each scar’s length on my skin.

“I really don’t mind the scars either,” I said.

I reached a hand over to the nightstand and clicked on the light. They were glorious. I stared, so focused on the scars I didn’t realize she had pushed her hips back into me. We made love again. I told her to start the story over from the top.

Louder this time.

One step forward . . .

2011-02-23T22:51:00.000-08:00

I don't like to use the blog to complain. I'd like to think that's not a reason why I don't update as much as I should. But if this is going to be about my writerly life and possibly share any wisdom at all I need to include the bad news with the good.

Not like I have really bad news, just the daily aggravations of being a self-promoted author.
I had to cancel an appearance today. It would have been the first appearance for Borrowed Trouble. It was to be in Sedona, AZ. which is a beautiful place. Last time I was there was for the Sedona Film Festival with my movie so my associations with the town are very positive. That was the screening where the woman who was supposed to do the Q&A afterward couldn't do it because she was crying too much after the film. Apparently I struck some sort of nerve, which is the point of art, isn't it?
We had to cancel the workshop at The Well Red Coyote due to illness of my co-presenter, Deborah J Ledford and it is in no way her fault. She is, to quote her "at death's door" with the flu so better to postpone than infect a whole room of book lovers. I love Deb and she has been incredibly kind to me so I wish her good health and a speedy recovery.

Trouble is, this is the fourth signing appearance I had been counting on. First off, I know it is my fault to count on anything in this business, or hell, this world. But four? Come on. Throw me a bone here.
All I want is to get out and share the book and, yes, sell a few along the way. I've said many times before that I don't expect to make money at this for a while so the pleasure in having a new book out is actually meeting a select few who might read it and getting out to event that make me feel like a writer. Now I've had the piss poor timing to miss the Mystery Bookstore closing by only a few weeks. I have an invite to come to Chicago and when I found out I will be there in a few weeks for work I thought, great! Get the network to pay for my plane ticket and do a signing at the same time. Perfect for my self-financed book promo workings. To make a trip to Chicago just for a book signing would be a colossally bad financial move costing me about $50-$75 per book I might sell. And only that low because I could stay with my sister for free. But the store's schedule was already booked solid for that weekend. Missed it by that much.

I still might do it later. It's about getting in front of people. One brick in the wall at a time. My frustration right now is that I feel like I'm on brick 2 with Borrowed Trouble and the wall I'm building is getting smaller.

Lucky for me I am still stubborn and naive enough to not quit. These frustrations will continue in one form or another. After more than half my life in some sort of DIY attempt to get my work out there - be it music, film, painting or writing - this is just standard operating procedure. So do I get frustrated? Sure. Does it make me want to throw in the towel. Nope. I don't have it the worst out there, not by a long shot.
I go back to a great quote my Steve Martin, of all people, when he was asked about what it takes to succeed in stand up comedy. What he said applies to any art form though: "Be undeniably good." I'm trying my best, Steve.

And as proof that it's not all bad and I can't get too upset about anything, this week has also been great in other ways. I was invited to contribute a story to another anthology. Man, there is nothing like being invited to the dance. So flattering and such a boost of encouragement that came at just the right time. I also had another story accepted by a favorite publication of mine so I'm thrilled about that.
Working on two stories that are due Monday and thinking about getting to the revision of the new novel.
Oh yeah, I finished that. Draft one anyway. I like it, I think. We shall see. My sixth novel. Crazy. Man, I hope people get to read this stuff.

Note to self: write down where my wife can find all this stuff if I die suddenly. After all, there's no better way to stir up interest in your unpublished work, right? This gives me an idea to start a string of pen names and start killing them off one by one. Imagine making a great living off staging your own death time after time. Sounds like a story . . .

Publicity tsunami

2011-02-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

Well the books is out so that means we're out and about ourselves. People have been so sweet to invite us in, let us take over or ask us questions all over the blogosphere.
We've got guest posts up over with Elizabeth White, Patti Abbott, the Do Some Damage crew, Holly West and many more to come.
It's great to be welcomed by writers I admire, people I like and people I haven't even met. Let's hope they like the book.

A Final Farewell

2011-02-01T14:23:00.000-08:00

Enough has been said about the Mystery Bookstore closing so I'll just say that I had a fun time at the closing night party and for all of you who couldn't be there I'll let owners Kirk and Pam and managers Bobby and Linda say the rest.

Proof!

2011-01-24T22:45:00.000-08:00

I know the name "Proof" comes from somewhere else when it refers to a single run printing of a potential book, but it seems so apt that it also serves as proof a book is real. Maybe it's just one of those serendipitous language miracles.
Either way, the "proof" of the new book, Borrowed Trouble, arrived in the mail today. That can only mean release is imminent. Prepare yourselves for the promotional onslaught, or the best onslaught I can manage on my own, not being a PR person or one who even much enjoys thrusting myself into the spotlight.

As an opening salvo I offer what others have said about the book. The people we hand selected to read an advance copy of the book were all so generous with their time and their words we thank them very sincerely. Frankly we were blown away by the nice things people had to say. If all goes well there will be more to come. Not a bad way to start off though, is it?

"Meticulous historical detail slams you into the hard boiled world of Ray Ward and Dean Fokoli as they use hard fists and cold steel to knock the shiny off Hollywood's glitter. Borrowed Trouble is like a talented fighter – powerful, quick, and hard to put down."

Rebecca Cantrell, award-winning author of A Night of Long Knives

"For a knockout punch of hardboiled, look no further than Borrowed Trouble, sequel to the period noir One Too Many Blows To The Head. You'll want to go the distance with Ray Ward, a tough-luck protagonist who knows how to hit where it counts!"

Kelli Stanley, award-winning author of City of Dragons

"Everyone has a short list of books that stayed with them long after they turned the last page—add Borrowed Trouble to mine. Eric Beetner and J.B. Kohl have vividly re-created 1941 Los Angeles, ripping apart the city’s glamorous façade to reveal the cold noir heart beneath. With sharp writing, head-spinning twists, and pair of protagonists haunted by memory and loss, this is pulp fiction at its finest."

Hilary Davidson, author of The Damage Done

“Borrowed Trouble is the hard hitting sequel to Kohl & Beetner’s noir knockout debut One Too Many Blows To The Head. It grabs you by the lapels from the first page and drags you out of the murky corners of Kansas City’s underbelly and into a glittering Hollywood where the bright lights cast sordid and sinister shadows.”

Paul D. Brazill, crimewriter, The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime

“An intriguing tale of two outsiders thrust unwillingly into the dark side of 1941 Hollywood. A seamless collaboration, rich with explosive dialogue and scenes so vivid, Kohl and Beetner takes the reader on a compelling journey. Rich with prose that packs a powerful punch, Borrowed Trouble is not to be missed.”

Deborah J Ledford, author of Staccato and Snare

"It’s 1941 and noir’s hot new duo, Kohl and Beetner, return with another sure-fire winner. Borrowed Trouble is a relentlessly tough and lean novel, packed full with memorable characters. United by their troubled pasts, the unlikely pairing of PI Dean Fokoli and troubled boxing promoter, Ray Ward, head from Kansas City to Hollywood to untangle a dark tale of greed and exploitation, but ultimately one which offers them both a shot at personal redemption. They don’t write them like this anymore. Jump onboard now."

Nick Quantrill, author of Broken Dreams

The two sister books meet each other for the first time. Quite a pair. If this writing thing all goes south I might try my hand at book jacket design. I feel quite proud of these. Once again kudos go to Marc Sasso who painted the cover of One Too Many Blows To The Head and put up with my stifling of his creativity by giving him a reference photo and saying, "Do this but with blood." He is a much more talented illustrator than this. Don't believe me? Click that link up there.

And to the anonymous painter of the image that adorns Borrowed Trouble, thanks for you and all your ilk who provided a look to the sordid words of pulp fiction. I tried like hell to find out who it was but couldn't. Either way it is an homage to the pulps of the past and a perfect image for the book. How did you know when you were painting it 50+ years ago?

We've been Nooked

2011-01-19T22:34:00.000-08:00

At long last One Too Many Blows To The Head is available for the Nook, Barnes and Nobel's e-reader. And it's only $4.99!

Is it disingenuous of me to tout the digital release of a book while only recently lamenting the passing of my favorite brick and mortar bookstore? I think not.
The two outlets should be able to coexist. As much as I admire the convenience, price and ease of e-readers (though I do not own one myself) they will never be a substitute for the staff at an indie bookseller. If all the big B&N or Borders went away I honestly wouldn't care much. To me, they are as impersonal as shopping at Amazon or Smashwords. I'll reiterate the quality of the staff at indie bookstores and their help and expertise in helping book customers. I speak as someone who didn't read much at all for years and years simply because of the intimidating nature of a giant bookstore with 12 sections and no actual human touch to help me find my next favorite book. I would walk in and stare, dumbfounded, at the selection - each with a blurb touting it as the greatest book of a generation - and just walk out empty handed.

It was A Simple Plan by Scott Smith that got me back in. It was exactly what I wanted and I finally had a touchstone. Something to say to an actual person who knew his or her stuff, "I liked this. What else ya got?"

Indies, from Kate's Mystery Bookshop in Boston (RIP) to The Mystery Bookstore here in LA made all the difference for me and helped me get back into reading.
Let me also throw my hat in the ring for indie record stores too. I've been in many more record stores over the years. I've even played gigs in them. There is just nothing like a fan who wants to spread the love of a find they made. Be it books, albums, comics, art house cinemas, whatever.
That said (again) go ahead and snag a copy of the book if you've got a Nook. And tell me how it looks.

Borrowed Trouble in mere days! (I hope)

Another one down

2011-01-18T23:21:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot so far this year. One airplane trip and I'm well ahead of my reading goals so far. But today I'm here to add to my contributions to the Criminal Plots reading challenge. This time out I tackled the 'Book that has been turned into a movie'. It came easily as my choice, The Ice Harvest, was one I was planning on reading anyway.

I've heard a lot about Scott Phillips and, as it turns out, we now share an agent so I was eager to read his work. I saw the movie when it came out a few years ago and I liked it quite a bit. One of those tiny crime films that doesn't try too hard to be a son of Tarantino or an homage to Film Noir. Just a solid cast in a dirty story about a really bad (Christmas Eve) night.

Now, I'm not one of those types to go on about how the movie is never as good as the book blah, blah, blah. Having written for both and with movies really being my first love I think they are apples and oranges and should be evaluated as such. Like the book? Great. Don't judge the movie by the book. Different animal. It's like saying you like dogs if you own a Great Dane but then when someone gives you a Chihuahua you complain that it just isn't the same. No. It's not. Dogs, yes. But different things entirely.

That said, I enjoyed the book greatly, despite and in some cases, because of the differences. And it didn't detract from my liking of the film either. The Ice Harvest is a quick read but due to my normal lunch-hour-only habits it took me a week, but this would be a great all-in-one read. It was a slow build. An interesting one, but slowish in a good way that adds to the overall pace. The writing style is great though. No fancy flourishes, just straightforward prose and believable action. Nothing is out of place in this book.

Of course, having seen the film first, I couldn't get the image of John Cusack out of my head for the lead character but it didn't detract too much. I like Cusack so that helped. All in all The Ice Harvest would be one I definitely recommend to anyone who likes a tidy noir tale with sharp characters and some unexpected twists. My greatest endorsement? I went out yesterday and bought another Scott Phillips novel.

Losing a legend

2011-01-11T23:35:00.000-08:00

Facebook has been abuzz today with news that the venerable Mystery Bookstore in LA will close its doors at the end of the month. It really is sad for Angelenos and Mystery Lovers in general. People all over the country, and truly the world, shopped at the store which became a real hub of the mystery community in Southern California.
For me, they were the first people to be unbearably kind to me in the mystery world. It was a trait I have seen replicated over and over but Linda, Bobby, Emily, Ingrid, Graham and the staff were so good to me you'd have thought I was James Ellroy in there instead of some punk who sold maybe 20 books through them (and trust me, I bought a hell of a lot more)
I thank them first and foremost as a reader. I got so many great recommendations! Nearly all the signed editions I own came from there. I feel like my drug connection is being sent to prison. What will I do?

I won't lie that among my first flurry of thoughts was, "Oh, crap. There goes my launch party for Borrowed Trouble." and, yes, that does depress the hell out of me. Not that I can't try to find somewhere else to have one, but that there is no where else I want to have one.
After what could have been a complete debacle on the launch party for One Too Many Blows To The Head, where we had no actual books for the signing, the staff turned it into one of the best lemonade-out-of-lemons experiences of my life. I knew I was among friends.
So many little things . . . Linda I bonding over our personal lives, and only learning about our shared connection through discussion of a Marcus Sakey book.
Being invited to the Mystery Bookstore booth at the LA Times Festival of books to sign alongside some of my heroes. To have Bobby and Linda (and Kirk and Pamela) treat me like an author, not just a small press author, but a real writer was so incredible.
All the other writers I have met there and become genuine friends with. Stephen Jay Schwartz, Christa Faust, Brett Battles, Kelli Stanley, Rebecca Cantrell, Sophie Littlefield, Gar Anthony Haywood, Holly O'Neill and recently Benjamin Whitmer and John Rector. I know I'll see them all again but I know it will be less frequently.
Seeing our book on a bookstore shelf for the first time ever. Every writer remembers that.
Bobby sending a copy of our book to Italy to a reader who didn't know squat about it but Bobby knew their taste and thought they'd dig it (reports were they did)
Signing the jail registry alongside all those great names - one page away from Mickey Spillane for @%$# sake!
No matter what I go on to achieve as a writer, The Mystery Bookstore will always be like a first love.

Too often in the gnashing of teeth over the new world of books and publishing the focus is on how the publishing houses will do, or not do, in a digital age. To me, today's news is the biggest tragedy. To have an indie bookstore that has no only helped me a writer but as a reader suddenly vanish is devastating. I wish I could have done more. Sold more books for them. Bought more books from them. Convinced more people to stop by and buy a book for a gift.
This is the most direct impact I have felt of the changing book world and the biggest difference for me will be that my life as a writer and a reader just got a lot more impersonal. The relationships I made there are valuable to me and I hope the community doesn't fall apart without a center to orbit around.
Time will tell how it really impacts us here is Los Angeles and I know most places never have the luxury of a store like the Mystery Bookstore at all.
I can only thank them for years of service to me as a reader and for their friendship and kindness to me in my still young adventures as a writer. They will forever be the one that got away.

Me at The Mystery Bookstore for my first ever reading at the launch party for One Too Many Blows To The Head. This will have to suffice as my first and last appearance at the store.

Reading challenge #1

2011-01-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

So I agreed to blogger Jen Forbus' 2011 reading challenge over at Criminal Plots. There are several categories and this book could have gone in two for me but I'll put it in the "A Different Country" because I'm fairly certain I'll read something that is the first in a series this year and when I really looked at it I don't read a whole lot set in other countries. But I guess that's the point here. Anyway, the reason I read this one was because it is a series and I like the author. So here goes:

The Guards by Ken Bruen.
I'd heard so much good stuff about this book I feel like the last person in America to actually read it. I have liked Ken's writing but it struck me that I have read mostly his co-written works. Tower with Reed Farrel Coleman, the books with Jason Starr, Bust, Slide and The Max. Rilke on Black was the only standalone of Bruen's that I'd read and I liked that one too. Time to jump in to the Jack Taylor series.

At an appearance promoting Tower Reed Coleman said he changed his style a little to fit with Bruen. After the first draft and reading his part up against Ken, Reed went back and started plucking out words to tighten the language and make it a little more clipped. It worked in Tower.

Now, I try hard to never say anything bad about a book because you never know when it will come back to haunt you. I am also a firm believer that there are no bad books, only books that are not right for a particular reader. Even Dan Brown (who I've never read). Even The Bridges of Madison County (which I have).
That said, The Guards didn't do it for me. Not a total failure on my part but it just lacked a certain something that would make me seek out the others in the Jack Taylor series. Certainly nothing that would turn me off Ken Bruen in the future though. I still want to read back through more of those early books.

Mostly it was that clipped and staccato language that Coleman mentioned. It is much more aggressive in The Guards. For me, it was to the point of making it hard to dive deeply into the story. Things happened in fast motion. It became exhausting. A part of it too may have been the lingering on Taylor's alcoholism which is just something I don't enjoy reading even in the best scenario. I know, I know - why even read Noir fiction?
Bruen's plotting is excellent and all that but the sparse language and the short bursts of scenes and chapters left me standing outside the story in a way. And Taylor as a character was not someone I felt I wanted to spend a lot of time with. Hell, he doesn't even seem to like being with himself.
In the end The Guards is hardly a bad book and Bruen is still a hell of a writer in my opinion. The style he reached for in this one just didn't do it for me. But The Guards is an award-winning classic already so I am obviously in the minority.
So there. I was honest. Not easy for me. So far, that's the most challenging thing about this reading challenge. Thanks Jen. (sarcasm font, where are you?)
Oh and the country is Ireland. Bruen is Irish. So there.

Making a scene

2011-01-05T10:31:00.000-08:00

Last night I wrote a scene where one of the main characters force-feeds a crack pipe to an uncooperative fellow, making him chew the glass until he's spitting blood. Sometimes writing is just too much fun.

It was one of those late addition scenes too. Not in the outline until I sat down at the computer late last night. I was about to go into a scene I wasn't 100% behind and in thinking about it the day before and during the day yesterday I hit on a logic issue. It was one of those, "Well, why wouldn't they just go here?" kind of things I hadn't thought about before but any reader would realize very quickly. Yeah, why wouldn't they go talk to those guys if they're looking for the missing man? It made total slap-the-side-of-your-head sense once I thought of it. So after a few small adjustments to previous chapters I sent my characters off on a new mission and hence the resulting crack pipe feast happened.

Just goes to show you that writing cannot be defined by time at the keys. I "write" quite a lot before I've even set down the first word. Thinking about the story, hearing the characters speak in my head. That is all writing too. It is letting a story come to you and then pushing it along when it stalls out. Much of this happens when I've gotten into bed and turned off the light. Much of it happens when I'm driving to work. You have to be prepared to stash away ideas as they come.

As for adjusting on the fly, I always find once I have a solid structure it is the small detours that usually add the most flavor. For me anyway, I can only take these side trips once the route is already established. Hopefully it turns out better than the time my Dad took my sister and I to see Lincoln's cabin en route from Iowa to Connecticut and it turned into a 6-hour detour to see - a log cabin. For a 9-year-old kid this was hardly worth it. Still haunts me.

2011 off to a great start

2011-01-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

So nice to be on a 'best of' list for a book that is technically not out yet (but kind of is on the technical side. I'll never understand this business) The talented and generous Hilary Davidson, she of The Damage Done, one of the most talked-about book this year and a damn fine read (would I give one to my sister for Christmas if it wasn't?) included Borrowed Trouble in her year-end wrap up. She was kind enough to blurb an advance copy and even got to see the lost chapter 30 (which we subsequently tossed out and replaced in whole with a new scene)
See her comments on Day Labor, the blog site of Crimefactory.

I'm officially on the calendar for the first appearance in conjunction with Borrowed Trouble at The Well Red Coyote in Sedona, AZ. on Feb 26th at 2 pm. Come on by! I'll be in discussion with Deborah J. Ledford about our books and about the editor/writer relationship.
The Well Red Coyote is a great indie bookseller co-owned by author Kris Neri. And a chance to make it back to Sedona? Hell yeah. Haven;t been there since my film screened at the film festival. We loved it then. Hoping like hell I can make it a full weekend with an appearance at The Poisoned Pen too but I guess I should let them know I was planning that. I hoed to have ARCs to send out by now but I may have to plead and beg without them. If all goes well I'll have actual books any day now. I've said that before.

I'm at work on a new novel and the first week has been very productive with over 10K words so far. We'll see what happens next week when I'm back at work. So far I'm digging this one.

Looking forward (sort of) to starting up the Borrowed Trouble promotion machine in the next few weeks.

Xmas Noir

2010-12-29T23:19:00.000-08:00

The folks over at the Do Some Damage blog, a great collection of writers who maintain an excellent blog about writing, have been hosting a Christmas Noir week of stories. They have been excellent across the boards. Some wonderful stories crafted around the holiday which seems so ripe for crime. My addition is up now. Give it a look and then page back through the riches.
At first I was bummed I didn't make it up by the actual Christmas day but now I think showing up in the post-holiday slump is perfect. More bitterness going around out there about now than good cheer. I like it that way.

A Grim Fairy Tale

2010-12-21T23:21:00.000-08:00

John Kenyon posted quite the unique challenge on his blog not too long ago - take a classic children's fairy tale and turn it into a crime story. It's one of those ideas that is so genius in its obviousness I wondered why I'd never seen the challenge before. I had to give it a go.
As the Dad of a four-year-old who is the biggest book freak I know (I think she and her sister, who is two, own more books than I do) I know from fairy tales. Even so, I went and did a little digging into the classics. I read a dozen or so Grimm Bros. stories with great titles (The Girl Without Hands, Godfather Death, The Robber Bridegroom, The Devil's Sooty Brother, The Flail From Heaven, The Devil and his Grandmother, Death's Messengers) but so many have supernatural elements or are just too weird to make much sense out of. You can see why the classics became the classics. So I ended up doing a riff on a fairly obvious one. Hope it doesn't seem like a cop out. It was one of those instances where I hit on the idea and my fate was sealed. It was the only thing my brain kept coming back to. I went a tad over the 3000 word count but oh well. It was a rough guideline anyhow.
I hope you like it and I certainly look forward to what others come up with for this one. I'm sure you'll sniff out the "inspiration" story fairly quickly. Not like I was trying to hide it.

COAL BLACK

by Eric Beetner

They called him Coal Black because, as Yancy put it, “You the darkest nigga I ever seen.” Yancy came in just this side of shoe polish himself so when he called C.B. dark, you know he meant it.

The apprenticeship had been three years going. He’d come into the operation at the ripe old age fifteen, nearly over-the-hill for starting a career in gang-banging or super-modeling. C.B. chose the career with more guns and less bulimia.

He fetched coffee, kept the guns clean and did a lot of driving where the rule was to keep his fucking mouth shut. Hauled a lot of weed and uncut coke to drop spots and brought girls back and forth from jobs. Damn girls never once showed any appreciation. C.B. couldn’t cop a hand job, let alone a blow from those whores. Too exhausted after a long night’s work. For driving them all over creation C.B. took home ten bucks leaving the girls with $240, one-fifty of which went to Yancy and his partner Jay.

Keep the ten bucks, thought C.B., show a little mercy to the jerk driving Miss Daisy around. Not like they couldn’t see the rise in his pants every damn time.

C.B. was constantly out to prove himself. He wanted his piece of the pie, to move on up to the East side. He volunteered for jobs all the time. When a street dealer came up short of his monthlies, C.B. paid him a visit on his own and beat the boy toothless.

Yancy and Jay were unimpressed. They explained that if their street talent gets so black and blue they can’t work, that means more money off the table.

“Got to think long term, man,” Yancy scolded.

C.B. couldn’t look at the young dealer next time he came around, fucker sporting new gold teeth and smiling like C.B. did him a favor.

C.B. wasn’t looking to run the show, only wanted to be invited to the party. His knuckles longed to get bruised on bones, his finger pulsed with anticipation of squeezing off a round, his toes banged the inside of his boot clawing to dig into a gut or break a nose.

“Yo, man, got a job for you C.B.,” Yancy said.

C.B. sat up, waved the joint smoke away and tried to look alert. Like a man who could be depended upon.

“Fuckin’ Asians are crowding us again. I need you to follow some dudes. Find out where they go. Motherfuckers been selling in our neighborhood. Cheap shit too. Shit I wouldn’t let my dog smoke.”

“You want me to fuck ‘em up? Make sure they don’t come around?”

Yancy made a face like C.B. just told him he’d like to fuck his own mother. “No, nigga. I want you to follow them. That’s it. You stay in the car and come tell me where they at. That’s all.”

“Damn it Yancy, it’s my turn. I can do this.”

“You’ll get your shot little man. I knew your Daddy. I’m not sending you in to no place unless I’m sure you can get out. Shit takes time is all.”

“Man, all I got is time.”

C.B. grabbed his keys off the table, spun the ring around his finger once, contemplated saying more but thought better than to piss on Yancy like that. He left to do his chores instead.

Following the piece of shit Subaru for a half hour gave C.B. time to think. Mostly he stewed on forever being the wallflower, never asked to the big dance. He thought now might be a good time to jump ship to another operation, but anywhere he went he knew he’d be starting off on the ground floor. And shitting away what little cred he’d built with Yancy and Jay wasn’t worth it any more than making enemies of those two would be.

C.B. turned up the music and sighed, giving in to his fate as a servant boy for another night, probably another year.

When he brought back the address where the car with the two Asian dudes ended up, the boys were out. Instead C.B. found Yancy’s sister, Bobbi. She hung around her brother’s crib like a test of restraint, her skirts always too short, her tits always pushed up beyond limits. If you knew Yancy at all though, you knew not to go sniffing around his little sister. Her very presence made for an uncomfortable air in the room like Yancy’s ghost sat on your shoulder giving you the death stare.

“Hey C.B.”

“Hey Bobbi. You seen the boys?”

“No. Not for a while.” She sat on the couch and opened the can of soda she held. The sweet smell of marijuana hung in the room and Bobbi’s grin gave her away.

“Oh.” Too uncomfortable to make himself comfortable C.B. decided not to sit. When Yancy did come back he wasn’t about to be caught on the same piece of furniture as Bobbi.

“They runnin’ you ragged again? You look all chewed up.”

“Yeah, well.”

C.B. knew the effect Bobbi had on all the young brothers who came through. She seemed to use it for her amusement.

“Tell mama all about it.” Bobbi patted the couch, her slow stoned drawl sounding sexy as hell. C.B. didn’t take the bait.

There were no secrets between Bobbi and Yancy. C.B. could afford to decline her invite to the couch but keeping her out of business would have been rude. And rudeness was almost as bad as an ass-grab if Yancy heard about it.

C.B. explained his dilemma.

Bobbi repeated the bullet points of his story back to him. “So you got the address they want, but they won’t let you go on the run?”

“Yeah. Basically.”

“Sounds like you got something to bargain with.” C.B. tried to follow her logic. “They can’t get there without you, right?”

“I guess not.”

“So use that and make them let you in on it. Don’t give them the address unless the take you.”

Other than the obvious – poking a hornet’s nest where the hornets carried Glocks – he saw no downside to her plan. They might even admire his gumption. Of course, they might make a game out of how many of his ribs they could break with an aluminum baseball bat but C.B. chose to see the glass half full.

“Thanks, Bobbi.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m just your little guardian angel over here.” She eyed the dark-skinned brother like she was ordering off a menu.

“Well? You forget or something? Where’d those fuckers go?” Yancy asked.

“I’ll tell you.”

“Damn straight you’ll tell us,” Jay said.

“If,” C.B. started and immediately felt the air in the room go electric. “You let me go with you.”

Neither of his bosses said anything. C.B. resisted the urge to take it back and spill the address or blurt out that the blackmail plan had all been Bobbi’s idea. His feet were begging him to run, but he kept them planted, waiting for a response and expecting a bullet.

Yancy and Jay exchanged a look. C.B. couldn’t tell if they were choosing who would be the one to kill him for insubordination or if they were agreeing to his plan.

“Okay. You’re in,” Yancy said.

C.B. smiled. His turn at the big dance had arrived.

These weren’t the kind of guys you could go hug and slap high fives with so he ran down the address and the lay of land around the house.

“Don’t make me regret this,” Jay said, his stare hard and unsentimental.

“You won’t. I mean I won’t. I mean,” C.B. swallowed hard. “It’ll be fine.”

Yancy and Jay seemed less than convinced.

Three days later C.B. sat behind the wheel of the car retracing the Subaru’s route. He had a hard time concentrating on the road because his body stayed focused on the 9mm tucked in his jeans.

Yancy and Jay had run down the basic ins and outs of the night’s work earlier and since they got in the car had said nothing. C.B. was bursting to talk about it. Wild speculations ran through his head. Fear one second, exhilaration the next. Always it came back to fear like petals on a flower – he loves me, he loves me not. They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me not, they’ll kill me . . .

The Subaru wasn’t parked out front but the lights were on. C.B. checked the dash clock before he got out – nearly midnight.

Yancy and Jay had silently slid guns into their palms.

“You got your head on, C.B.?” Yancy asked.

He nodded.

“We appreciate the extra body and the firepower but if you fuck up on this we’re all going down. Understand?”

He nodded some more. He resisted the urge to reassure them with steel tough bravado of his readiness for the job, the hours of rehearsal and devotion to the team. His proof was in the doing. After tonight, they’d see that.

Right away C.B. feared he’d fucked up royally. The door swung on broken hinges as the three gunmen aimed at an empty room. The trio stood like Charlie’s Angels waiting for someone to call action.

No Asians in sight. No piles of drugs or stacks of cash. Just a suburban living room with bad art above an out-of-date couch and a grandfather clock hugging the wall that ticked out a beat nearly as loud as the heartbeats of the three invaders.

A logjam of excuses crowded out any coherent thought from C.B.’s mind. Escape, apology, suicide, and blame all fought to be the first idea to push through.

Sweat had never formed on C.B.’s lip faster.

Yancy dropped his gun down to his side, ready to chew out his young protégé. “C.B., what the f–”

Something like a canon went off and Yancy’s chest leaked red. He slumped backward and hit the broken door jamb as a second shot erupted from the darkness of the hallway. Jay clutched his chest and fell, leaving a bloody spray from the exit wound on the wall behind him.

C.B. hit the decks. He spun on the floor only to find Yancy’s body like a threshold across the open doorway. C.B. could hop up and make a run for it but he risked getting gunned down like a carnival game.

Wanting to keep moving, he crawled forward and made for the couch. Barely over his own breathing he could make out footsteps coming down the hall and into the living room.

C.B. moved to the right around the couch and then heard feet and felt them through the floor as someone circled the couch to his left. He’d gained an extra few seconds of cover but someone upright, armed, and who could presumably do first grade math well enough to know there was still one more intruder to find, stood only a sofa length away.

C.B. seemed genuinely surprised to find the gun in his hand. How had it gotten there? Was he some sort of magician? Then he remembered the three of them in the kitchen choosing their weapons like an old-fashioned duel. C.B. had again reassured them of his readiness. They should have shot him in the kneecaps and left him behind. At the moment C.B. would have preferred that fate.

The proving is in the doing, he thought. I made it to the dance, no time to be a wallflower. So he stood.

The man he saw wasn’t what he expected. Not Asian at all. Across the couch stood a large, make that extra large black man. A double XL gun in his hand and a XXXL scowl of hate and anger on his rocky face.

C.B. fired once, caught the gun hand. The big man didn’t scream at all. C.B. charged forward.

The canon fell to the floor as C.B. reached the man. Up close and personal he recognized the deeply lined face. Wallace “WALL - E” Price. Chief competitor to Yancy and Jay and a man with whom they’d forged and uneasy cease-fire years ago.

Also apparently a man smart enough to know if he hired Asian dudes to run his business creeping into Y&J’s territory there would be no link to him.

Smart. And big.

So big C.B. couldn’t wrap his arms around him. He’d expected to take him down to the floor, knock him cold or shoot him dead, whatever the moment called for, then make his escape.

Instead, he stood grappling with the giant like they were dancing at a ball. Wallace pushed his thick hand into C.B.’s face, smearing blood from the gunshot wound across the dark skin.

C.B. resorted to playground fighting, swinging his legs to try for a crotch shot, banging his forehead into Wallace hoping to break his nose. Nothing worked.

Wallace locked eyes with the young brother. “Who the fuck are you?” C.B. didn’t feel like giving out his vitals right then.

They waltzed across the room, past the couch, past a side table, C.B. unable to lift his arm up to fire his gun.

As they struggled and turned they both found themselves falling to the floor. Their progress had been halted by a lump on the carpet. Jay’s body.

Tripping over the nearly dead man sent them both down to an oriental rug. C.B. managed to fire a round but only made a loud noise and a hole in his jeans from the muzzle flash.

The dance had turned to a Greek wrestling match. Wallace got his blood-slick hand up again to C.B.’s face. The giant nearly hooked a finger in his eye but C.B. thrashed away, spinning his head violently to avoid being blinded. He inadvertently put his ear in the big man’s hand and Wallace pinched down on the flap of skin and the diamond earring in the center.

C.B. made another try at bashing his forehead forward and this time caught Wallace’s nose square on. He also jerked his skull forward fast enough that the grip Wallace held on his ear tore away a piece of flesh, and a bit of jewelry as a bonus.

Not showing Wallace’s restraint, C.B. cried out in pain.

Like a live wire C.B. bucked and thrashed. Wallace loosened his grip as his nose throbbed and the prey in his arms became wilder and harder to clench with blood soaked hands.

C.B. slid down the man’s belly and popped out of Wallace’s grasp, immediately ditching the gun and grabbing his half an ear. He screamed his way out the door, passing by the quaint suburban grandfather clock chiming midnight as he left.

C.B. felt Wallace reach out to claw at his ankles, trying to keep him in the room. “I’ll find you moutherfucker,” C.B. heard as he reached the car.

C.B. landed back at Yancy’s place wondering how the hell his fortunes had gone to shit so quickly. Bobbi came fast-stepping out of the back pulling on a thin robe over her brown thighs.

“Yancy? What happened?”

She stopped when she saw only C.B. The way he crashed through the door signaled trouble and now the sight of his face, as pale as he’d ever been which meant only a shade lighter than oil, and the smears of blood down the side of his neck from the missing earlobe gave off signs that things were worse than Bobbi could have expected.

“Bobbi, I’m sorry. It all went . . . fuck, it all went bad.”

She glanced over his shoulder through the open door checking for her brother and Jay. When they didn’t appear she knew better than to ask if they were ever going to.

C.B. hit the couch, slumped over and pressed hard against his ear, hoping the damn bleeding would stop and maybe that could help him formulate a plan.

Bobbi went back down the hall, came out ten minutes later dressed and holding a suitcase.

“You best get going too,” she said, but didn’t stop moving out the door.

C.B. knew where some money was hid. An operation like Yancy and Jay’s always kept around a decent amount of cash. Git-up-n-go money they called it. Might be enough to get a start. C.B. discovered that with the only world you’ve ever known suddenly off-limits the choice of where to begin again is a hard one.

Blood crusted around the missing piece of ear and caked like dried mud down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. Bits of it flaked off, dark and dry like his skin had been baked. Even with his eyes closed he felt the world go black.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been on the couch, passed out. The door still hung open, Bobbi’s perfume had dissipated. C.B. thought of the money. He stood.

A figure filled the door. Wallace stared at him, his fist clenched around something more than just anger.

“I knew those two niggas you left on my floor.”

C.B. tensed in his gut, thought he might puke. Of course Wallace knew who they were and of course he knew where they lived. C.B. had spent the night proving, in bright neon signs, the reasons he wasn’t ready for a job like this one.

Wallace held up his closed fist, opened his fingers like a rose blossom – the red coating his hand made a beautiful bloom. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a small triangle of dark flesh and a diamond in the center.

“Shouldn’t leave a rock this big behind. Must be worth something.” C.B. opened his mouth but no words came out. For the second time that night his brain had become clogged with information. Wallace did all the talking. “Know what I think? Piece of shit must be glass.”

Wallace stepped forward slowly, no gun out, no knife. Only a rock hard stare and a lifetime of putting down punks like C.B. kept the young man in his place. The way Wallace stared at C.B. as he advanced made him feel like he was being measured for a coffin.

Coal Black stood frozen, resigned to his fate. Never should have tried to dance with royalty. He belonged in the basement, soot on his face, sweat on his brow. A servant to the end.

Wallace held out the ear, reached forward and put it back where it used to attach to his body.

“It fits,” Wallace said.

C.B. watched as Wallace reached behind him and drew out the gun from the waistband in the small of his back. The same canon from before, still smelling of fresh gunpowder as Wallace rested it under C.B.’s nose.

C.B. closed his eyes, waited for the sweet ever after.

Borrowed Trouble

2010-12-16T09:01:00.000-08:00

Any day now we should get our print proofs of Borrowed Trouble and then it's off to the printer (providing there are no errors). I can finally release the cover art into the wild so here you go. I also did a book trailer, the effectiveness of which is still debatable among the book world but I think they are fun to make and it didn't cost me a dime so why not?
So to recap: cover art I designed and made myself, a homemade promo trailer for a book I co-wrote. I'm feeling quite accomplished today.

Borrowed Trouble Trailer HD from Eric Beetner on Vimeo.

Immortalized in print

2010-12-03T22:57:00.000-08:00

He kind of slipped it by me but I'm happy to report that Stephen Jay Schwartz' new, original Hayden Glass short story Crossing The Line is available for free download. Why should you read this story? Well, for starters Schwartz is a great writer and Glass is a great character and if you haven't discovered him already this is a great intro to the hero (well . . .) of Boulevard and Beat. Second, it's free. Duh. And third, there happens to be a little character named Sergeant Beetner. Yep, I've been fictionalized. Well, not me exactly but my name anyway. In the story Beetner is an oversized black man. Not even close. I happen to know also that the character of Christa's name was lifted from Christa Faust.
The story is a prequel, an origin story of Hayden's major vice - his sex addiction. Not for the easily blushed. It's positively NC-17. Safe to say I won't be telling my Mother about the story, my name in it or not. Not that I fear she wouldn't like it, more than I'm afraid she would and the images that conjures. For all the action you can handle check out Boulevard and Beat. Darker, tougher detective stories you won't likely find.

In other news that fine chap Nigel Bird has named my story, My Asshole Brother, one of his favorites of the year. Coming from a fine writer like Bird it is a quite a compliment and I'm honored. You can read about all his picks over at the Death By Killing blog.

We made the top ten...well, six.

2010-11-18T23:29:00.000-08:00

I love it when I randomly trip over someone talking about the book. Well, I guess having a Google alert for the title of our book isn't exactly tripping over, but still.
Graham Bowlin, up and coming writer and newest employee of The Mystery Bookstore, came out with a list of his top six reads of 2010 over on his blog. Somehow One Too Many Blows To The Head made it on there right next to The Cold Kiss, Pike and a few other great books. We'll take it.

La Ronde

2010-11-15T23:53:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago Patti Abbott threw out a 1000-word challenge, as she likes to do. This time it was to have several authors pass a baton between us using the theme of jealousy and the little trick that the person who was the object of envy in one story became the envious one in the next story. The results of the first six rounds are here. A daunting task to be sure. My story is a bit of a reboot on what came before but I couldn't help run with the story once it came to me. I feel like I write about brothers an awful lot without having one (3 sisters. They don't get treated much better in my fiction)

Please enjoy and let's all look forward to what Nigel Bird comes up with next in the rotation. Without further ado - La Ronde, part 7:

MIRROR IMAGE

by Eric Beetner

Gregory Rubinstein liked to tease his brother Adam. Greg reveled in pointing out that he was the true first born son. Greg beat Adam out by sixteen minutes but it seemed to be enough of a margin to give Greg the ammunition for years of torture.

By ten years old the dynamic had been established. Greg – the golden boy. Destined to follow in father’s footsteps through law school to district attorney, state office, maybe senate. Adam – the also ran. Forever chasing his brother’s tail. He’d make a damn fine prosecutor. Maybe even run Greg’s campaigns. Respectable, anonymous work.

Despite the house being a five bedroom gothic-style manor, Greg and Adam still shared a room. Even the bunk beds gave away the hierarchy in their way. Greg, one would assume, would be perched high in the top bunk but instead Greg chose the lower bed. In addition to his dislike of heights it let him come and go as he pleased at night, which he did quite often, being a fitful sleeper prone to minor bouts of sleepwalking. To keep Greg from banging his shins on the ladder to the top, once Adam assumed his perch, Greg kicked the ladder away, trapping his younger twin in the Siberia of the top bunk. If Adam forgot to pee at night he risked a broken ankle on the jump down and a pitch-black mountain climb on the way back up. Bladder-busting discomfort was often the best option, until he learned ways to dismount silently using body contortions Spiderman would have been envious of.

At their riding lessons Greg was the first to canter, the first to make his horse jump, the first to bring home a trophy. When Adam brought one home the very next weekend it sat next to Greg’s like a shrunken, sickly twin. Shorter, the gold more dull, the name etched in a smaller font. Adam stared at the two on the shelf, the symbolism not lost on him. Two of essentially the same thing, only one a little lesser than.

At first Adam played out subtle games of revenge. He put a scratch in Greg’s Spin Doctors CD. He fed Greg’s horse, Blade Runner, a box of ExLax before a meet. At the first water jump the team left behind a trail and fouled the water so badly they were forced to delay the competition for an hour while they drained the pool, lest someone fall into it.

Adam wished they’d been identical, not fraternal, twins so he could impersonate his brother and get him expelled from school. He compromised by writing notes to girls in Greg’s exact handwriting using words he’d lifted from the stash of Penthouse Forum columns they routinely looked at in Dad’s closet.

Despite Adam’s minor insurgency Greg seemed secure in his place. He called Adam nicknames like Dickface and Assmunch. He routinely told on Adam any time he did anything remotely against the rules and Adam seemed to suffer punishments more harsh and long lasting than Greg ever did. At the dinner table Greg sat at the right hand of Father, Adam a seat down, as forgotten and unnecessary as that extra fork that never got used.

At night was the only time Adam felt in charge. The nightmares, the whimpering and bed-thrashing contortions Greg would go through, let Adam feel that the cruelty Greg regularly dished out was eating him away inside. When Greg would walk around the room in his sleep Adam enjoyed spooking him awake and then pretending to be asleep, eyes shut and stifling laughter as he heard Greg’s heavy breathing and confused panic when he awoke – out of bed in a dark, foreign-feeling room.

Adam started plotting ways to put to the test the old myth that if you wake a sleepwalker they might die. When Adam would be roused by Greg’s kicking over of a toy or stack of books, he would rise and shimmy down the side of the bed, place something hard and solid at shin level in Greg’s way and climb back to watch from his crow’s nest as Greg jolted himself awake with a cry of pain.

It was report card day that Adam forged his most brilliant plan.

Adam’s GPA: 3.4 Greg’s: 3.8

Ten years old and Mr. Rubinstein had given Adam up for a life of mediocrity. Back-slapping praise was lavished on Greg while a series of questions about Adam’s B-minus dominated the dinner conversation.

Alone in their room at night, Greg said out loud what Adam assumed everyone had been thinking.

“Just give it up, man. You might as well drop out and learn how to wash cars or something.”

The words weren’t irrational to Adam’s ten-year-old ego.

That night he decided if Greg was so in love with himself, wouldn’t it be great if he scared himself shitless?

After Greg became locked in battle with his sleep demons, Adam descended the bunks. He took the full length mirror off the back of the door with the screwdriver he’d placed in his desk drawer after dinner. He leaned the narrow strip of glass against the lower bunk, right next to Greg’s face as he slept. Adam dismissed the consequences of his stunt. Seeing Greg frightened by his own reflection would be worth the punishment to come.

Adam climbed back to his perch. When he was settled and had stopped himself laughing he waited for Greg to begin a particularly fitful episode. He didn’t wait long.

When Greg let out a stifled cry Adam rocked the bunk and coughed loudly. Greg, on the verge of awake anyway, bolted up, saw his own reflection but had no idea who or what it was. Still half asleep, he screamed and lurched forward, pushing his face through the pane of glass and slicing a diagonal line from his scalp to his chin down over the bridge of his nose and across his wide-open left eye.

Blood rushed to the wound, nearly obscuring Greg’s face by the time Adam peered over the edge of the top bunk. A flap of skin hung down across his forehead like an open envelope. The wide stare of Greg’s right eye struck a stark contrast with the blood-filled cavity of his left. The bottoms of his feet sliced open as he stumbled around the room, still thinking he was trapped in a dream.

The ensuing chaos let Adam do a quick re-staging of events. The story was Greg, in the throes of another of his sleepwalking incidents, ran headlong into the door, shattering the mirror, slicing his face and blinding his eye.

The next day, Adam got his own room. His father began to talk about plans for attending his alma matter. He filled Adam’s ears with stories he’d heard before, but always with Greg’s name in the starring role, not his own. Bold predictions of the future and Adam’s destiny to be a great man.

Greg began home schooling. His face took months to heal, even then it appeared always at risk of sliding apart into two distinct halves. His glass eye, at eight thousand dollars, never sat quite right so Greg preferred the eyepatch.

Adam never played a joke on Greg again. He never felt the need.

The lessons of that night stayed with him. His aggressive technique as a lawyer made the old man proud. At a cocktail reception for his first victory in court, Adam heard his father telling a colleague, “Yep, I knew as soon as he came out first, Adam would be a real go-getter. Came out a good fifteen minutes before his brother. We knew he was something special right then and there.”

Caught reading

2010-11-10T10:01:00.000-08:00

I'm very glad to be a part of amazing blogger Jen Forbus' Crime Writers Caught Reading project to recommend books for holiday gift giving. I cheated a bit and picked two books. Oops. My two suggestions: The Cold Kiss by John Rector and The Deputy by Victor Gischler.

So much, sort of

2010-11-09T22:50:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm not writing at all lately. Probably because I'm not putting down many words on the page but so much of writing is that intangible phase more commonly known as "thinking". I do a lot of thinking before I start something. I've done it for years, since I first started screenwriting. If I ventured into something only half-baked I never felt right about it and usually abandoned a project midway through. So I'm a thinker. I run a story over and over in my mind until I really know it.
I use it as a bit of a litmus test too. If I think of an idea and I don't write it down but the core of the plot is still with me several days later I know I'm on to something. Similarly, if a character sits inert in my notes or my brain I know not to keep chasing a blind lead. But when characters start to speak, to suggest themselves in my subconscious, I know I'm on to something that can sustain.
I'm in that phase right now. Doing yet another final read-through on Borrowed Trouble (I've said final before haven't I?) and plotting out what comes next. I have 5 books roughly outlined. Which one will insinuate itself into my brain the strongest and insist I write it? Remains to be seen but one trio of morally questionable men are in the lead right now.
I'm anxious to share the great blurbs we've gotten for Borrowed Trouble as well as the cover art I'm really excited about but I want to wait until there is a reason to shout. No point in blowing it now when we're still 3 months away from release. Killing me not to share though.
Oh, I'm on Twitter now @ericbeetner. So far I have not found it very addictive the way people do or the way I enjoy the community on Facebook but it has its merits. Come follow me if you like.
One thing I hope to initiate before the release of Borrowed Trouble is a push to get One Too Many Blows To The Head into the conversation again. I get antsy at the thought of people reading a sequel without reading the original. I need to get over it and we purposely wrote Borrowed Trouble so you wouldn't have to read One Too Many, but it would absolutely help. I feel that about any series, which remains the main reason I don't read many series. If I miss the beginning I don't want to be late to the party. Hell, I don't watch Mad Men because I missed season 1. I'll catch it someday on DVD but until then I can't jump on board late.
One series I did start at the top with is Steve Hockensmith's Holmes on the Range series. I loved the concept of old west cowpunchers making like Sherlock and solving crimes in the 1800's but it just didn't sound like my kind of book. Too light. Too funny. After Hockensmith killed it on a panel at B-Con I couldn't resist getting a signed copy (even after I'd passed on the $4.98 deal Amazon ran a few months back) and I LOVED it. That is a series I look forward to continuing. Y'know, after I beat down my TBR pile a bit. But really Hockensmith's voice for Old Red and Big Red was so unique and so rich with language I couldn't resist.
Up next for me is my entry in Patti Abbott's La Ronde challenge. I just got my assignment story and I'm at work on my contribution to this whirlwind of a challenge.
Also, mine and Jennifer's chapter is up for the Rubicon Ranch project. We're chapter 3 so there's plenty of time to climb on and read along as 7 of us Second Wind authors post a chapter a week in this collective mystery. None of us know who the killer is yet. I am praying it is our pair. Check it out and see if you think they could have done it. A new chapter is up every Monday.
Discount Noir is still going strong in every ebook format out there, even some I didn't know about.
So, soon the new novel will begin. The other orphans are out seeking a home right now. Borrowed Trouble in the new year. La Ronde next week. It's a lot, sort of. I'll feel really good when a full-fledged novel is out in the world again.

October Harvest

2010-10-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

Lots to talk about in this busy month. My first story in A Twist of Noir's 600 - 700 challenge is up. I drew numbers 610 and 698 so I had only 610 words to tell a story. You tell me if I did the job.

Discount Noir is out on all ebook platforms, even the Kindle. Of course, better for you to buy it directly from Untreed reads.

The Men of Mystery conference is this weekend. That promises to be a fun event.

Rubicon Ranch is up and running with chapter one. A new chapter will follow every week until the mystery is solved. At this point I don't even know who the killer is. Get in early and take the ride with us.

I've joined Twitter so, um, follow me I guess.

Very soon I'll be unveiling the cover for Borrowed Trouble and letting out some of the great blurbs we've gotten in. Oh, and speaking of blurbs, I gave out my first one. I'm happy to report the book was quite good. It's called The Science of Paul and will be published by New Pulp Press in January.

I'm sure there's more but I'll have to report later. Full details of Men of Mystery next week.

p.s. I knew I forgot something. My interview with Czar of Noir Eddie Muller runs in this month's Crimefactory. Check it out.

The Day After

2010-10-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

All over the internet people are posting their thoughts on the recently completed Bouchercon before the memories slip away (most as soon as the alcohol leaves their body) so I figured I'd do my part.

So, my first B-Con and I had a great time. I didn't sell any books. Nope, not a one. Do I care? Did it lessen my experience? Not a whit. It's so not about that. For me it was meeting with people I'm getting to know better like - Rebecca Cantrell, Sophie Littlefield, Kelli Stanley, Reed Farell Coleman, Duane Sweirczynski, Deborah Ledford (and watching Rebecca and Sophie win awards to boot) - and meeting new authors I had mild fanboy moments with like Jason Starr and Marcus Sakey.
My biggest book nerd moment had to be when I ran blocker for Linda Brown as we powered our way through the crowd at the Mulholland Books party to catch Sara Gran before she left. Linda and Pam talked with her about the Mystery Bookstore and she was gracious and thankful for their support. I waited until the love died down and then awkwardly shook her hand proclaiming, "I'm just a fan and wanted to say hi." Dope was the only book I brought from home to have signed. Could she be any cuter?

I finally got to meet my agent face to face and that was great. We had a brief meeting about the new book and I got some final notes on it and then had the pleasure of hearing multiple times, "Oh, you're David's new client. I've heard good things about you." from people out and about. Score one for the word-of-mouth campaign.

I had a good time getting to hang with Eddie Muller for a while, meet his wife and sit to chat Film Noir Foundation stuff and felt glad for him that the Giants won.

My one panel was a lively affair. Seth Harwood was the only other person I knew going in but we were joined by one other author and three people from the publishing world, big and small. Seth, as you surely know, is perhaps the foremost practitioner of new media promotion for his work. He pioneered podcasting his novels for free, he is a master of beating his own drum. Plus, he has experience working with a bigger publishing house and now with a smaller one so he knows the world from both sides. He and I were touting the new model of giving away work, letting an audience find you and we found swift and adamant rebuttal from the oldest of the old school panelists who insisted on retaining an outdated publishing model that is currently broken and dying. I compared it to turning around a ship whereas guys like us on our own or indie presses can be swift and nimble. The old guard wasn't having it. I think the room was on our side though. The discussion could have gone on all day. The best was when I took the microphone Seth and I shared to give a rebuttal but Seth stopped me and said, rather darkly, "I want this one." The man has opinions on the subject.
I kind of felt bad for our moderator, J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet - a daily stop for me - that we all took over in the verbal sparring and left him with not much to do.

The panels were good, sometimes uneven and the little challenge they ran asking people to guess the theme of the panel's titles would have been fun if the titles they chose (all names of episodes from The Streets of San Francisco) had something - anything - to do with the topic at hand. It made it hard to find and/or choose what I wanted to attend. But there was some great stuff. Too much, really. I had to miss out on many panels since there were 7-8 to choose from at any given time.

Of course Bouchercon is a social gathering above all else. A big party. The highlight for me was getting to meet several of my cronies from the online world in the flesh. I knew them immediately when I saw Jason Duke, Jimmy Callaway, Matt Funk and Cameron Ashley all clumped together. Add in Kieran Shea, Greg Bardsley, Dan O'Shea, Aldo Calcagno breezing in for the last day and my Film Noir Foundation brother-in-arms Vince Keenan and my weekend was made. It felt a little like a reunion with people I hadn't actually gone to school with but who are better than most people I did. I had some great talks about books, some playful joking around (a very funny batch of cats) including my favorite inscription I've ever been able to write in one of my books (to Cam), and these friends I'd never met gave a sense of comfort and belonging I don't normally experience at this type of event. I'm too quick to retreat to my room or be a wallflower and these guys helped tremendously to keep me out and social and meeting people.

Man, what else? Some little thoughts that come to mind are that Hilary Davidson is truly as kind and generous in person as she appears and seeing her navigate the crowd soaking in praise for her work seemed justifiably deserved. Stacia Decker is awesome. Glad to be even a little bit in her glow as she goes out and hocks those anthologies. At the risk of objectifying anyone I was privy to confessions of book-crushes on Megan Abbott (I won't say who) and the stunning-in-person Alafair Burke (who became the 100th person to tell me I look like Will Arnett). If there is any sort of vote after the fact I pick Christa Faust's green silk dress as my favorite.
My sister continues to make an impression on writers as Laura Caldwell, Jamie Freveletti and Marcus Sakey all remembered her fondly from their recent meetings. How long before she attends a B-Con? Come on Gretchen! Come to St. Louis. She'd be a great asset to me since she could do all the drinking I don't do - she might even be able to give Callaway a run for his money.

I had a few self-gratifying moments when people actually knew who I was. One woman even blurted out, "You wrote my favorite short story in crimefactory!" Now, of course, I don't remember her name and that makes me look like a dick but I met about 500 people over the past 72 hours so sue me.

So, like everyone else, I had a great time. As usual I didn't take any photos because I'm too busy trying to be in the moment and I'm too timid to ask. Some do exist (wait for the next issue of Plots With Guns to see the best one) If anyone has me in a picture let me know. I need to get better at that stuff.
So congrats to all the winners of awards, fair travels to Cameron on the rest of his US tour, wish I could go to NoirCon but I'm looking forward to St. Louis.

Heading North

2010-10-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

I leave for my first Bouchercon on Thursday. I'm expecting a fun, fast and busy as hell time. I have a "continuous conversation" panel on Saturday from 3-4 with a book signing at 5:30. We'll see if anyone shows up.
I'm most excited to see friends, authors I admire and to meet so many of the writers and bloggers I know only in the cyber world.
If I know you, but don't know you, look for me.
Once I'm back it's only two short weeks until the Men of Mystery conference. That should be fun too.

In book news: Borrowed Trouble, the sequel to One Too Many Blows To The Head, is slated for a Feb 1 2011 release. We've alreayd gotten some great blurbs and the cover art is pretty damn cool if I do say so (did it myself) I'm trying to hold back and wait until all our ducks are in a row to really push it but I can't keep it in any longer. Hopefully B-Con will be a good place to spread the word and talk up the next book after that.
2011 look like an exciting year.

Hitting the streets

2010-10-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

The street date is set for Discount Noir , the anthology I am proud to have a piece in. October 19. Some amazing authors contributed flash fiction works all centered around big box discount stores in the tradition of Wal Mart.
It will be an ebook and it is listed super cheap - only $4.49. I really dig the cover. Wish it was going to be a real book but oh well. Better get used to it.

The full list of authors is still mind blowing to me:

Patricia Abbott, Sophie Littlefield, Kieran Shea, Chad Eagleton, Ed Gorman, Cormac Brown, Fleur Bradley, Alan Griffiths, Laura Benedict, Garnett Elliot, Eric Beetner, Jack Bates,
Bill Crider, Loren Eaton, John DuMond, John McFetridge, Toni McGee Causey, Jeff Vande Zande, James Reasoner, Kyle Minor, Randy Rohn, Todd Mason, Byron Quertermous, Sandra Scoppettone, Stephen D. Rogers, Steve Weddle, Evan Lewis, Daniel B. O’Shea, Sandra Seamans, Albert Tucher, Donna Moore, John Weagly, Keith Rawson, Gerald So, Dave Zeltserman, Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen, Jay Stringer, Anne Frasier, Kathleen A. Ryan,
Eric Peterson, Chris Grabenstein and J.T. Ellison

Keep watching the horizon

2010-09-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

News is a-comin'. Ducks are being aligned in rows. People are responding to requests. Deliveries are being made.
Start warming up the presses . . .

October events

2010-09-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

Bouchercon is fast approaching and I am so excited to attend my first. I'll be making the drive up to San Francisco and looking forward to meeting people, seeing friends and attending panels all weekend long. No word yet on whether I will be speaking on any panels but it's fine if I don't. Next year in St. Louis, though, I OWN that convention!

Also coming up on October 30th is the Men of Mystery one-day conference in Irvine. I'm really looking forward to this one too. It was an honor to be asked to join and I am really looking forward to meeting some authors and hearing what they have to say. I've been meaning to pick up Savages by Don Winslow and Strip by Thomas Perry but I was waiting for paperback until I saw they will be there. I might have to suck it up and get signed copies.

Representin'

2010-09-13T00:13:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled this past week to get the news that I have joined the client ranks of agent David Hale Smith. I could not be more excited about this because I know David shares my same taste judging by his client list. Victor Gischler, Duane Swierczynski, Reed Farrel Coleman, Michael Koryta, Derek Nikitas, Sean Doolittle, Teresa Schwegel, Vicki Hendricks, Gary Phillips, Stefanie Pintoff, Tom Piccirilli. I mean, holy crap, right?

Time to bunker down and earn this. Do the work. Put in the hours. Write like hell. Of course I'm still grinning every time I think about it. Dare I say the best part were the congratulations cookies my wife made? That woman can bake!

Good Week

2010-09-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a good week, writing-wise. I am a mere two chapters away from final edits on Borrowed Trouble. I should have finished last night but I was procrastinating and filled the time finishing my two stories for A Twist of Noir's 600-700 assignments . I even did audio recordings of both. (Told you I was procrastinating)

Once again Deborah J. Ledford's edits have made me appear much more competent than I am and have helped (hopefully) to break more bad habits.

The news broke that Discount Noir has sold as an ebook. It is a fantastic lineup that I am so very proud to be a part of. Then I was invited to participate in another anthology. It is so great to be invited to the party rather than stick a foot in the door and ask to be let in.

I like having this many little things going at once. Gives the feeling of forward momentum, which I seem to seek in my life. My wife wishes I were more of a sit still on the beach kind of guy but that is just not me.

80 stories/80 authors all in one

2010-09-01T00:18:00.000-07:00

Michael J. Solender runs the blog Not From here, are you? which is always a great stop for flash fiction and other things. He put out a challenge to come up with a story about summer in only 100 words, no more and no less. It's tough to tell an entire story in that few words but more than 100 writers took up the challenge and now Michael has complied the top 80 into an e-chapbook available for download (free, of course).
Download it HERE and read on as the summer wraps up. My story, Don't Think Too Hard About It, appears on page 22. I'm proud to say it was chosen for a Special Jury Award among the entries.

New blurb

2010-08-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

It's never too late for a blurb on a book, even if it's been out for 9 months. Author Stephen Jay Schwartz was impressed enough to write up this little ditty:

"A powerful tale of vengeance, rife with pounding action and colorful, complex characters. One Too Many Blows to the Head is a first-round knock-out!”
Stephen Jay Schwartz, LA Times best-selling author of Boulevard

Not too bad considering Boulevard is a heck of a read. The sequel, Beat, is out at the end of September and it sounds like the action surrounding Detective Hayden Glass is being ratcheted up even more so look out for that. Stephen will be signing at the Myster Bookstore on Sept. 30th and holding a launch party the Thursday night that Bouchercon starts up in San Francisco.

New story up

2010-08-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

I entered the Title Fights last round. It's an interesting concept. They throw out a theme of titles, this time around it was Jimi Hendrix song titles, you enter, they assign you one and that's all the inspiration you get. The title I drew was Dolly Dagger. Needless to say I was psyched. I had never heard the song (not a big 60s music fan) so I ran with it totally uninfluenced by anything but the title.
I was pleased with the outcome but reading it back on the site I noticed a typo and it makes me crazy that I can't proof my own crap better than that. It's amateur hour and I should be better. I get too caught up with too many projects and I don't focus enough and it makes me angry at myself. Not a big deal in the long run but if I want to be taken seriously I need to present myself seriously. Any excuse to beat myself up, I guess. I got plenty of 'em.

Speaking of being too busy, I just finished a short-ish work. Novella length. No idea why. I have one outlet to submit it to but it may have been only an exercise and the only way to get the idea out of my head.

I'm also joining a group of writers from my publishing company who will be doing a mystery novel in blog form over the next year featuring seven different writers all contributing to the story. It's at the very start but it should prove to be an interesting experiment indeed.

A winner! (and other junk)

2010-08-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

I can't even seem to post when it's good news but I am very excited and honored to have my story, My Asshole Brother chosen as the top seed in Jason Duke's Red Hot writing contest. Duke is a hell of writer and can be heard doing an amped up SFX-laden reading of his own Phoenix Nightlife over at Crimewav.com He pulls no punches.
It was quite a crop of stories so I am really proud to have made the cut. The good news is that it got my writing out in front of some influential people which is always a good thing. It is TBD what comes of it but at least getting the name out there is a plus.
The story, while already available online, will be published in issue #5 of Crimefactory. Another honor, indeed.

We have sent off Borrowed Trouble, the sequel to One Too Many Blows To The Head, off to the editor so we'll see just what an alarming number of errors can slip through even four editing passes by Jennifer and I. News of publication is still a question mark. You'll know when we know.

I'm almost done with a project of mine I've wanted to do for a while. I'm sure nothing will come of it but it's been fun to write. At the very least if no one wants it I'll post it here or it may make my first foray into Kindle-only publishing which, according to some, I am an idiot if I don't do it and I'll be raking in the cash hand over fist. Doubtful.

There's a new collaborative book project I just signed on for that sounds like a real hoot. More on that as it comes along but it is going to be an ongoing novel written online with a new chapter each week until it concludes at which point it will be published as a book. Jen and I are writing together again so we'll have one chapter ever 6 or 7 weeks. It's still in the infancy stages but it's going to be a blast.

Finally, on another note, something I wanted to post about but wasn't sure how. The other day I made a life goal happen for someone. It was something that has been discussed for a long time, joked about, but I finally made it happen. That individual was very happy as was I. Is it bad that the main reason I did it was that I don't know how much longer this individual will be with us? It made me wish I'd done it years earlier but then it wouldn't have been such an event. It was a really small gesture, it's a silly thing in the end but it made me think and reflect. It seems like the kind of thing a better writer would be able to turn into a story. Maybe I'm too close to it. Maybe it would just be one of those stories where the plot is in between the lines. Maybe it's just a private moment that wouldn't mean anything to anyone but me. Either way, I'm glad I did. I know she was happy. I hope we have much more time with her and I can do it again. If not, it is just one of hundreds of memories I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Round up

2010-08-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

I know I seem to start every post with, "It's been a while..." but my excuse is I've been writing, so there.
Here's the round up. Just finished The Cold Kiss by John Rector and it blew me away. This book was so up my alley! A simple story simply told. It unfolds in almost real time with completely relatable characters in a completely messed up situation. I tore through it on my lunch hours and, faced with the prospect of waiting until Monday to finish, I brought it home and polished it off after I put the girls to bed. Highly recommended! And just in time. I came off three duds in a row then this breath of cold air hit me.

Next, I seem to have made my way to the finals in Jason Duke's Red Hot writing contest with my story My Asshole Brother (see link in the list to the right) I am very honored to make the cut to the final two seeing as the judging panel was a prestigious list of writers and agents whom I respect. Fingers crossed for the win. The other story selected, by Michael J. Solender is a cracker too. Tough choice Duke has on his hands. Oh and Duke's Crimewav.com version of Phoenix Nightlife is up to pt 3. Good stuff.

I finished my final draft of the sequel to One Too Many Blows To The Head, titled Borrowed Trouble. Now it is in Jennifer's hands and she'll let me know what she thinks of my half. Her half is brilliant so I hope I can keep up. She dropped a few brilliant lines in her stuff. The book rocks (I think) and next step is figuring out what to do with it. Stay tuned.

I have to mention (honesty I keep thinking, "oh that would make a good blog post" then I get caught up at work or two kids and never get to it) but I have to say thanks to the many authors who donated books for my little sister's charity auction. All I did was put it out on Facebook and in no time I had over a dozen signed editions for the auction from Brett Battles, Kelli Stanley, Gary Phillips, Sophie Littlefield, Rebecca Cantrell, Gar Anthony Haywood, Stephen Jay Schwartz and Marcus Sakey (and me and Jennifer of course). At every stage I have been blown away by how kind and generous and giving the crime writing community has been.
Just this week I've been asking a lot of advice of some of my writer friends with much more experience than I and everyone has been so kind about giving up free advice. It does not go unnoticed, even if all I can do is buy your books but then the real winner is me again.

I am vowing to make a stronger push to get myself (and the books) out there in preparation for the sequel to come out. I've got Bouchercon coming up in October as well as the day-long Men of Mystery on Oct 30th but I am going to try harder to get in to book stores I haven't made any headway with. I need to stop being so shy because no one is going to do it for me.

I do have other things that are almost like real blog posts which I will save and try not to wait another month and a half between posts.

Apparently...

2010-07-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

I write like Ian Fleming. According to this website anyway. Kind of a cool little time waster.
Having never read a word of his stuff, but having seen all the movies, I'll just take it on faith that millions of book sales are in my future.

I write like
Ian Fleming

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Fixin'

2010-07-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

We're fixing some stuff in the sequel. It is an interesting thing to go through with someone else. For One Too many Blows To The Head we really didn't alter any plot points, locations or anything you'd call significant. For this one we've made some course corrections that ripple down the line and require minor fixes in several chapters. Some of it could be described as major but the integrity of the plot and the character's motivations remain the same so I don't consider it very major. Nor would I call anything a 'problem'.
Revising on my own is relatively drama-free but doing it with a partner presents a whole different set of challenges. Challenges, I am happy to report, Jennifer and I have once again met and handled easily and with no quarrel. The hardest part is keeping the consistency between us. Little things have come up like how badly someone's injury was from one chapter to another (and we've got lots of injuries in this one) to simple stuff like what color car someone is driving to minor character names.
This is the real work in writing. It still beats a real job.

Revising

2010-07-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

I've been learning that even though it makes for fewer blog posts, it is sometimes best to keep things a little closer to the vest. Hence, in the past few weeks I've been keeping fingers crossed about submissions, revising the manuscript for the sequel and making changes that are an ever-evolving organism and also stressing about home/work/real life things.
The details of all these things are better left unsaid for fear of spoiling or jinxing anything.
The feeling I hate is that any loss of inertia feels like I'm slacking or failing. I know in my rational mind that it is part of the ebb and flow of everything I do but it is hard to compete with the paranoid self-doubting part of the brain that always seems to have longer claws. Who's with me?
Book sales have stagnated but the book has been out for a while now so that is to be expected. It is a sinking feeling to know you've peaked and, now that award season is pretty much over with, to know that the outlets for getting the book out there are down to almost zero. Part of being an author I suppose. No one I've met, large publisher or small, feels like their book has gotten quite enough publicity. Guess you can never be too rich or too skinny either.
With the entire world talking about Dragon tattoos it is a wonder there is room on anyone's shelf for anything else. (another in my arguments against hardcovers. For the casual reader the $75 they are going to spend on that trilogy I'd bet wipes out their book buying budget for the year. Cheaper books means more books, I think anyway.)
I am glad to see several books getting the attention they deserve like A Night of Long Knives and A Bad Day for Pretty.
One on the radar I am looking forward to is The Cold Kiss by John Rector. It sounds very much up my alley and I am watching with interest all the buzz he is generating right now in the week since the book has come out. Glad to see a debut author really making a breakthrough. I'm excited to go to his signing at the end of the month.
So while I wait to hear on several different things I try not to feel like my feet are in cement and what little momentum I had is dissipating. Just keep on plugging away just like all the others out there. I'm not special and I take comfort in that. It's the Iowa boy in me. I do my best to make my own little contribution to the conversation but I'll never have the loudest voice in the room. It's been 40 years like that and it's unlikely to change.
More revisions loom and then it will be time to turn to the next project. But oh, what to choose from the long list of ideas....

I've been anthologized

2010-06-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

I am late with this stuff but two of my stories appear in collections I am quite pleased with. First is Crimefactory issue #3.5 and this is, quite possibly, the finest collection I have been a part of. That Needle magazine is awfully damn good though...let's call it a tie.
Seriously, there are some great stories by some great writers in this all-fiction issue. NEW FICTION BY:

SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD JONATHAN WOODS, JAKE HINKSON, CULLEN GALLAGHER, JOHN KENYON, JASON DUKE, GARNETT ELLIOT, JAY STRINGER, ROBERT CRISMAN, JULIA MADELINE, ERIC BEETNER, NAOMI JOHNSON

I mean, that's a great lineup! Sophie is the hottest novelist going right now and Jake, Jason, Cullen and Naomi are proven talents that do not disappoint. (Duke's story is called Guns, Drugs and Shitload of Blood which is truth in advertising) I feel like Jake Hinkson and I have similar styles or at the very least whenever I read his stuff I wish I wrote it. Robert Crisman is great, Jay Stringer is one of the Do Some Damage guys so you know he's got the goods and Jonathan Woods has a stellar short story collection out now from New Pulp Press. The others were new to me but there is not a bum story in the bunch.

I applaud the always stellar layout and design of Crimefactory particularly because my story was a bitch to format since it is half prose and half screenplay. Yep, a little weird but just go with me.

Aw hell, just go read it. It's free.

I also got my copies today of Murder In The Wind from Second Wind publishing. My story Without a Body There is no Crime bats cleanup in this anthology from nearly all of the Second Wind authors as well as contest winner Sheila Deeth who joins the party and is a welcome addition. It is an eclectic anthology that even includes some mystery contributions from some of SW's Romance authors. There is something in there for everyone. Easy ordering is available on the right with the direct link to Amazon.

This one has been a long time coming so it's great to see it in print. And don't forget about the companion Mystery In The Wind. They got so many submissions for the contest to be included in they decided to go with a two volume set.

That's the update for now. Word will come soon on the plans for a hard copy of Harbinger *33 which promises to be another wild and weird anthology with some great stories of all stripes in it.

Sense a pattern here?

2010-06-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

I had just finished the penultimate chapter in the new book and I happened to glance to my right in my little office/hideaway here and was surprised by what I noticed. Well, maybe not surprised or at least I shouldn't have been. On one shelf nearly all the books were about Film Noir, crime films and gangster films. I guess I wear my passions out in the open here in the office anyway. Of course the walls are plastered with Film Noir posters so it's pretty obvious even without looking at the spines of the books on the shelves. Of course I have more than just reference books on crime films but I was just struck by the one shelf devoted to it. Just had to share. And with a detail of the office this small you can't see how dirty the rest of it is.
(click on the image for more detail if you can't read some of the titles)

Bonus points to anyone who noticed the shelf below with the complete short stories of Raymond Chandler, a collection of Cornell Woolrich, the Big Book of Pulps and a four novel compilation of Chandler novels. (and my copy of Conversations With Wilder that is signed by both Cameron Crowe and Billy Wilder)

Finding a story

2010-06-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Father's Day and while walking to dinner with my precious girls my older daughter found something on the sidewalk. It was an unopened greeting card envelope with the word 'Dad' scrawled on it in kid's writing. Obviously it had been dropped on the way to a Father's Day dinner and now some Dad would never get his card and some kid probably drew a picture inside or signed their name and would miss out on Dad's reaction to it.
It was simultaneously one of the saddest things and more intriguing things I'd seen in a long time.
It got me thinking how those tiny incidents in ordinary life can be filed away for use in a story. Sometimes something we see or hear is the basis for an entire tale or sometimes it is just a little detail that can crop up inside a larger piece.
At the risk of sounding like the weird neighbor kid in American Beauty, I love the little details of life that happen in the margins. Stories are all around us waiting to be discovered. It's why I love Found magazine (and I even had the chance to be a contributor once) it's why I have a bunch of old flea market photos from the 20's and 30's of people I don't know.
Will I use a lost Father's Day card in a story? Maybe. Either way it is a great reminder of the inspiration that surrounds us and the billions of stories to tell.
As cynical and I can be in my belief that the human race is generally fairly despicable I maintain a very bright outlook on life by an endless fascination with the world and by seeing beauty in all things even, as Thelonious Monk said, ugly beauty.
I'll go to another music reference and quote a lyric from one of my favorite songs from a great band, Chavez. About as far on the sonic scale as you can get from Monk but still. In their song 'Unreal is here' the chorus repeats, "There is nothing to not be amazed at."
I agree.

Summer is starting

2010-06-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

A lot of action in the writing world these days. Summer reading season is here and I've got some appointments to see authors coming through town with their books. Sophie Littlefield is here this weekend with A Bad Day For Pretty and Rebecca Cantrell will be here in two weeks with A Night of Long Knives.
On the interwebs Naomi Johnson has announced the winners in the latest Watery Grave International and they are some great stories.
Jason Duke's contest is heating up and I am very happy to be on the list of finalists that includes some great writers and great stories.
My interview with Stephen Jay Schwartz is up at Spinetingler. He was very open and honest and had some great tales to tell about his book Boulevard.

The sequel is coming along to a rapid conclusion even though we keep changing it. We just revamped the revamped ending but, as always, making it better. It's a little bit like driving the engine with one arm and laying track out ahead of us with the other.
I've said it before but working with Jennifer is such a pleasure. Even these roadblocks we hit in the story never end up in an argument or a stoppage in work. (lives and kids do that enough) But the end is near. I think only about 2 or 3 more chapters each and a first draft will be done. I think there is a lot of work to do with this one but working it over and making little improvements along the way is the fun part. Another fun part anyway.
I really hope we can do something with this one. I start to feel like a slacker if I don't have anything to announce is in the pipeline.

One thing that is out is the Second Wind anthology that I did a story for a while ago. As of now it seems the only place you can get one is off their website. Anyway, I quite like my story included in it and there are several others like Deborah J. Ledford that are worth your while if you're looking for a short story collection this summer, although I haven't read it yet. I'll have to order one for myself to see what else is inside. Give a gander to Murder In The Wind. I'm hoping it will be more widely available and I can spread some more links. I'll get one and report back on the other stories.

Where have I been?

2010-06-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

Man, I took a long time off from blogging but did anyone even notice? I doubt it.
Since I've been gone a few things: one is that I took 3rd place in the Storysouth Million Writers Award for best short of 2009 for my story Ditch. Thanks to everyone who voted and supported me. I was really blown away by it.
Work continues with JB Kohl and I on the sequel and it is going well. We just did a big adjustment to the almost-end so we're working our way through how that effects everything now. Over the 65,000 word mark though.
I have a new book idea I want to do but just need to crack a few more beats of the story. If it works - oh man!
Of course, it would be nice if I could do something with the three others I've already finished! Fingers crossed that good news is coming on that very front soon. Don't want to jinx it.
There's been no time to write any shorts lately but I'll have a story in the next all fiction issue of Crimefactory and we are closing in on the end of Jason Duke's story contest. Hope I can show well in that one since there is some great stuff in the running.

This Friday Sophie Littlefield will be in town to sign A Bad Day For Pretty which is exciting and the later in the month Rebecca Cantrell will be here with her sequel A Night of Long Knives.

Um, what else - reading! I've read some great, great stuff lately. The Deputy was amazing, both Severance Package and Expiration Date were phenomenal. I stopped early on two others but also loved Boulevard by Stephen Jay Schwartz.
Has it been so long that I haven't mentioned The Way Some People Die by Ross MacDonald? How am I so late to the party on him? It's because he does a series and I am allergic. I liked it though.
Did I mention The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston? Freakin' loved that one. I decided I'm going to check out his Joe Pitt series and maybe the Six bad Things series too. They are only 4 or 5 books long so I can handle it.

I leave you with a great quote from Garrison Keillor on the state of publishing:

"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time,

and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals

(U R 2 1derful)...The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America,

each with an average of 14 readers,

eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75"