Forgotten Music : BASZCAX

FORGOTTEN  MUSIC:BASCZAX

I’m not 100% on this but  think  the first time I saw Basczax they were supporting either Cowboys International or The Damned at Middlesbrough Rock Garden in 1979. 

They were great – a cracking mixture of  punk, art rock  and glam - and me and the Hartlepool crew made regular visits to the big city -Stockton- to see them play at The Teesider pub every Friday night, and wherever else they played for that matter. I even supported them a couple of times when I played in the band  Halcyon Days.

As Wikipedia says: 

'Basczax were a British post-punk band that was formed in Redcar in August 1978.

The band was formed by Mick Todd (bass), who recorded a demo of "Karleearn Photography", which convinced Jeff Fogarty (saxophone) and Alan Savage (guitar, vocals) to join. The line-up was completed for early performances by Nigel Trenchard (keyboards) and Cog (drums), but these were soon replaced by former Blitzkrieg Bop members John Hodgson (keyboards) and Alan Cornforth (drums).

Starting out as an anti-punk, almost anti-music noise band, they supported the Gang Of Four, amongst others in the early days. Basczax's first released material appeared on Fast Product's Earcom 2 mini-LP in 1979, alongside Joy Division.The band also released a 7" single on the Pipeline label: "Madison Fallout"/"Auto Mekanik Destruktor" (1979), which reached #48 on the UK Independent Chart.

Basczax toured with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) and appeared on the Check It Out TV show in 1980, performing "Ego Therapy". ’

I can’t remember how many times I saw Baszczax  but they were always a pleasure and never a chore and I’m sure a strong influence on me in many, many ways. Singer Alan Savage was one of the first people to encourage me to write, lyrics in this case.

And the good news is that thirty years after splitting up Basczax are BACK!

Their website gives you details of what they're up to as well as links to some of their splendid  songs such as  Neon Vampires, Madison Fallout and  Young Hearts Wear Scarlet.

Basczax also have a Facebook page with lots of links and information.

Here they are performing EGO THERAPY on the telly back in 1980.

And here's NEON VAMPIRES from the new LP.




There is MORE FORGOTTEN MUSIC today at SCOTT D PARKER's smashing blog here

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime - Ed. Maxim Jakubowski.

 The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime

 

 

 

 

 

 

               Ed. Maxim Jakubowski.

Stories from Ray Banks, John Mortimer, Stella Duffy, Martin Edwards, Ken Bruen, Donna Moore, Allan Guthrie, Colin Dexter  and loads more.

 

 

 

 

The SP:

This is the must-have annual anthology for every crime fiction fan - the year's top new British short stories selected by leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski. This great annual covers the full range of mystery fiction, from noir and hardboiled crime to ingenious puzzles and amateur sleuthing. Packed with top names like Colin Dexter, Christopher Fowler, Alexander McCall Smith, Robert Barnard, Peter James, Natasha Cooper, Sophie Hannah, and many more. 

Maxim Jakubowski is a London-based novelist and editor. He was born in the UK and educated in France. Following a career in book publishing, he opened the world-famous Murder One bookshop in London in 1988 and has since combined running it, now online, with his writing and editing career. He has edited a series of 15 bestselling erotic anthologies and two books of erotic photography, as well as many acclaimed crime collections. He compiles two acclaimed annual series for the Mammoth list: Best New Erotica and Best British Crime. He is a winner of the

VOTE in 2010 Spinetingler Awards

2010 Spinetingler Award Nominees and Poll

The polls are open until April 30th and the winners will be announced on May 1st.

Vote here.

(IN THE) COLD LIGHT OF DAY - My Gischler Write Off entry.

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JASON DUKES' ' RED HOT' WRITING CONTEST - Entries So Far

JASON DUKES' 'RED HOT' WRITING CONTEST - Entries So Far

* What Happened Next by Patricia Abbott

* SEVENTY-TWO HOURS OR LESS BY MICHAEL J. SOLENDER

* Dirt by B.R. Stateham

* Mumbles Finnegan by Thom Gabrukiewicz

* Facial Recognition by Daryl Sedore

* Sisterhood by Nigel Bird

* Jackie Boy by A J Hayes

Links are in the right sidebar ...

This Impossible Night by Peter Ord

PETER ORD - SONGWRITER

I've known Peter Ord for THIRTY years ! He is a songwriter and artist living in Hartlepool, UK. A self-taught musician (guitar, bass and keyboards),he has been writing music since his early teens.

In the 80's he performed with post - punk bands in the Middlesbrough area, including Halcyon Days, Oceans 11(along with Richard Sanderson, Ronny Burke & me)  and Hold, amongst others. 

Since then, he has concentrated on songwriting, film -making and painting. He records his music in his bedroom and refuses to play live.He is NOT a Private Detective- or is eh?

His alter ego Hedge45 is a big hit with the NOOB TOOB ARMY!

He composed the moody THEME for my CRIMESPACE  page.

Peter Ord's MY SPACE page is HERE

His latest recording is the noir tinged  This Impossible Night and here it is ...

FLASHBACK: Frank Duffy Showcase by Steve Jensen

FRANK DUFFY SHOWCASE 

by 

STEVE JENSEN

Biography: Frank Duffy was born in Liverpool in 1971. He started writing when he was just eight years old, but it has only been in the last five years that he has started writing seriously. His inspirations are varied, though he has a passion for all things dark and eerie. He has a number of publishing credentials to his name, having placed stories in both the U.K. and abroad in such magazines as Here & Now: Tales of Urban Fantasy, The Ethereal Gazette, Visions, Insidious Reflections and Estronomicon.

He currently lives and works in Poland as private school teacher, in the fascinating city that is Warsaw. Frank lives with his partner Ewa, his two dogs B and Mr Mole, and devotes most of his time to thinking-up new ways to unnerve himself.

Published stories: The Seat (Here & Now), The Box (The Ethereal Gazette), Where It All Started (The Ethereal Gazette), The Examples (Insidious Reflections), The Inevitable Change (Visions), Others’ Pain (Visions), Cycle (Pulp Metal Magazine). Frank’s short story False Pilgrim is now available to read in Estronomicon, the magazine produced by Screaming Dreams Press.

At present Frank has half-a-dozen stories under option. He is also hoping to place a novella, a near-future satire called Leaving The Room. Work in progress: The Dark Soldier, (a novella), co-author Steve Jensen. Deadline, (a novel). False Pilgrim and Other Stories (a collection).

Introducing...Frank Duffy

Please give us a little background on yourself and your writing career.

Frank: I was born in Liverpool in 1971, but grew up in large provincial village just down the road. I attended a Catholic all-boys school, which was still in those days floundering under the misapprehension that caning and general acts of arbitrary violence against their pupils was an acceptable norm of the education system. Naturally, it has since made its way into my work.

As for my writing career I’ve been writing ‘seriously’ for five years now. When I say seriously, I mean that I started to submit my work. I’ve written for as long as I can remember, which is to say since I was eight years old. I’ve placed stories on both sides of the Atlantic, and I seem to hover between what the industry calls speculative fiction (when they don’t want to say horror), and outright bona-fide horror.

'She blinked her eyes rapidly, batting the gentle tide of white which was slowly submerging her and made another decision. It would hurt, but she had no choice but to act. Nicky counted…one…two…three…, and with a cry that escaped without her knowing it, she was sitting upright. Her head did not spin or roll, but instead obstinately refused the gravity of her concussion. She dug her hands into the snow that bordered her like the chalk outline of a corpse in a murder scene.' ('For Me' by Frank Duffy)

When did you first aspire to become an author, and was there a particular book which inspired this? 

Frank: Actually, the first thing that made want to aspire to be an author, wasn’t a book, but a teacher I had in junior school. Her name was Mrs. Cardwell, and she used read to us (‘us’ being a relative term... children from my year aged 7, and the ‘bigger’ pupils who were 8 or 9) from a book of traditional ghost stories every Monday morning, straight after school assembly. Of course this was a children’s book, but the effect was nonetheless quite staggering. I remember it was raining outside, and all the children, about forty of us in total, sat around her while she read to us. It was quite exciting as you can imagine for a child of seven.

At the end of this she read Walter De La Mare’s poem, ‘The Listener’ to us, and asked the older kids to go home and write a story on what they felt the poem was about. Us younger kids weren’t asked to do this, but nevertheless I went home and wrote my own version of events anyway.

The first book which had an impact on me was most probably Ramsey Campbell’s collection ‘Demons By Daylight’. I remember being too young to appreciate what was going on when I read the stories, but I knew that there was something special happening.

The first novel that had a similar influence on me would have to be Stephen King’s ‘Christine’. I’ve gone back many times to ‘Demons By Daylight’ because there’s so much to savor, and as an aspiring writer, there’s an awful lot to learn from reading it time and again, but I haven’t read ‘Christine’ in over 25 years.

'Father Jose got out of the van. He walked along the pavement and up to the back of the vehicle. Inside something thumped the walls. The metal rippled from the repetition of the commotion, concentric circles of violence and emotion that drew the attention of nobody but a young boy in a sleeping bag. The priest opened the back of the van, stood aside as the door slid upwards, rolling and twisting on its motored chain. He pulled himself into the back and crouched down by Liu's eldest daughter. He had shackled her to the floor, her arms and legs encased in heavy bracelets chained to iron loops set into the floor. He produced the fourth key and held it front of the face of the creature."It's time," he said.' ('The Last Supper' by Frank Duffy)

Which contemporary writers do you admire?

Frank: Obviously like a lot of other aspiring writers in horror, Ramsey Campbell is without doubt somebody I have admired for a long time. But I tend to find that the writers I admire are usually outside of horror, such as Penelope Fitzgerald, Michael Chabon, and Truman Capote.

Of course there are many writers in horror whom I do admire, and whose work I love, but they are too numerous to mention here.

What do you consider to be the major themes in your writing?

Frank: If you’d asked me that several years ago I might not have been able to answer. It took other people to point out what was staring me in the face, namely that a lot of my stories deal with people who feel out of place, not lost in the physical sense, but somewhere in a mental landscape of their own design.

'Simmons lay half on the bed, his back arched, the woman with the broken nose embracing him, pulling him towards her with one hand. Her other hand was in his partner’s mouth, up to the wrist, bulging in the depths of his throat; a face Harrison had trouble recognizing swung towards him, its eyes pleading. The woman grasped Simmons tighter as she forced the hand further, and slowly moved her head in Harrison’s direction. “He needs more than me,” she said. His partner flailed a useless hand at the naked back of the woman. “Want a try?” she asked.'
('The Signal Block' by Frank Duffy)

What do you feel is the most important and fully-realized story you've written?

Frank: It changes week to week. But for now I’d have to go with, ‘And When The Lights Came On’. This story encapsulates what I want to do stylistically, but more importantly, I think it shows me finally embracing the story, the idea, running with it in as many directions as possible, letting the beast out of the bag.

Which books have influenced your thinking, and your writing, more than any other? And whose writing style do you aspire to equal?

Frank: That’s such a difficult question to answer because I’m always discovering something new every year. The list is fortunately endless. But two examples of the kind of work I have recently been thinking about would be Paul Auster’s ‘The Music of Chance’, which showed me the many wonderful ways in which direction and narrative can be used to complete a truly personal perspective, while Ramsey Campbell’s ‘Midnight Sun’has been instrumental in showing me the awe of traditionalism in the supernatural can be reworked into a modern setting to create something at once beautiful and horrifying.

I would be a liar if I said I didn’t aspire to write like these writers, but of all the writers whose work technically impresses me, that would have to be Michael Chabon. I want to write like Frank Duffy, but I wouldn’t mind having a little bit of what he’s had.

How has living in Poland influenced your work?

Frank: Enormously. Poland is much like England in that its history is reflected in everything you look at. Whether it’s a derelict piece of communist architecture, a brand spanking new residential block, or Chopin’s former residence, the physical landscape generates the kind of feeling I get from being anywhere in England.

Which is surprising given that Polish people in general are not at all superstitious, and have no time for horror. Given their history that isn’t surprising.

'The stark brilliance of the underground had begun to show him things he’d rather have not thought about; the stamp of indefinite weariness on so many faces had shocked him; the seemingly arbitrary explosions of unexplained violence had given each train ride an abnormal musicality all of its own...the screams, the yelling...the uncontrolled language. Of course the city had eventually clamped down on it, deploying regular patrols in a pattern difficult to predict, but the faces never changed, nor did the sense that the train was taking them someplace other than home or work.' ('And When the Lights Came On' by Frank Duffy)

What are your future writing plans?

Frank: Well, I’m working on a collection at the moment, and after that I’m probably going to rework a near-future satire. My ultimate goal is to find a publisher for a novel I’m working on called ‘Deadline’. But generally just to keep writing.

Visit Frank's website THE JOURNAL here: http://coaction.wordpress.com/

Read False Pilgrim by Frank Duffy here: http://www.screamingdreams.com/ezine.html

This was first posted here on Tuesday, 29 December 2009. Since then Frank has announced that he will have a short story collection published by BLACK INK in 2010.

SHORT SHARP INTERVIEW: CHARLIE WILLIAMS

I recently talked cobblers to Charlie Williams, author of Stairway to Hell and the Mangel books.

PDB)You share the same name as the most popular host, mebbes,  of the 70’s quiz show, ‘The Golden Shot’.  Has that led to any moments of hilarity inducing confusion?

CW) I did an in-store book signing for Stairway to Hell at Borders in Birmingham, and a bloke was hanging around near the table for ages, looking at me funny but not stepping forward. As always happens at these things there were periods where no one seemed interested, so I went around the store, badgering people. When I got to the bloke he said he'd come especially to see me but he was a bit confused... because he could have sworn his comedy hero Charlie Williams was black, and I am not. I told him my skin tone has faded over the years and he seemed to accept that. I signed a book for him.

PDB) After The Specials wrote a song about him, Nelson Mandela was immediately released from prison, sort of. Who do you think should write a song about Royston Blake to support the Free The Mangel One campaign?

CW) Clearly The Specials.

PDB)There’s a new Dr Who, apparently. I thought the last one was a bit Frank Spencer, to be honest.  Do you think Blakey would make a good Dr Who?

CW) As I was saying to Russel T Davies, the thing about Blakey as Dr Who is that he would break the sonic screwdriver within seconds. And he would be in the sack with his assistant within hours, or she would be jumping out of the tardis in mid-space to get away from him. Plus he would be reckless with his power and make mistakes that would lead to entire civilisations being wiped out, including ours. It would be great, wouldn't it? Imagine him against the daleks, armed only with a cricket bat?

PDB)Pub grub. The work of the devil?

CW) Insofar as you sometimes need a bit of scran to mop up the pints so you can keep drinking, pub grub is alright by me. But if I want some decent food I go to a restaurant. Then a pub. 

PDB)Top Gear, Top Gun or Top Cat?

CW) A combination of all three. That woud be top drawer.

Charlie Willams has a blog too

LONDON Coffee House 1950/ 1960s

I found this gem on You Tube. Daddy-O!

GAYE BIKERS

 . . . ON ACID, PIGFACE, APOLLO 404.

 Want to read an interview with  Mary Byker - the mastermind behind all of those bands?

Then pop over to PULP METAL MAGAZINE and see Jason Michel and  Mary Byker TALK DIRTY!

The Goodbye Kiss at Pen 10

I sent  THE GOODBYE KISS  to PEN  10 last October but recieved no reply and put it down in the rejections box.

Anyway, yesterday  I received an email from Olive the editor to say that she'd found the submision in her SPAM box!

So, it's up now! have a gander!

JASON DUKE'S 'RED HOT' WRITING CONTEST - More entries

A couple more entries in for Jasons Duke's contest.

#2 Sisterhood by Nigel Bird

3# Facial Recognition  by Daryl Sedore

I'll put all the entries together in the right sidebar. 

This looks like it's going to be a HOT one!DEADLINE is 14 MAY.

And , oh yes, these are DARK ENTRIES... did you see what I did then? 

Pic a Winner — A Contest for the Needle Addicts

From Steve Weddle at NEEDLE MAGAZINE

'Get yourself pictured reading NEEDLE. Or of a friend or family member reading the mag. Or of a wrestler. A stranger at the Soap-N-Suds. Whatever.

Then post the photo and link back here.

At the end of May (wanna give you time to get a copy), we’ll draw three winners. Two get a copy of the second issue free of charge mailed to them. Yes. Even if you live in Tazmania or Scotland. The third person gets the second issue of NEEDLE signed by some of the authors.

Post your photo wherever you want, but POST THE LINK HERE IN THE COMMENTS. We’ll post up as many of the photos as we can.

No purchase necessary. (You can borrow your friend’s NEEDLE.)
Void where prohibited by law or where this will get us in trouble.

Please do not harm any livestock in the course of this contest.'

There you go!

The Journal : Horror Edition Online NOW !

The Journal: Horror Edition

The Journal is the cyber home of dark fiction writers FRANK DUFFY, STEVE JENSEN & GERALD D JOHNSTON. 

The Journal’s Horror Edition is now online, and features Horror short stories from Gerald D. Johnston, Jason Michel, Pamela Payne, Marc Lyth & more.

The stories can be read at The Journal's Short Fiction pages.

JASON DUKE'S WRITING COMPETITION - ENTRY #1

 The first entry in Jason's writing contest is up. The story is called Jackie Boy and it's from A J  Hayes.

And it's HERE.

 

 

  Jason's contest rules are as follows ...

 

  ' It’s nice to get published, it’s better to get paid. As writers, we know this all too well. My 15 minute claim to fame was an adventure for Dungeon Magazine that netted $100 bucks. I’ve been paid for other stories over the years, ten dollars here, twenty dollars there, but those are few and far between.

So why is it so fucking hard to get paid? I’m not the greatest writer. I’m good enough to get paid, but not the greatest. There are a lot of better writers out there, yet we’re all in the same boat. Why? I think because there are so few paying magazines.

Which makes sense.

In the crime fiction circle, it seems books are even a hard sell nowadays. I hear firsthand from authors how hard they work to get word out about their books in the hopes of selling copies, authors like Anthony Neil Smith, Eric Beetner, Seth Harwood, Megan Abbott, Tim Maleeny, Nick Quantrill, the list goes on.

If books are a hard sell, then probably crime magazines too, right? Especially paying magazines. Sometimes, I wonder how publishers and magazines manage to stay afloat, because not all of them stay afloat, a lot of them sink. My hat’s off to the ones that survive. Without them, no one would have a shot at getting paid.

Which brings me back to my point: it’s nice to get published, it’s better to get paid. There are a lot of great crime magazines available right now, mostly online, and some more prestigious than others, where writers like myself can get published, just not paid. Exposure is great, don’t get me wrong. With everyone struggling to climb the same pay ladders, not everyone is going to make it, and exposure helps our ascent.

So what I offer is a shot at getting paid. Not just a token amount, either, at least I don’t think so. I believe in karma. I believe in altruism. I consider myself a generous person. I try to be. If I have the cash, and life is good, I believe in spreading the wealth.

Every time I log on to Facebook, or read your blogs, or read magazines like Spinetingler, Thuglit, Plots With Guns, Darkest Before the Dawn, A Twist of Noir, I see this great community of fellow crime writers, all struggling to climb that ladder, all deserving to get paid.

A community looks out for each other, helps each other, encourages the other to aspire to something greater, to reach for and change the stars.

We all play our part in some way.

That is why I’ve decided to throw down some scratch for a crime fiction contest. The winner gets paid $50. The runner-up gets paid $25.

You know what?

Fuck that.

The winner gets paid $100 and the runner-up gets paid $50 bucks.

Call the contest whatever you want. I don’t give a shit what it’s called, but if someone comes up with something really catchy we’ll run with it.

Everyone has a month to get their stories in. I think it goes without saying, only submit your best. We’ll handle entries the same as other contests such as Daniel B. O’Shea’s “Let Us Prey” fiction challenge, the “Recession” fiction challenge over on Do Some Damage, or the various contests hosted on A Twist of Noir. In other words, post your stories on your blogs, on A Twist of Noir, Darkest Before the Dawn, anywhere on the internet, email me the link at dm_jasonduke@hotmail.com, and we’ll link them here for the judges.

That’s right, we have judges.

Excellent, qualified judges who know their shit. In the line-up are Aldo Calcagno, John McFetridge, Steve Weddle, and Stacia J.N. Decker. They have very generously donated their time to read the entries and select two stories each. From those eight stories, David Hale Smith has also generously donated his time to narrow the selection to four – two winners, and two runner-ups. From those four picks, I’ll decide the winner and the runner-up. Yeah, I know I’m not as qualified or know my shit nearly as much as Aldo, John, Steve, Stacia, and David, but it’s my fucking money, so ha.

Crime fiction only. It’s broad, can mean a lot of different things, leaving it wide open, so if you ask me to explain what we’re looking for I’m gonna put you in a fucking chokehold. Word limit on stories 2,000-3,500 words. I don’t want them too short, but still quick for the judges to read.

The judges will have another month to narrow their selections. We will post the announcements here. Then I’ll announce the winner and runner-up. Payment will be through paypal, money order, direct deposit, cash, however the fuck the winners choose to get paid. The winner and runner-up will also get published in Crimefactory, with a big thanks to the Crimefactory crew Keith Rawson, Cameron Ashley, and Liam Jose.

So what the fuck are you waiting for?

Get to it.'

You heard the man!

Guest Blogger: B r Stateham - A Crime Writer from the Wind-Swept Plains of Kansas

A Crime Writer from the Wind-Swept Plains of Kansas

When Paul asked me to write this little piece for him about me and my writing, I have to admit, I was both pleased and perplexed.  Pleased in the comforting knowledge that somebody whom I admire as a writer thinks and acknowledges the possibility I may be one as well.

But the perplexity sat in quickly:  What the hell do I say?  How do I show the world that I may indeed be (gulp) an honest-to-god writer?

I’ll start with this.  I’m sixty years old.  A sixty-year old body with a fourteen year old mind living in it.  I still dream about going into space.  Still dream about discovering Atlantis.  About facing insurmountable odds and challenging the gods.

I grew up in the Fifties.  When Communism threatened the world and where there seemed to be a distinct belief that everyone shared a consensual definition of what was right and what was wrong. What was good and what was evil. You were either good.  Or you were bad.  Of course this came from my family.  Blue collar, hard working laborers who worked the oil rigs as Texas and Oklahoma all their lives.  Work in the oil patch, brother, and you quickly come to appreciate what hard manual labor is.  Freezing cold in the winters out in a godforsaken barren country with the snow blowing forty miles per hour in your face.  Or standing on a derrick floor throwing chains around turning pipe underneath a blazing Texas sun with the air so still not even a blade of grass stirs.

Blue collar oil field deck hands.  Tough.  Hard drinking.  Conservative. Life for them was simple.  It was black or white.  You were good or you were bad.  There was no quibbling.  No hesitation.  It was this way—or that.  But nothing in between.

I grew up in this environment.  Grew up and went to college.  Got an education.  An education that opened up the world with a whole new set of horizons.  And I discovered something.  More education meant the world changed.  It no longer was black or white.  Right or wrong. More education meant the world turned to gray.  Shades of gray.  There became the possibility that evil came in various manifestations.  That good became a debate in Situational Ethics.   That right and wrong had a multitude of variations and definitions.

And literature changed.  There no longer seemed to be hard boiled detectives who worked with a Code of Honor that was inviolate—instead I discovered the anti-hero.  Characters with no sense of right or wrong.  Amoral.  Even . . . . bland.  No color.  No life.  No hope.  No story.  Only failure.  Loneliness.  Isolation.

Perhaps even worse; I discovered a world where there was no testosterone left in the venerable genre of detective literature.  Instead there was the feminine gender.  There was Malice Domestic tales.  Cozy little variations of Miss Marple.  Or females who talked, looked, and acted like a badly written Mickey Spillane novel.  Now, don’t get me wrong—I love women.  Hell, I’ve been married three times, so I guess that qualifies me as being appreciative of the female sex.  And a good writer is a good writer no matter what gender they lean toward.  But in the dark shadows and foggy streets called Crime Fiction the feminine mystic has taken over.  With dire consequences in my opinion.

No.

There’s still in me a part of that blue collar ancestry.   I need my heroes.  I need someone who will stand up and defy the darkness.  I need a story that has color.  Imagination.  A sense of completion.  Hope.

So I became a writer.  I write a kind of noir police-procedurals. And I go against the grain of current writing diatribe.  I purposefully put in descriptive imagination.  Hopefully, just the right mix that still allows the reader to use their own imagination.  I purposefully weave complex plots lines which lull the reader into a matrix of many dead-ends.  I write about men and women who, out of one necessity or another, rise up to become heroes.

In my noir police-procedurals I have two cops by the names of Turner Hahn and Frank Morales. One looks like a 1930’s movie matinee idol and who, through sheer accident, suddenly finds himself inheriting a fortune.  The second one looks like the spitting image of what a modern day Neanderthal might look like. 

Cops.  Blue collar.  Tough.  With a Code of Honor inviolate.  Two over-worked, under appreciated cops who find themselves working multiple cases.  Just like real cops do. Everyday.  All over the world.

The first novel of the series came out in 2008 entitled Murderous Passions.  Two cops.  Four tough, complex homicide cases to work.  The second book is slated to come out in August of 2010.  Its called A Taste of Old Revenge.

                                         

The second novel has only two cases to solve.  Only two.  But brother, these are two tough walnuts to crack.  With dead ends, dead bodies, double-crosses and other nefarious skullduggeries aplenty.  Yet there still is the imagination.  The story-line.  The sense of right and wrong.  The need for justice to be served.

Maybe I’m all wrong.  Maybe I’m the discarded gargoyle the world passed over a long time ago.  Tough.  I like what I write.  And I think there are millions out there who might think the same.

Decide for yourself.  Find my writings at these two locations:

http://www.brstateham.com  or at http://www.turnerhahnnovels.com

Obama Jones and the Logic Bomb

'The controversial Rod Kierkegaard Jr, best known for the cult comic strip, Rock Opera in Heavy Metal Magazine, follows it up with his first novel, a dark social satire set in the America of 2049.  A fast-moving, sexy, visionary comic satire in the tradition of Philip K. Dick and Petronius's Satyricon, Obama Jones and the Logic Bomb  draws the reader into a randy, pleasure-seeking, plugged-in future world in which political correctness is the law of the land and a new Ice Age has turned the Green movement Orange. 


Devastated by the loss of his beloved wife Kim, Obama Jones, a mild-mannered bureaucrat, sets off on a desperate quest through cyberspace to rescue her from the clutches of a compulsory, lifelong UN witness protection program. Along the way he encounters ruthless diplomats, terrorist cells, talking apes, deadly seductresses, shapeshifting robots, body-snatching aliens, civil war in Central Park, God, a strutting supercool babe-magnet alter-ego named Joyful Kalinga, and the Truth: about Kim; about the purpose and fate of Humynkind, and about Obama's own astonishing true nature., 

I haven't finished this yet but,I'll tell you one thing, it isn't dull!

The Heart Is A Lonely Drinker is at BLINK INK

I have another piece of micro-fiction at the splendid BLINK INK.

THE  HEART  IS  A  LONELY DRINKER  is up NOW.

I'M A CULT ! RADGEPACKET V 4 REVIEW

POP over to AMAZON to buy BYKER BOOKS' RADGEPACKET FOUR and read the rest of this review.:

' Twenty-two stories, in fact, including contributions from established, hard-hitting novelists Danny King and Ray Banks, blogster extrordinaire and and cult short-story writer, Paul D. Brazil, and exciting up and coming authors, Andy Rivers and Tom Arnold. Add to this new and old faces from the ranks of the 'unsigned and the unhinged' and what you have is a gritty short-story collection that is in turns disturbing and hilarious.'

Suits me sir!

JASON DUKE'S WRITING COMPETITION

Ace Noir Writer Jason Duke is giving away money. Sort of. But you have to work for it ... listen to the man ...


' It’s nice to get published, it’s better to get paid. As writers, we know this all too well. My 15 minute claim to fame was an adventure for Dungeon Magazine that netted $100 bucks. I’ve been paid for other stories over the years, ten dollars here, twenty dollars there, but those are few and far between.

So why is it so fucking hard to get paid? I’m not the greatest writer. I’m good enough to get paid, but not the greatest. There are a lot of better writers out there, yet we’re all in the same boat. Why? I think because there are so few paying magazines.

Which makes sense.

In the crime fiction circle, it seems books are even a hard sell nowadays. I hear firsthand from authors how hard they work to get word out about their books in the hopes of selling copies, authors like Anthony Neil Smith, Eric Beetner, Seth Harwood, Megan Abbott, Tim Maleeny, Nick Quantrill, the list goes on.

If books are a hard sell, then probably crime magazines too, right? Especially paying magazines. Sometimes, I wonder how publishers and magazines manage to stay afloat, because not all of them stay afloat, a lot of them sink. My hat’s off to the ones that survive. Without them, no one would have a shot at getting paid.

Which brings me back to my point: it’s nice to get published, it’s better to get paid. There are a lot of great crime magazines available right now, mostly online, and some more prestigious than others, where writers like myself can get published, just not paid. Exposure is great, don’t get me wrong. With everyone struggling to climb the same pay ladders, not everyone is going to make it, and exposure helps our ascent.

So what I offer is a shot at getting paid. Not just a token amount, either, at least I don’t think so. I believe in karma. I believe in altruism. I consider myself a generous person. I try to be. If I have the cash, and life is good, I believe in spreading the wealth.

Every time I log on to Facebook, or read your blogs, or read magazines like Spinetingler, Thuglit, Plots With Guns, Darkest Before the Dawn, A Twist of Noir, I see this great community of fellow crime writers, all struggling to climb that ladder, all deserving to get paid.

A community looks out for each other, helps each other, encourages the other to aspire to something greater, to reach for and change the stars.

We all play our part in some way.

That is why I’ve decided to throw down some scratch for a crime fiction contest. The winner gets paid $50. The runner-up gets paid $25.

You know what?

Fuck that.

The winner gets paid $100 and the runner-up gets paid $50 bucks.

Call the contest whatever you want. I don’t give a shit what it’s called, but if someone comes up with something really catchy we’ll run with it.

Everyone has a month to get their stories in. I think it goes without saying, only submit your best. We’ll handle entries the same as other contests such as Daniel B. O’Shea’s “Let Us Prey” fiction challenge, the “Recession” fiction challenge over on Do Some Damage, or the various contests hosted on A Twist of Noir. In other words, post your stories on your blogs, on A Twist of Noir, Darkest Before the Dawn, anywhere on the internet, email me the link at dm_jasonduke@hotmail.com, and we’ll link them here for the judges.

That’s right, we have judges.

Excellent, qualified judges who know their shit. In the line-up are Aldo Calcagno, John McFetridge, Steve Weddle, and Stacia J.N. Decker. They have very generously donated their time to read the entries and select two stories each. From those eight stories, David Hale Smith has also generously donated his time to narrow the selection to four – two winners, and two runner-ups. From those four picks, I’ll decide the winner and the runner-up. Yeah, I know I’m not as qualified or know my shit nearly as much as Aldo, John, Steve, Stacia, and David, but it’s my fucking money, so ha.

Crime fiction only. It’s broad, can mean a lot of different things, leaving it wide open, so if you ask me to explain what we’re looking for I’m gonna put you in a fucking chokehold. Word limit on stories 2,000-3,500 words. I don’t want them too short, but still quick for the judges to read.

The judges will have another month to narrow their selections. We will post the announcements here. Then I’ll announce the winner and runner-up. Payment will be through paypal, money order, direct deposit, cash, however the fuck the winners choose to get paid. The winner and runner-up will also get published in Crimefactory, with a big thanks to the Crimefactory crew Keith Rawson, Cameron Ashley, and Liam Jose.

So what the fuck are you waiting for?

Get to it.'

You heard the man!