News and a new story.

First up THE FINAL CUT is over at Byker Books' RADGEPACKET ONLINE.

And the great Maxim Jakubowski has accepted my story GUNS OF BRIXTON - which will be in CrimeFactory 5 - for The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 2011!

STATIC MOVEMENT ANTHOLOGIES!

I have stories in the following  STATIC  MOVEMENT anthologies.

Don't Tread on Me has SINS OF THE FATHER.

Flash! has M and Ballad Of The Kid.

CAUGHT BY DARKNESS has The Friend Catcher

OUT NOW!

More details HERE!

WARSAW MOON PARTS ONE TO FOUR

PARTS ONE TO FOUR of WARSAW MOON are at DISENTHRALLED here

PULP METAL MAGAZINE- new stuff

The new look PULP METAL MAGAZINE has all sorts of great new stuff:

Fiction:


Suture by Nigel Bird


Before It Dies by Benjamin Imamovic

The Wild Country by David Massengill

THE ARGUMENT BUNNY by Ian Ayris



Death of a Jedi by Andrew Bowen


Fancy Eating by Richard Godwin

Non-fiction:


My Muse Plays Hard to Get by Kevin Lynn Helmick


& my column I Didn’t Say That Did I –July 2010. Book Reviews.

All HERE

SUNDAY STUFF!

Just a few quickies...

Part Four of my serial WARSAW MOON is at DISENTHRALLED

Richard Godwin has THE MAILMAN at THRILLERS KILLERS N CHILLERS

Dave Zeltserman has KING at BEAT TO A PULP

Jimmy Callaway has story number 500 at A Twist Of Noir

Michael J Solender has story 501 at ATON!

And YOU TUBE have this  trailer for Tony Black's cracking LONG TIME DEAD.

And There's More …

In his introduction for the crime anthology KILLER YEAR, the thriller writer Lee Child talks about buying records as a working class lad in 1960’s England. At the time, 45 rpm singles cost an ‘affordable’ six shillings and eightpence  but LP records cost so much more that they were a twice a year only event – birthdays and Christmas.Later, he says, some record companies introduced budget price samplers – mainly prog rock- featuring two or three songs by ‘known’ bands  and the rest unknown or cult bands. And this, he says, is what KILLER YEAR is.  A sampler.

It’s a good analogy and it’s a friggin’ good book with some particularly good stories from Bill Cameron, Ken Bruen, Sean Chercover,Dave White  Jason Pinter and Brett Battles. And there’s more…

I’ve been very lucky to have had stories in three print anthologies so far this year along with some well-hard writers and I thought I’d give you a little sample of them.

Most recently I was asked to contribute a story to the first issue of  Needle – A Magazine Of Noir.

Needle was cooked up by author Steve Weddle and art director John Honor Jacobs and – with the help of editors Scott D. Parker, Naomi Johnson and Daniel O’ Shea –they have put together a cracking first issue. The magazine  looks great and contains over 150 pages of cushty writing.
It kicks off with this line from  Kieran Shea’s  splendid hardboiled P.I. story The Shrewd Variant :
’So you’re saying my daughter is a whore?’

And then it grabs you by the lapels and drags you along with it on a bloody, boozey pub crawl that calls last orders at Jedidiah Ayres’ The Whole Buffalo which is as amazing a piece of writing as you’re likely to read this year.

Along the way you’ll read all sorts of gems from Hilary  Davidson, Keith Rawson, Dave Zeltserman, Cormac Brown, Eric Beetner Sandra Seamans and Chad Rohrbacher.
And there’s  more…

In Needle, I was the token Brit but that wasn’t the case with  Byker Books’ Radgepacket Volume Four – Tales From The Inner Cities.

I first staggered into BYKER BOOKS via the ace crime writer Nick Quantrill who had a story in one of their books- Radgepacket Three- and online at their cracking Radgepacket Online site.

Prompted by Nick I sent a story to them last year – The Night Watchman – and was well chuffed to find out that it was accepted for the Radgepacket Four anthology.
And what a great anthology it is too.

It kicks off with Ragna Brent’s clever  touch of urban magic realism, ‘PianoMan‘ and ends with ‘ I Have Never‘, a brilliantly tense piece of writing from Stephen Cooper.
Along the way you get Ray Banks‘funny and sad ‘The Deacon Shuffle‘, Ian Ayris painfully funny ‘Little Otis‘, Steven Porter‘s spooky ‘Blurred Girl Diaries‘, Fiona Glass’ nasty  and nice ‘Lemon Sour‘, Darren Sant’s laugh out loud ‘Ungrateful Dead’.
And there’s more …

I think first heard about Howl: Dark Tales of the Feral and Infernal via Erin Cole who is the cover star of this classy looking anthology edited by Mark Anthony Crittenden.

My own attempts at horror writing have always felt a little lacking in bite to me and certainly seem so when compared to the blood curdling  Howls in the this collection.
There are standout stories from Lee Hughes, Pulp Metal’s Jason Michel , Gregory Miller, cover star Erin Cole (with the brilliant “Legend of La Chusa”), Carrie Clevenger, Jodi MacArthur, Richard Godwin and editor Mark Anthony Crittenden. 

And there’s  more …

And that’s the deal isn’t it? There are the stories I’ve mentioned and there’s more which you may also like or even prefer.

And another thing, these anthologies aren’t exactly expensive are they?
If you  fancy having a Pick N Mix of top dark fiction–noir,hardboiled, drama, horror, comedy – here are the links:

NEEDLE: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/needle—spring-2010-issue-1/10264337
RADGEPACKET FOUR: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radgepacket-v-Tales-Inner-Cities/dp/0956078850/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268329893&sr=8-4

Howl: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451531311?ie=UTF8&tag=ecleflas-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=1451531311

This post first appeared at PULP METAL MAGAZINE

The Big Hurt at Pulp Metal Magazine

The Big Hurt is a version of a story that came out of one of Chad's FLASH FICTION CHALLENGES and it's over at the new look PULP METAL MAGAZINE!

Guest Blogger: Timothy Hallinan - WRITING ON TIPTOE

WRITING ON TIPTOE

by

Timothy Hallinan

“Write what you know,” right?

Absolutely, if you want to write boring stuff.

I think “Write what you know” is one of the worst pieces of advice you can give an aspiring writer.  Unfortunately, it's also one of the most common pieces of advice given to aspiring writers.  Every decade brings its crop of young novelists whose books sound like they all grew up on the same block and took the same drugs.  Their authors wrote what they knew, and guess what?  In this highly interconnected world, they all knew the same things.  And now nobody cares much about those things.

Okay, start with what you know.  Learn how to structure a novel or a story with material that's familiar to you, easy to write about.  Everyone who's not David Mitchell should write at least one, and probably two or three, drawer books – books that will be finished, read proudly once or twice, and then buried forever in the bottom of a drawer.  My first drawer book was called The Wrong End of the Rainbow, and that was the best thing about it.  But, boy, was it about things I knew.

And it taught me a lot about what a novel is.

By the time I'd written my second book, which was also all about things I knew, I realized that I was never going to get any better, and that I was going to get very bored with writing, unless I started writing about things I didn't know – things I had to imagine.  Kinds of people who'd never intruded into my safe, middle-class world.  Opinions, biases, outright bigotry I never could share in a million years, around which whole personalities had been built.  Places where basic assumptions are different, where the conventional wisdom is almost unrecognizable from here. 

(In parentheses: To me, that doesn't mean writing about vampires or zombies unless you can imagine really fresh vampire and zombies, although I guess “fresh zombie” is an oxymoron.  It seems to me that most people who write vampires are writing vampires they've read somewhere.  The character seems right because it already exists on a page somewhere.  I think one of the first traps a developing writer falls into is writing writing instead of writing life – that kick of recognition that says, “This is real” often just means you've read it somewhere.  God knows, I fell into it.  I still do.)

Once you've gained a sense of how a novel or a story works by writing about what you know – stuff you're comfortable with emotionally or geographically or behaviorally –  then get up on tiptoe.  Ransack your imagination for things you really have to stretch to reach.  It's harder, and there's probably a bigger chance that you'll fail, but you'll be getting an aerobic workout and hoisting free weights at the same time.  You're going to get stronger faster.  You'll be able to handle more things, harder things, new kinds of situations and characters.  New kinds of language, if you also stretch your prose.

In my case, like many thriller writers, I started with the bad guys.  Bad guys are the opera of thrillers; they have the most extravagant personalities, they do the most out-of-the-ordinary things.  The goal I set for myself in the first few published books was to come up with bad guys (they were mostly guys) I had never read before, who had a sufficiently strong gravitational field to curve the world of the book around them. 

I wrote (I think) a few good books in that series, which featured a Los Angeles private eye named Simeon Grist.  It's a “cult” series, meaning it got great reviews and didn't sell squat.  The first one, not entirely coincidentally, just went up as an e-book at Amazon, and more will follow.

Los Angeles got too comfortable, so I decided to write about another culture, complete with another language and a radically different perspective on life.   The four Bangkok thrillers have made me work on tiptoe every inch of the way, just trying to keep the Thai characters true.  (I have a couple of helpful Thai readers who point out the most egregious errors.)  And the moral climate of Bangkok, which is unusually rich in gray areas, was also a rewarding stretch.  I think seeing the world in black-and-white is a luxury of the well-fed, so it's energizing to explore the spaces in between “good” and “evil.”

Three books ago, I realized I had never accepted a challenge much closer to home – I had never written two women alone in a room with no men present.  In the Bangkok book called THE FOURTH WATCHER, I did it for the first time.  No outraged women wrote to criticize it.  In the book that's coming out in August, THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, I wrote a 45,000-word section that's ALL women, and what's more they're women who are being forced into the sex industry, which is obviously rather intimate territory.  It's no exaggeration to say I was terrified while I was writing it.  I was completely captivated by the material, but when I handed the book in, I had no idea what the reaction would be.  A male Westerner writing the path to prostitution taken by so many Southeast Asian females – it was like walking through a mined area.  So far, though, so good – the book has gotten starred reviews from both Kirkus Reviews and Booklist, and both of them gave special praise to that section of the story, as did Publisher's Weekly.

My point here isn't that I'm cool or that I'm a particularly good writer.  It's just that I'm handling material now that I wouldn't have dreamed of touching eight or ten years ago, and it's because I made a conscious decision to write on tiptoe.  Everyone has read series that went stale, that turned into dioramas of familiar characters and settings.  The writers of those books weren't stretching themselves.  They were writing what they knew.  It's the quickest way I know to mummify your writing.

Bio:

Timothy Hallinan has written ten published novels, all thrillers.  A series of six mysteries he wrote in thr 1990s featuring erudite Los Angeles private eye Simeon Grist is a cult favorite and is now becoming available in e-book form.  Since 1981, Hallinan has divided his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, the setting for his Poke Rafferty novels: A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, THE FOURTH WATCHER, BREATHING WATER, and the upcoming THE QUEEN OF PATPONG.  As of this writing, THE QUEEN OF PATPONG has already received “starred” reviews in two of the four major publication trades.

FACEBOOK PAGE

Yes, for some reason I've set up a Facebook page for  YOU WOULD SAY THAT, WOULDN'T YOU?

Anyway, I set it up last night and I've got over 100 'like's already, which is nice.

If you fancy joining the gang then click on the link!

You Would Say That, Wouldn't You?

Promote your Page too

ANNE FRASIER'S HALLOWEEN ANTHOLGY

Over HERE Anne says :

'Signed the contract for the Halloween anthology!'

For more information about the anthology's publishers NODIN PRESS and about the contributors -which includes me!- pop over to Anne Frasier's blog MONKEY WITH A PEN

Long Time Dead by Tony Black.

Long Time Dead

by

Tony Black.

In Tony Black’s Long Time Dead , journalist turned reluctant private investigator Gus Dury is in the gutter again but he’s still looking at the stars, albeit through the bottom of a bottle of whisky.

Long Time Dead starts off with Gus waking up in hospital, after a particularly prolific drinking session, and being told that he’s close to knocking on heaven’s door. Gus, of course, ignores the doctor’s advice and immediately checks out of the hospital. After a little arm-twisting, he decides to help out his best friend, Hod, and investigate the suspicious death by hanging of a famous actress’ son.

While sniffing around, Gus finds a rancid trail that leads from the top end of Edinburgh society down into its murky sewers. And back again.

Punch-drunk and booze addled, Gus’ shoulders have more chips than Harry Ramsden and he just can’t stop kicking against the pricks with his puke encrusted Doc Martins.

 

Gus isn’t for everyone, of course, and his scatter shot bile can be wide of the mark - a man wearing eyeliner, how shocking Gus!- but when he’s on target you’re with him all the way.

 

LONG TIME DEAD is another urban classic from Tony Black and fans of the previous Gus Dury books – Paying For It, Gutted & Loss – won’t be disappointed.

SHORT SHARP INTERVIEW: KIM NEWMAN

SHORT SHARP INTERVIEW: KIM NEWMAN

Wiki says 'Kim Newman (born 31 July 1959) is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the BSFA award.'

And for some reason he answered some of my questions!

Q1:One great image I have of you is from Channel Four's old breakfast show.

You'd given a less than positive review of a Brit film and afterwards, when the camera went to the Des Lynam lookalike that presented it, he said' If it was down to the likes of Kim Newman there'd be no British film industry.'


Off camera you could be heard shouting' And good riddance! Good riddance!'


What's the shape of the British film industry today?

KN: I don't think it's in any worse shape than at any time since 1929. There have always been sorry-state-of-the-industry worries. In genre terms, it's livelier than it has been - though maybe with a few too many mockney gangster films and footie thug biographies. I'm still a big Mike Leigh fan.

Q2: There seems to have been speculation about a big budget Hollywood version of your novel Anno Dracula for ages. Any truth in this?

KN: It's been optioned a couple of times. I did a first draft script once. As it stands, I have the rights back - and have turned down a few offers which I thought weren't likely to lead to films or TV shows I could endorse (and, frankly, weren't likely to get made).

At the moment, a producer/studio would have to offer me either a) life-changing money, b) a really interesting director with a track record in expensive but personal films or c) a considerable degree of control and input. None are that likely.

A problem with the book as a film project is that it isn't the sort of thing that can be done cheaply - it's a period piece with special effects, a large cast of the sort of characters who need big (ie: star) personalities, and has a lot of background things going on arguably more important than the actual plot.

Q3: Did you really wear a cape to school?

KN: No, I went to a Grammar school with a uniform policy so I wore that. I wore a cape at college and university - a few years before there were goths or even new romantics around to fit in with, and a few years after the Victorian dress-up flower power trend of the 1960s. If there had been other people dressed like me then, I probably would have been contrary and found something else no one would consider wearing.

Q4: What are you thoughts on ebooks and how new technology, including social media, are affecting the worlds of of the writer and reader?

KN: Sorry - but this is like the budget or censorship or interest rates. I know it's important and I do keep track of the issue, but the debate is so excruciatingly boring I'd rather not add to the tedium with more waffle.

Q5: How would you like to write Dr Who? Could you tell us about 'Time and Relative,'?

KN: I'd certainly consider it. Time and Relative is a novella, published by Telos Books - who briefly had a license to do Dr Who-related fiction outside the BBC's franchise envelope.

It's set before the first episode of the series in 1963, during the long cold winter of 1962-3 (which I dimly remember), and is narrated by Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter (Carole Anne Ford on the show). Like a lot of Who characters over the years, she had a great introduction and a lot of potential but wasn't especially well used in later stories (she was the first of the many women who wound up screaming a lot).

So I got to go back and rethink her a bit, and do a story about an alien teenager in London. It has a monster - living snowmen from a pre-human ice intelligence (they come back in my novella Cold Snap in Secret Files of the Diogenes Club) - and a save-the-world plot, but I was as interested in the viewpoint. It was reasonably well-received.

It was the first of the Telos line, and I did a very rough outline for a later novella (Dimensions in Space, of course) which would do for the last (it was to be a memoir by the Master - which is why he's set up as a presence in Time and Relative). As it happened, the BBC took back the license when the show was revived, so I didn't get to write it. I might not have done anyway: when something is well-liked, there's a temptation to do more but also a worry that you did your best the first time out and shouldn't try to repeat it for fear of disappointment.

Q6: Your Video Dungeon at is one of the best things at Empire Magazine. Is it more difficult to track down undiscovered gems these days than it was when you first started the column?

KN: Actually, it's much less difficult. The column has been running for a while, so publicists are aware of it and send me plenty of things - though I still do a certain amount of buying and renting movies which would otherwise fall through the cracks. If anything, the problem now is that I have far more films in the to-be-watched dungeon pile than I can a) cover or b) watch. The column has grown to a full page, but I could easily write something three or four times as long.

Unlike most reviewers, I'm not strictly tied to what comes out in the month the issue is cover-dated, but that just means the backlog swells. I occasionally do themed columns - I've just done an all-British dungeon - which lets me look at different things. Plus my remit is broad - initially, I was supposed to cover films which didn't have a theatrical release (I more or less keep to this for new movies) but I've expanded to take in a lot of reissue or backlist titles.

Q7: What are you working on at the moment?

KN: I've just started writing a short story called 'The Adventure of the Six Maledictions', which is one of a series I've been doing about Professor Moriarty, narrated by his sidekick Colonel Moran on the assumption that Moran has seen how well Watson is doing with his Holmes memoirs and wants to try something similar. They're slightly more humorous than my norm.

Also on my desk: I've turned in Mysteries of the Diogenes Club, the third in a series of collections for MonkeyBrain, and delivered a draft of a new edition of Nightmare Movies (which is basically the old book with an entirely new one stuck to it covering the last twenty years). I've just signed with Titan to reissue the three Anno Dracula novels, in editions which might have new material, and finally put out the collection Johnny Alucard. Plus all the usual reviewing, TV/radio appearances. So, I'm busy.

KIM NEWMAN'S website is here.

His WIKIPEDIA page is here