The Summing Up, Friday July 22, 2011

Just five days ago, Milton Burton sent me information about his new book TEXAS NOIR. He has written several book reviews for this site over the years and I have grown so fond of him (as I do all the ladies and gentlemen that come here--and there are a lot of you). Now I have learned that he has been hospitalized for tests. Kevin Tipple tells us that it is not life-threatening. Good!

Please send all of your good wishes to Milton and include a few for Kevin Tipple and his wife too.

We need to huddle together in these hard times for so many.

You can find my mystified review of TREE OF LIFE right here.

And for all of your hard-working reviewers, some appreciation.

SteveHL has left a new comment on your post "The Summing Up, Friday July 22, 2011":

"I don’t know where else to put this comment. Like everyone else who reads FFB, I often think that I would like a particular book that someone discusses. Most of the time I don’t follow up (who could afford to?), but when I do I usually am very glad. In just the past few months, I have enjoyed books recommended by John Norris (Miss Hargreaves), Yvette Banek (The Baby Game), Ed Gorman (Hard City) and Barry Gardner (Death of a Fantasy Life), as well as quite a few others. I thank you all.

And one more thing…I want to say how much pleasure I have got from the writings of many of the FFB posters themselves. Again, many thanks."

And thanks to Steve for sharing this.


The Summing Up

Patti Abbott, Outsider in Amsterdam, Janwillem van de Wetering
Yvette Banek, Daddy Longlegs, Jean Webster
Paul Bishop, Ringside Jezebel, Kate Nickerson
Michael Carlson, 47th Samurai, Stephen Hunter
Bill Crider, Cain's Woman, O.G. Benson
Scott Cupp, Anita, Keith Roberts
Loren Eaton, House of Stairs, William Sleator
Martin Edwards, Death to the Rescue, Milward Kennedy
Glenn Harper, The Sunday Woman, Carlo Fruttero & Franco Lucentini
Randy Johnson, Star Born, Andre Norton
George Kelley, Double Trouble, Sheldon Jaffery
Margot Kinberg, Indemnity Only, Sara Paretsky
Rob Kitchin, Borkmann's Point, Hakan Nesser
B.V. Lawson, Five Passengers from Lisbon, Mignon Eberhart
Evan Lewis, Seven Samurai, Robert B. Parker
Steve Lewis/Bill Pronzini, Route 13, Ed Lacy
Steve Lewis/William F. Deeck, Quinney's Adventures, Horace A. Vachell
Todd Mason, The Collected Stories of Carol Emshurller, Janet Fox; Mister DA V, Kit Reed; Janet Quiet, K.A. Laity and Elena Steier
J.F. Norris, The Room with the Iron Shutters, Anthony Wynne
Eric Peterson, The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen, Richard Crouse
David Rachels, Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse, Otsuichi
James Reasoner, The Barn, Glenn Law
Gerard Saylor, Guild, Ed Gorman
Ron Scheer, Two Soldiers, Charles King
Michael Slind, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones, Timothy Fuller
Kerrie Smith, XYZ A Detective Story, Anna Katherine Green
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, Mystery Ranch, Max Brand

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, July 22, 2011

Won't be here next week to gather links.

Outsider in Amsterdam, Janwillem van de Wetering
is the first novel in the Gripstra and de Gier mystery series, a series I followed from The Netherlands to Maine over the years. The best element of the series was always Adjutant Gripstra and Sergeant de Gier, our two heroes.

In this first book, you can throw in an interesting hanging victim, the victim's sexy wife, the victim's mother, and a lot of other interesting types.

And, of course, Amsterdam itself, which is my favorite city although when I read this I never thought I would get to spend six months there later. Amsterdam and its wonders and oddities is a welcome presence. Keeping drugs off the streets is a huge concern to the police.

And the series was always full of humor and pithy observations:

(Grijpstra talking to his superior on the phone and looking at his wife's head), says "Yes sir" on the phone and thinks: "Why do curlers have to be pink? Why not brown? If they were brown they would blend with her hair, I wouldn't notice them so much, and I would be less irritated. I wouldn't have such a foul taste in my mouth. My stomach wouldn't cramp. I wouldn't have to worry about ulcers. My wife wouldn't forget to buy medicine for me because I wouldn't need to take medicine. I would be a happier man."

Does anyone use curlers now?

Yvette Banek
Paul Bishop
Michael Carlson
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Loren Eaton
Martin Edwards
Glenn Harper
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Bill Pronzini
Steve Lewis/William F Deeck
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang

Bat Segundo Show-Megan Abbott

http://www.edrants.com/_mp3/segundo404.mp3

More for the writers out there, an interview with the amazingly insightful and brilliant Ed Champion, the reader every writer wants. Warning: it is long.

My Life at the Theater: Anything Goes

Not a huge Patti Lupone fan, but you get the idea from this clip.
I saw Anything Goes at the Stratford, Canada Festival in 2004. Music by Cole Porter; book by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. New book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, what's not to love. A terrific cast and stage production.

How I Came to Write This Book: Robert Swartwood

I love a good title. Sometimes—for me at least as a writer—a story begins first by a title and evolves from there. So was the case when, for some strange reason, the title “True Confessions of a Serial Killer’s Wife” entered my head out of nowhere a few years ago. The idea stayed, because I thought it would be interesting to look at the family members of a serial killer and how they’re affected by the killer’s despicable acts. And so I sat down one day and wrote about a woman whose life is suddenly turned upside down when the FBI shows up to arrest her husband of being a serial killer. This woman is a middle school science teacher, has had no idea of her husband’s terrible deeds, but what is worse is she has just given birth to a baby boy. And as the story unfolded, it becomes clear she’s worried about her newborn son. How whatever evil is inside her husband might also be inside her baby, and wouldn’t she be doing the world a favor by putting the baby out of its misery?

This was one of the story’s themes, the idea of nature versus nurture. Throughout the story the woman has only two close friends she can rely on. Her mother is dying of cancer. Her brother is in the Peace Corps, off in another country. She wants nothing more to do with her husband. Her life as she knows it is over. And so she decides to escape, taking her baby boy with her, still uncertain about whether or not he too will bring the same kind of evil as her husband into the world. The story ends with her driving away with her son strapped in the backseat, the early morning sun shining through the rear windshield creating a sort of halo around the baby’s head.

The story was long—maybe 7,000 words—and I knew it needed work, so I set it aside and kind of forgot about it until one day when I was getting together some novel pitches to send to my agent. One of them was picking up with the serial killer’s wife five years after she disappeared and managed to start a new life. It was going to be a straight-up thriller, very fast paced, about a woman whose son gets abducted by someone who knows of her former life. This someone wants her serial killer husband’s trophies—the fingers he cut off each of his victims—and so to save her son she has no choice but to return to the life she once fled.

It was easy starting the novel, seeing as I had already laid out much of the background in the short story. All of the characters who appeared in that story appear again in the novel. Only—and here’s the fun part—much of what I knew about the characters when I wrote the story changed as the novel progressed. Just like my novel’s protagonist, Elizabeth, much of what I thought I knew was merely a lie, and by the time the novel was finished, I was just as shocked as I know many readers will be.

Robert Swartwood’s work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, Postscripts, ChiZine, Space and Time, Wigleaf, and PANK. He is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, which was chosen by The Nervous Breakdown as one of their favorite books of 2010, and was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. His latest novel is The Serial Killer’s Wife.

Robert invites you to visit him at his website www.robertswartwood.com on August 1^st, at 7:00 pm EST for a live reading.

Wednesday Night Music: It's a Perfect Day

END OF EVERYTHING DAY

And I know I will be stressed out over: will people turn out, will we have enough food, will Borders still be there, will Megan's flight from Phoenix be on time, will the books be there, will they have enough chairs, will the map from the store to the party be clear enough, will the three hours sleep she has had be enough, will it be so friggin' hot, none one will venture outside?

Will people show up?

That's always the worst fear for writers and I have seen it happen. Playing to an empty house. Once at our local Borders, a crowd of ten listened to Elmore Leonard. The store only advertised the event inside the store. Of course, Leonard wasn't much bothered and talked for an hour. I love that man.

Oh, and incidentally, thanks to those who came out to hear Megan over the years.

You know how it is. Wish us luck. None of the Abbotts are comfortable in the limelight.

If you have enjoyed a recently written novel, go say so on Amazon. That may be the only place people will learn about books soon. If Amazon is going to be the only place that counts, let's make it count.

For Persephone Zieger--the real version

With love to the boy who searched the world for the woman he loves.

Forgotten Movies: Jump Tomorrow

George (Tunde Adelbimpe), a proper Nigerian gentleman, arrives at the Buffalo airport to meet the women his family has arranged for him to marry. He's late, she's gone on to Niagara Falls, so he has two days, traveling slowly and reluctantly, to get to the wedding. At the airport, he meets Alicia (Natalia Verbeke), a lively Latin, going with her boyfriend to see her family. George is smitten. Partly by happenstance, and partly by the designs of Gerard, a romantic and manic Frenchman George meets at the airport, his path crosses Alicia's a few times. As Gerard puts it, George should seize the chance to see what happens with Alicia - he can always jump tomorrow. Can George take on fate and custom?(This synopsis mostly comes from IMDB) What I remember most about this film was how original, unexpected and delightful it was. Not the exact mechanics of the plot-ten years ago now. The lead is just riveting because he plays his part so deadpan.
I will probably only persuade Charlie Stella to see this, but you won't regret it if you do.
(Directed by Joel Hopkins).

Borders

Here is a piece by Ed Champion, which includes a list of indie bookstore near each closing Borders store. Thanks for the footwork, Ed. Let's all do the right thing and buy a book from these stores pronto.

Robin Watson just reminded Detroit folks that there is a indie in Taylor called BOOK NOOK and there is a terrific bookstore near me SECOND STORY BOOKS (used by terrific). Also New Horizons Bookstore in Roseville, MI. And they do offer discounts. These are the stores we let wither when the big boxes came along. Now it's their turn to reclaim the spotlight.

Let's work on building up a list and building up some businesses.

The original Borders Bookstore was an entirely different affair from the pumped-up Thanksgiving turkey it became. It occupied a sizable chunk of a block in Ann Arbor and was magical because it was ALL ABOUT BOOKS.

It was the only store at that time where you were likely to find a book from a university press, for instance. Or books in foreign languages. Or books written ten years earlier.

There was no coffee shop, gifts area, music. Just books. Making the hour trek there was a joy I will never recapture. It was always packed with people holding books in their hands. After a while it added another store closer to us but far less magical.

And then it started adding stores everywhere and its magic continued to dim.

But it was still a Michigan thing. We still found a difference between it and other big box stores even if no one else did.

I wonder after Megan's book talk at a Borders on Wednesday if I will ever step inside one again. I doubt it and I am so sorry for that. I have read a lot of press about all the mistakes Borders made and wonder if sticking to that one store that carried books no one else did was the way to go. Probably not, because everything has changed since then.

Maybe one day, I will go to Ann Arbor and find such a bookstore again. It might not be Borders but it may some new and wondrous store that takes a chance on a fickle public.

Along this line, check out Megan's blog today with emails readera shared with her about what their childhood library experience meant to them. Are we willing to allow the institutions that meant the most to us be gone for our children and grandchildren? There are people that say government should not fund libraries. Or much of anything else. Don't let that happen.

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY: Jim Wilsky

How I Came To Write This Story: Big Cat

by Jim Wilsky

When I was asked by Patti to write this installment for her series, I was of course very appreciative and honored to do so. At the same time, I was of course, clueless. I’m positive I had the deer in the headlights look going on as I typed my response back to her and enthusiastically said, “Absolutely!” I have always feared explaining myself or making some sort of sense of why and what I write. Not so much fear I suppose as it is maybe just the difficulty in trying to explain a black hole in space or outline why it gets so quiet right before a big storm. Many times I just don’t know why I would chose to write a story like Big Cat, at Beat to a Pulp.

The only common denominators for a starting point I can consistently point to is place and memory. More times than not, the setting is absolutely crucial to me. Frequently its just as important as the nutshell of a story or the characters in it. If I know a place well or there’s a place I’ve been, or even a place I haven’t been but find intriguing - that seems to be a trigger for me and I’ll build a story on that foundation. As I’m sure all writers do at varying degrees, I also pull from memory. Memory of those places, people you’ve known or events that seem to have been imprinted in your mind.

Big Cat was not the agonizing dentist appointment that some stories are for me. It came easy and that really is a conversation in itself. Why some stories flow like the Mississippi and others meander like a slow creek in August?

At any rate, Fallen Angels, the tavern where the story takes place, is everything to me with this story. The rural route road, the big gravel parking lot and the forgotten shuffleboard table along the back wall. In my wilder days, days I’m not proud or ashamed of, I used to frequent several places that had many similarities to that fictional bar. The hybrid of those places I went to would be Fallen Angels. I might have known the equivalent of Jesse, an absolute monster with the same first name. I might have known a few guys like Dumpy and some girls like Leesa too. There were maybe a fair share of disagreements that I might have had out back from time to time.

One summer, the real Jesse just stopped showing up at the bar where he worked. Nobody ever knew what happened to him. He probably just drifted on, nothing dramatic, so I just took the liberty of filling in some more interesting details. Frankly though, the story of Big Cat and even it’s outcome, was probably not all that much of a stretch.

Jim J. Wilsky

Jim Wilsky is a central Illinois native with a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling. He has written short stories in the genres of mainstream, suspense, crime, westerns, and historical fiction. His work has appeared in A Twist of Noir, Yellow Mama, Darkest Before The Dawn, Plots With Guns, Powder Burn Flash, Mystercial-E, The Medulla Review, Hardluck Stories and others, including several print anthologies.

Sunday Night Music: David Bowie

For Persephone Eñano Zieger, born July 16, 2011

Titles

This title calls to me. Have no idea what the book is about and yet...Does this ever happen to you? Have you ever bought a book based on the title alone?

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

Saturday Night Music: Lucinda Williams

Incidentally brethren, if you have a short story or novel you'd like to talk about on "HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS ...." please contact me. I would love to have you on here.

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY: Randy Rohn

HOW I CAME TO WRITE “THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE STUMP OF A TREE” WHICH WAS ONE OF THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2009.

By Randy Rohn

Many people don’t understand small towns. I mean, really small towns. Not suburbs, not bedroom communities, but stand-alones. Towns of 6,000 people or less. Ten or twenty miles away from anything. Ten or twenty years past their prime. Several years behind the times. Towns with no highways going through them. Towns surrounded by farms or wooded areas or land that seems to have no purpose.

Towns that Rand McNally might ignore and chains avoid.

People assume these towns are filled with salt-of-the-earth, solid, commonsense folks. However, along with the core of the solid, commonsense type, is a fair share of fringe-dwellers. Extreme eccentrics. Dotty, wacky, madcap, characters. A doctor who always dresses in an expensive suit and a rumpled, flannel pajama top. A lawyer who appears normal in every way, except he saves used tissues, tissues people have wiped their noses on. He stores these in glass mason jars in cardboard boxes stacked in the corner of his detached garage. Not to study. Not to fondle. Just to collect. Then there’s a farmer who is a violinist and violin maker. He boils the bones and gristle of road kill to make the glues and varnishes for his handmade violins. He swears the best sound comes from opossums. Who am I to argue? By the way, these are real people. I’ve met them.

For the most part, the solid, commonsense type accepts the weird ones with a live and let live attitude. There’s even a bit of affection. A wink and a smile. “Old so and so did his crazy thing again” and then a slight shrug and its time to change the subject. “What do you think of this weather we’ve been having?” Life goes on.

I’ve also discovered the combination of commonsense and nonsense in most small towns, gives the town its flavor. It’s texture. It’s soul. Different for every town. An identity which is definitive, distinct, and piquant.

I grew up in a small country town and have lived in several others. Because of my background I have an intense affection for the people, the culture and the atmosphere of small-town America. Besides growing up in a small town, many times when traveling I will pull off the main highway, drive down some dusty gravel road until I run into a clump of buildings. I’ll park the car and spend the day talking to people, hanging out at the local diner and visiting whatever shops and stores aren’t boarded up. Most of them, these days, are consignment shops, dollar stores and antique (junk) stores. There seem to be many more storefront religions with offbeat names. And, of course, a funeral home or two.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to bring to life the colorful characters and places in most small towns. It just didn’t seem like an interesting story. It seemed more like a laundry list: “and east of town is the weird turkey farmer who…”

And then I read a newspaper article about a convicted child molester who returned to his hometown, a small town in Ohio. He lived in a run-down old house next to a tiny, seldom-used park and would sit on one of the park benches all say long. The police didn’t arrest him because he wasn’t doing anything wrong except creeping people out by his very presence. Until one night, he got drunk and started digging a hole near his favorite park bench. The police hauled him in and found a tiny girl’s bracelet in his jacket pocket. Later, after digging deeper into the hole the man had started, they found the remains of three children. For some reason, the molester was drawn to the place where he had buried his victims. And, of course, he revealed himself as not just a one-time child molester but a serial murderer.

Hmmmm.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Stump of a Tree is about small town characters and what happens to them as the economy sours, jobs are shipped overseas and agri-business takes over the family farm. How do they cope when their town begins to fade away? How does it affect the feel, the atmosphere, the soul of the town?

On top of all this, a stranger has moved into town. A very strange stranger.

Some of the characters in my story are based on people I knew growing up and some of them are based on people I’ve met in other small towns. A few, of course, are totally the product of my imagination but certainly could have been part of small town life.

When someone new moves into a small town, it changes the texture of everyday life---sometimes radically. Sometimes in bad ways. Perhaps even in malevolent ways. This story is about a small, fading town and the mystery of whether a newcomer is really a newcomer or some evil finding its way back.

Randy Rohn’s short stories have appeared in many anthologies including The Best American Mystery Stories 2009, The Baddest of the Bad: The Worst of Out of the Gutter Magazine and Ransom. His stories have also appeared in many print and online mystery and noir pubs. His first novel Hang on Sloopy will be coming out the end of July.

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, July 15, 2011

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, July 15, 2011









Yvette Banek, Inspector Anders and the Blood Vendeatta, Marshall Browne
Joe Barone, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, Lawrence Block
Paul Bishop, Masquerade in Blue, Glenn M. Barns
Milton Burton, Point Ultimate, Jerry Sohl
Bill Crider, Murder Isn't Funny, J. Harvey Bonds
Scott Cupp, Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Martin Edwards, Portrait of a Murderer, Anthony Gilbert
Elizabeth Foxwell, Anderson Crow, Detective, George Barr McCutcheon
Jerry House, JOHN CARSTAIRS: SPACE DETECTIVE by Frank Belknap Long.
Randy Johnson, A Planet For Texans – H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire
George Kelley, Walking Dead Man, Hugh Pentecost
B.V. Lawson, The Singing Spider, Angus MacVicar
Evan Lewis, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Philip Jose Farmer
Steve Lewis/Barry Gardner, Murder Be Hanged, Jonathan Ross
J.T. Norris, The Eleventh Little Indian, Jacquemard-Senecal
David Rachels, A Jury of Her Peers, Susan Glaspell
James Reasoner, My Bride for Yours, Curt Aldrich
Gerard Saylor, Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2, Arthur Conan Doyle
Ron Scheer, The Long Fight, George W. Ogden
Michael Slind, The Case of the Constant Suicides, John Dickson Carr
Kerrie Smith, Stiff Upper Lip, P.G. Wodehouse
Kevin Tipple, The Ugly Princess, Elizabeth Burton
James Winter, The Glass Key, Dashiell Hammett

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, July 15, 2011

I won't be able to post links for forgotten books on Friday, July 29th or August 12th if anyone cares to step in. Otherwise, take a holiday.You need it.

Check our my review of THE TRIP.

Thanks to today's contributors.

Milton Burton is the author of NIGHTS OF THE RED HORN and ROGUE'S
GAME.

POINT ULTIMATE

Back in 1959 I was introduced to science fiction via a cousin who gave me a copy of Alfred Bester’s “Starburst.” It is still to this day one of the best single-author anthologies I have ever read. From then on, I was hooked. The next Saturday at the Safeway grocery store in Jacksonville, Texas, I looked through the small, revolving book rack for more. I had a free hand with my reading, which my mother never censored. A teacher herself, I have heard her say, “If he understands it he’s old enough for it, and if he doesn’t it couldn’t possibly hurt him.”

Seems to have worked. I haven’t developed too many quirks, twitches, or perversions.

That Saturday I bought two books, both of which I remember vividly: Erle Stanley Gardner’s “The Case of The Velvet Claws,” which doesn’t concern us here, and “Point Ultimate” by Jerry Sohl, which does.

Sohl was a prolific scriptwriter for “The Twilight Zone,” “Outer Limits,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and later “Star Trek.” Point Ultimate,” which appeared in 1955 was a classic example of Cold War fiction, one reflective of the fears and anxieties of the era, and it is a true period piece that stands alongside Pat Frank’s “Alas Babylon” and Nevil Shute’s “On The Beach.”

Set in 1999, as the story begins the U.S. has been conquered by the Soviet Union and is held in thrall by a widespread virus which infects citizens and conquerors alike, all of whom need monthly booster injections to stay alive. A handsome Midwest farm boy rebels, kills a local Soviet honcho, and then gets in contact with the Resistance, a small, tightly-knit group that has found a way to synthesize the booster vaccine in small quantities. The Resistance has also created a clandestine space program under the noses of the occupiers, who have become lazy and degenerate, and established a colony on Mars from which they plan to re-conquer the country. After many adventures, the book ends with our hero about to embark on a trip to this colony. The ultimate end is a foregone conclusion: the American people have become once again tough and resilient through oppression while their communist masters have let themselves become fat, lazy, and complacent.

It never happened, of course. In 1999 the Soviet Union was almost a decade in the dustbin of history. But if one approaches this book as an example of alternative history, one is in for a good read. Several used copies are available through Amazon, and probably other booksellers as well.

Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Elizabeth Foxwell
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Barry Gardner
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
James Winter