Archive for September, 2010

Summer’s End

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

A word from my son, Nate —


As some of you may already know, in addition to administrating this website, I work as a freelance Japanese to English translator. In the spirit of crass nepotism, I’d like to hijack this week’s post to announce the release of my first book-length translation, SUMMER, FIREWORKS, AND MY CORPSE: a collected novel, novella, and short story by suspense/horror writer Otsuichi.

The titular SUMMER, FIREWORKS, AND MY CORPSE, Otsuichi’s breakout suspense novella (written when he was only sixteen), follows a nine-year-old girl who dies during summer vacation. While her two friends-turned-killers attempt to hide her body from their families and the police, we watch from the point of view of the girl’s dead body. It’s a simple story with an interesting narrative twist.

The collection follows with “Yuko,” a short story set in post-war Japan. A young woman is starting her first job as the lone servant in a mansion home to a reclusive author and his wife. But as weeks pass with no actual sign of the wife’s existence, the servant begins to fear for her master’s sanity.

The third and final selection, BLACK FAIRY TALE, is a novel of classic Japanese horror. In it, a girl loses her eye in an accident and receives a transplant. Her new eye contains visions of the experiences and memories of its previous — deceased — owner. The girl, her own memories gone, finds herself estranged from her old family and friends and becomes drawn to the past life of her eye’s donor. But as she seeks to discover the donor’s fate, she soon finds herself in mortal danger.

As you can see, there’s a lot packed into this book, and there’s a lot to like. Otsuichi deftly mixes the creepy and the supernatural with a grounding in slice-of-life Japan, and the twists and turns are surprising, but never cheap or dishonest. I am very lucky to have worked with such captivating and well-written source material, making my first book-length published translation something I can be proud of. I hope you’ll check it out!

We’ll now return to your regularly scheduled update:

Very proud of Nate – I read this book in galley proofs, and it’s excellent. Can’t wait to lay hands on an actual copy.
Here’s a small but nice BIG BANG review (those seem to finally be winding down).

And here’s a link to an appearance I made last May at the legendary Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City. (And here’s a link of the same with audio only.) It’s about an hour – I discuss THE BIG BANG and read a brief selection, then answer a few questions. They have signed copies and you can write them here for info about mail-ordering one: info@prairielights.com

For those of you in the eastern Iowa area, Crusin’ will play at the Elms Restaurant, 2108 Grandview Avenue, from 8 to 11 on Friday, Oct. 1. Muscatine’s River Drive is blocked by road construction and you should use the bypass.

Work continues on the live Crusin’ CD culled from soundboard recordings last August. Twenty songs including around seven originals. It’s designed for promo purposes but I’ll sell a limited number here.

Here are some things Barb and I enjoyed over the weekend: the solid crime film THE TOWN; the new Weezer CD, “Hurley”; and the eighth season of the electrifying British show Spooks (aka MI-5), thanks to our all-regions DVD player (and Amazon UK).

M.A.C.

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Please, Sir, More Sex & Violence

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

I did a guest essay for the new Mulholland Books web site. It’s called “Sex and Violence, Please” and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Here’s a short, smart QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE review.

And here’s a tepid BIG BANG write-up, an example of the kind of review that always has me scratching my head – someone who begins by saying he doesn’t like Spillane/Hammer, then reviews the book in that context. Would you send a restaurant critic who hates Chinese food to the Ming Gardens Buffet? Just asking.

If you want to read a really lousy review of BONES: BURIED DEEP, it’s here. I post it as an example of a review by somebody who doesn’t understand the process of writing a tie-in. This novel, written before the show hit the air with only a rough cut of the pilot episode to guide us (Matt Clemens and me), gets beaten up because we are not faithful to the way the characters developed over the many years of the series. BURIED DEEP may not be a great novel, but it’s a better conceived novel than this is a review. And I plead guilty to not being psychic.

On the other hand, at least that site is reviewing tie-ins – mostly they get ignored. I am always surprised by how many “big fans” of mine do not read my tie-ins.

Oddly, some obits of the great actor Kevin McCarthy (who my buddy Ed Gorman knew very well) credit him with appearing in my indie movie MOMMY. I wish I’d had him in any film of mine.

Last week, Matt Clemens and I spent most of the week on the new J.C. Harrow proposal. We like it. And we shipped it. We’ll see.

Barb and I took a quick day-trip getaway to Des Moines on Friday, and on the way talked plotting for both Antiques Disposal (she’s doing her draft right now) and for the Nate Heller JFK novel, which I continue to research. Feels like I’m zeroing in on the plot, the shape, of what George Hagenauer calls “a monster.”

M.A.C.

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Now Hear This

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

No One Will Hear YouHere’s an advance look of the second J.C. Harrow novel, NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU, by me and Matthew Clemens. We thought Kensington did a fine job on the cover of YOU CAN’T STOP ME, but this one really knocked our socks off. I’ll let you know more later about this one, which both authors think tops the first book by a country mile.

Matt and I have been working on a proposal for the next Harrow for several weeks. We had a sample chapter ready and were tweaking the proposal when a better idea came up – not completely different, but a compelling alternative – and we junked what we had and started over. We have work meetings at the Muscatine, Iowa, Applebee’s, where our discussions of grotesque homicides routinely raise eyebrows and drop jaws. Matt and I are also working on several jigsaw puzzles – we did an NCIS and NCIS: LA not long ago, and are set to do a MENTALIST puzzle, as well. These are short stories that accompany a puzzle image, which contains the clues to a mystery (we did a number of CSI puzzles for this same client, a few years back).

Nate and his girl friend Abby (and Nate’s wonderfully crazy blue heeler, Toaster) visited over the weekend. We mostly watched the SHERLOCK BBC series on Blu-Ray (second go-round for Barb and me) and went to the entertaining if mindless RESIDENT EVIL 3-D movie…fun, but no PIRANHA 3-D (no kidding, that one’s terrific – almost Russ Meyer level over-the-top).

Nate and I continue to explore the e-book notion. Right now we’re thinking of doing new books of old material – i.e., a collection of my horror stories, a Barbara Allan short story collection (every story Barb and I have written together), two-fers of various novels (like two Mallorys to a book), etc.

Cop, writer, all around great guy Paul Bishop has one of the coolest web sites around – BISH’S BEAT – and recently he wrote what may be my favorite review yet of THE BIG BANG.

The film version of ROAD TO PERDITION has made it onto a very hip “best 10 mob movies” list. I am thrilled to be on there with some of my favorites, like GET CARTER and PRIME CUT.

I will be writing more RETURN TO PERDITION script this week and also doing my draft of the sample chapter for the next Harrow novel (assuming Matt Clemens delivers his draft soon).

M.A.C.

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Returning to Perdition

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

I am back at work on Return to Perdition – strictly on the front burner now. I’m inspired by Terry Beatty’s great artwork. I hope this graphic novel, the conclusion to the Perdition saga, is out next year some time. Some of the characters and events intertwine with the Marilyn and Kennedy Nate Heller novels, which is tricky.

And negotiations to possibly film my screenplay from my novel Road to Purgatory are continuing apace. I never believe this kind of thing till the check clears and shooting begins, but it’s promising, very promising.

After a busy summer, Crusin’ has no bookings this September – next date is Oct. 1 at the Elms in Muscatine. But we have been booked back to Riverside Casino in December, which is very encouraging, and we are putting together our live CD to help show other venues what we can do. Any Midwestern mystery conventions would be wise to consider us.

Even now The Big Bang is racking up some nice notices. You’ll have to scroll down to read this nice one from the Lansing State Journal.

It’s a pleasure to see an Augusta Chronicle article about cult crime writer Ennis Willie getting widespread attention on the web. Considering Willie was a mystery himself for years, seeing his picture and reading an interview with him is almost surreal…definitely surreal is seeing my own name prominent in the article. A good job, though the writer seems to think Willie was a rich, famous writer in the ‘60s, when even then he was an obscurity, published by a minor softcore smut house (Merit Books) out of Chicago. Over the years, a handful of us realized we had been reading and loving and collecting Willie, and our enthusiasm turned him into a much-collected writer – the original paperbacks now go for a lot of money. The article, of course, covers the new Willie collection, Sand’s Game, from Ramble House.

Fun to see Dead Street (by Mickey Spillane with a little help from yrs truly) getting attention so late in the game with this really nice write-up.

Downright odd is seeing my Dick Tracy movie novelization getting attention, but here’s a pretty good article on my adventures with Disney on that project. You can get my version in the book Tied-In, available at Amazon on Kindle and print-on-demand.

I’ll wrap by saying Barb and I saw some very fun movies this weekend – Machete and Going the Distance, incredibly different films but similar in that they are entertaining and not cookie-cutter Hollywood. Machete is, of course, an outrageous B-movie ride, while Going the Distance is a really funny, uncontrived romantic comedy with Justin Long and Drew Barrymore. In addition, we got the blu-ray from England of the new updated Sherlock (Martin Freeman of the original Office is Watson) – it’s first-rate, really terrific. It’s coming out over here soon, and don’t miss it. In its way it’s very faithful, and by dumping the Victorian era, you get an idea of what it must have been like to encounter the Sherlock Holmes tales when they were first published, and were cutting-edge current, not fog-wrapped nostalgia.

M.A.C.

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