Wow, it’s been ages since we did a book giveaway here at M.A.C. Central – last week, wasn’t it?

I have ten hardcover copies of the new Nate Heller, Too Many Bullets. If you are one of the first ten readers to request one, and agree to write a review for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads and the usual suspects, I’ll send a signed copy along.

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you for your support! –Nate]

You must include your snail mail address, even if you’ve entered before. This is for American readers only because of shipping costs, and keep in mind you can’t review at Amazon until the release date on Oct. 10.

Receiving a copy of your just published book is a unique experience for an author. Barb, at least since the first few books, just glances at the things, maybe checking to see if something that required special typesetting (like the blackboard lists of suspects in the Antiques novels) looks right.

I am still genuinely thrilled.

On the other hand…

I remember vividly receiving copies of the simultaneously published Bait Money and Blood Money in December 1972. It was exciting until I looked at the covers. They were photo covers, and one was pretty good – Bait Money had a very Nolan-esque Nolan and a dish I’d seen in men’s magazines – but the other (Blood Money) was a young guy with a bad mustache who looked like a cast member of Boys in the Band.

Further, the byline was Max Collins, which was my father’s name, not mine. I was Max Allan Collins, Jr., and had always been called Allan or Al. That bummed me out bigtime. I was stuck with “Max Collins” for a while, but when a book of mine called The Slasher came out at the same time as Michael Collins’s novel of the same name, enough was enough. I started using Max Allan Collins.

Now about half the people I call me Allan or Al and the rest use Max. I have to work at keeping track.

Still, it’s a thrill to see your novel become an actual book – typeset, your stuff always seems more real, more official. And now and then you get a decent cover. The Nolan novels as published by Pinnacle had good cover art. But I haven’t loved a cover until Hard Case Crime started publishing me.

No matter what the cover, I always sit with the hot-off-the-presses copy and kind of just look at it. Page through. Frankly, kind of caress it. Barb, meanwhile, has gone off about her business. This morning I asked her about why she was so blasé about receiving Antiques Foe in the mail.

“That’s the old one,” she said. “I’m working on the new one.”

She is much more mature (except in looks) than I am, far more grounded. Me with a freshly published book of mine, I’m a kid with a new toy. I own ten original covers from various books of mine (most from Hard Case Crime), and they are on the wall inspiring to stay at this.

The thumbing through part is dangerous, though. There are a couple of errors (one in the text, one in the afterword) in Do No Harm that I have not been able to correct, as there has been no trade or mass market paperback of that Heller title. So I cringe a little when I see that book. I’m proud of it, of course, but I wish it were perfect.

Not that any novel is perfect, The Great Gatsby and The Maltese Falcon included. But right now, having thumbed through both Too Many Bullets and Antiques Foe, I am still a kid in the candy store.

Of course, some well-meaning (and in reality helpful) reader will no doubt approach me to share errors he or she has found. I will grit my teeth and thank them. And do my best to make the corrections, but without a second printing or new edition, it is…well, impossible.

We are less than a month out from the first day of shooting on Blue Christmas. I prepared a shooting script over the weekend and the sense of excitement (make that terror) is growing by the second.

Thanks again to those of you who have donated to the cause (lots of names will go in our credits). Most recently our longtime fan and friend Stephen Borer kicked in a C-note (well, a check for that amount). Thank you, sir.

Also exciting is the podcast project – turning Nate Heller’s memoirs into movies without pictures (i.e., top casts and music and sound effect, not just audio books). This will be my next big project after Blue Christmas, and I couldn’t be more thrilled than to be working with Robert Meyer Burnett. I love his various podcasts. I am going to provide a window on this week’s Let’s Get PHYSICAL MEDIA on which he talks about this project and says things about me that would make me blush, if I had any shame, which I don’t.

Rob and his German pal Dieter talk about what’s come out recently on Blu-ray and 4K, discuss various movies and TV series (emphasis this week on the Star Wars TV spin-off Ahsoka), answering letters on air, and news about what’s coming on physical media. This is not for everyone, because they are long, rambling, quirky but in my view incredibly entertaining episodes.

Barb and I got our Covid boosters today, something I wanted to make sure I’d done before going into full Blue Christmas contact with cast and crew (all of whom I’m going to suggest, if they are so inclined, getting theirs).

In an oddly related matter, last Saturday afternoon my grandson with my son along for the ride watched the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, having (I am glad to say) moved up from strictly CGI animated movies into actual live action. Eight year-old Sam was seated next to me in a comfy chair when a wasp stung him on the left cheek. He took it just the way his grandfather would have, howling in pain and indignation and bawling like a baby. As his grandmother tended his sting, he said something rather profound and hilarious.

“I want to ask Mr. God why he created wasps!”

I don’t think any answer Mr. God could come up with would be sufficient enough.

M.A.C.