Posts Tagged ‘Barbara Allan’

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New “Barbara Allan” Out This Week!

Tuesday, April 29th, 2014
Antiques Con

The day this update goes live, the new Barbara Allan – ANTIQUES CON – will be available. You should be able to find it at your favorite bookstore (and if they don’t have it, ask – but Barnes & Noble has been a big supporter of the series, so that’s a safe bet). And of course you can get it on line.

Those of you who got advance reading copies can now post a review on Amazon (and elsewhere).

One of the fun things about this one (commented upon by several reviewers) is that we begin with Chapter Two. The conceit is that our editor made us drop Chapter One because that chapter – dealing with the attempt to recover the paperweight that beloved Aunt Olive’s ashes had been turned into – had nothing to do with the mystery plot.

Well, you can read Chapter One, and for free, by going to our Barbara Allan web site.

The web site is a work in progress, with lots of fun stuff to come, but for now it’s already very cool (thank you, Nate!) with individual pages for each Barbara Allan book, including BOMBSHELL and REGENERATION. Many of the books have sample chapters, for those of you who haven’t dipped into the world of Barbara Allan as yet. Check it out!

To further celebrate, read this fantastic review from one of our favorite people (and favorite writers), Bill Crider.

Speaking of great reviews, here’s one that is about to appear in Booklist for SUPREME JUSTICE:

In the near future, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade, strengthened the Patriot Act, and dismissed the Fourth Amendment. Devlin Harrison, the second African American president, is a liberal, but the court’s conservatives plan to outlast him. Then conservative justice Henry Venter is shot and killed in a D.C. restaurant. Enter former Secret Service Agent Joe Reeder, who took a bullet while guarding a president. Hailed as a hero, he made the mistake of expressing his opposition to that president’s neocon politics and quickly became a pariah. His only remaining federal-cop friend is FBI Agent Gabe Sloan, and Sloan, valuing Reeder’s insight, adds Reeder as a consultant to the multiagency task force investigating Venter’s murder. Soon a second conservative justice is killed, and the mastermind behind the crimes may be just getting started.

Collins (Ask Not, 2013), perhaps best known for his Nathan Heller novels, has crafted a spiky thriller with a fine inside-the-Beltway sensibility. His politics are transparent enough to cost him conservative readers, but the sense is that Collins is probably OK with that.

Here’s a LAST QUARRY review – better late than never.

Craig Zablo has posted a pic of Mickey and me. I wonder if he knows it was shot outside the Tower of London?

Here’s an interesting love/hate evaluation of series fiction in the mystery genre, with a brief but nice QUARRY mention.

MAC Iowa City Literary Walk

Speaking of Quarry, our images this week include shots of the structure honoring me as one of the authors on Iowa City’s Literary Walk (I am part of the Northside Marketplace expansion). This is particularly sweet to me, since as many of you know, I was kind of a black sheep at the Iowa Writers Workshop because of my insistence on writing crime fiction. Quarry was created when I was in the last semester of my MFA work at the Workshop, and the opening three chapters were “workshopped” to mixed reviews, mostly negative, including my instructor. My champion at the Workshop was the great mainstream writer Richard Yates – and his pedestal with quote was added to the walk at the same time as mine…how sweet is that? Writing well is the best revenge.

MAC Iowa City Literary Walk

M.A.C.

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Veronica Mars Attacks

Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

This weekend Barb and I went to St. Louis to visit our son Nate (who as you may know runs this site) and his terrific wife, Abby. I finished the Spillane western novel THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK (but for a two-day edit, which will begin today), so I could really use the break. Ditto Barb, who recently finished her draft of ANTIQUES SWAP. But the main reason for the trip was seeing the VERONICA MARS movie.

I am a Kickstarter backer of the movie. You’re welcome. But its limited run (pretty much strictly AMC theaters) did not bring the film to our area, so going to see it in St. Louis made a lot of sense, since we hadn’t seen Nate and Abby in a while, and we could do a late celebration of my birthday – Nate even sprung for the tickets. As a harbinger of senility, I forgot to wear one of the two VERONICA MARS t-shirts I received as a backer, a slip that Nate gleefully reminded me of numerous times.

Nate’s presence, despite his sarcastic nature (which I have no idea where he got), was key because – like Barb – he was a VERONICA MARS fan as well. This was an enthusiasm grown from a binge-watch, because I did not discover the show till I’d seen Kristen Bell in REEFER MADNESS and realized she was a special talent. Yes, and blonde and beautiful, but that’s just petty of you to mention. By way of prep for the film, Barb and I binge re-watched the three seasons in three weeks, and Nate and Abby did pretty much the same, though I believe it took them four weeks…a barely adequate performance, if you ask me.

As for the movie itself, as one of the producers (you’re welcome), I am biased. But all four of us loved it. I can’t be sure, but I think it will work well on moviegoers with a bent toward mystery and specially noir P.I. whether they’ve seen the original series or not. It manages to be at once a movie and a great VERONICA MARS episode. The mystery is not really the thing here – the movie is about its main character making a life/career decision – but the whodunit aspect is typically twisty and twisted in the fashion of the series.

As the co-creator of MS. TREE, I appreciate the way creator Rob Thomas (co-writer and director here) transforms wise-guy PI dialogue – and a tough guy attitude – by placing them in the mouth and body of a lovely young woman. Veronica Mars is slightly off-kilter, at least a little nuts, like Mike Hammer, Jake Axminster and Nate Heller (and Ms. Tree). The film has plenty of call-back references to the show itself, and many, even most, cast members (including non-recurring ones) turn up in a way that will tickle fans but doesn’t get in the way of the appreciation of non-fans. Working on these two levels is terribly tricky, and I admire the screenplay for pulling off something that I feared might be impossible.

Everybody is good, but Bell is remarkable – so badly or unimaginatively used elsewhere (fie on you, HOUSE OF LIES), she has a confidence and ease in this role that indicates she is well aware it’s her signature one. Her father Keith, as played by Enrico Colantoni, is equally good, and remains the heart of VERONICA MARS. Jason Dohring as Veronica’s stormy love interest does a beautiful job of taking his character somewhere new while remaining the same guy…again, not easy. In fact, the entire film and its cast does well by the passage of time, and making a ten year class reunion for Neptune High a major set piece and plot mover here is just another example of how good Rob Thomas is with this property that he clearly loves.

The film, in its limited release, had an impressive opening weekend. It’s a unique release with VOD simultaneous and a Blu-ray/DVD coming very soon. I hope that the film’s success – and it already is a success, just by existing – leads either to more features or a renewed series. As much fun as it is to see VERONICA MARS on a bigger landscape – which Thomas managed to pull off on an under-$6 mil budget – this is a story and world best served by series television.

After all, VERONICA MARS is easily in the top ten private eye shows of all time. And in my top five – at the top.

Okay, since you asked nicely:

VERONICA MARS
CITY OF ANGELS
MICKEY SPILLANE’S MIKE HAMMER (McGavin)
A NERO WOLFE MYSTERY
THE ROCKFORD FILES
Runner up: PETER GUNN

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Speaking of movies, a very nice if extremely belated review of REAL TIME: SIEGE AT LUCAS STREET market has popped up at the Bookgasm movie spin-off, FLICK ATTACK.

Here’s a nice, smart review of SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT.

Finally, here’s a terrific Publisher’s Weekly review for the upcoming ANTIQUES CON:

“In Allan’s humorous eighth whodunit (after 2013’s Antiques Chop), Brandy Borne and her quirky mother, Vivian, travel from quiet Serenity, Iowa, along with their blind, diabetic shih tzu, Sushi, to New York City, where they hope to auction their prized possession—an original Superman drawing—at a comic convention. On arrival at Bufford Con, organized by comic purist Tommy Bufford, the pair soon learn that all is not well. The old comic convention guard are none too pleased about Tommy’s new competing event, which may explain why the prize pen ends up as a murder weapon. Mysterious deaths follow Brandy and Vivian wherever they go, but these two spunky out-of-towners always manage to find crafty ways to avoid sticky situations in the big city. Tips about comics collecting add to the cozy fun. Allan is the pseudonym of Barbara and Max Allan Collins.”

M.A.C.

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Notes From a Stuffed-Up Author

Tuesday, February 18th, 2014

I spent much of last week fighting a cold and researching/writing an introduction for a forthcoming Hermes Press collection of the pre-Disney ZORRO comic books from Dell. The centerpiece is a trio of issues drawn by Everett Raymond Kinstler, who would go on to be our nation’s premiere portrait artist, with subjects ranging from John Wayne to various Presidents. The other comic books (seven in all) are good as well, but I really had to dig in on the net and among Zorro fans to find out who the artists and writers were. Much guesswork involved. I am a big fan of Zorro as originally created by pulp writer Johnson McCulley, and my intro in part decries the paucity of McCulley Zorro stories in print.

Also, we received good reviews from agent and editor on ANTIQUES FRUITCAKE, so that one is largely put to bed (it’s an e-book novella). Barb is back to her draft of ANTIQUES SWAP, and I am headed into the Spillane western, THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK. There will be a subtitle for the latter but I haven’t come up with it. I’ve been told to leave out the sex and hit the violence hard, even down to the title. So RAVAGING THE DANCE HALL GALS is out. I’m considering SHOOT-OUT AT SIROCCO.

I also worked on several more passes on a HELLER TV pitch. I’ve done seven so far. Hollywood is all about rewriting. I remember so vividly when I handed in draft umpteen on THE EXPERT to director Bill Lustig and he immediately said, “Thanks! Now, on the next draft I want to concentrate on – ” I interrupted to say that I wouldn’t take any more notes till he’d read the draft I just handed him.

Barb and I are listening to Dan John Miller’s audio rendering of THE WRONG QUARRY. This is Dan’s first Quarry novel, having done all of the Hellers. He has once again nailed it.

Speaking of THE WRONG QUARRY, here’s another nifty review.

COMPLEX 90 made the top five best book covers of 2013 at the Rap Sheet.

Here’s a nice review of the Hammer short story (available from Mysterious Bookshop as a mini-book), “It’s in the Book.”

Finally, here’s a very smart review of the film of ROAD TO PERDITION. Nice to see this great film really making its mark over the years.

M.A.C.

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Writer’s Work is Never Done

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

When a writer finishes a novel and sends it in to a waiting editor/publisher, a feeling of relief is greater than any sense of accomplishment. What all of us forget, however, is that sending in the “finished” book is only the beginning.

First, there comes an editorial letter, often asking for revisions, followed by a line-edited manuscript, then a copy-edited manuscript and finally galley proofs. For a prolific writer like me, all of these turn up unexpectedly, often at terrible times, and always with a note to get the manuscript or galleys back in something like three days.

Editors don’t care if you’re on deadline with some other book, usually (though not always) for some other publisher. Every editor (rightly) considers the book of yours that is theirs to be the only book.

I also have the problem of not wanting to do any revisions that aren’t absolutely necessary – i.e., a plot point that I haven’t dealt with, or sentences and/or paragraphs that have proved confusing. I rarely agree to elaborate rewrites. Hardly ever. I also am notorious for becoming furious with copy editors. Not all copy editors: just those who have appointed themselves collaborators. About one in three times at bat, I encounter one of these creatures intent upon “improving” my work.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. The only shit fit that Mickey Spillane ever threw in front of me was in response to a copy-edited version of one of his novels. The fury of Mike Hammer at his kill-craziest was unleashed.

But it is the collision of books that can make a writer dizzy.

Last week, after completing QUARRY’S CHOICE, I was immediately thrust into dealing with the galley proofs of the very different SUPREME JUSTICE. Now, because Hard Case editor Charles Ardai is lightning fast, I am already facing the copy-edited manuscript of CHOICE!, before the literary paint is dry. I am grateful and impressed with Charles’ speed, but fear I lack enough distance from the book to effectively work with the copy-edit so soon.

Much of what a professional fiction writer does is little-known or even unknown by readers.

Ahead in the immediate week or two ahead are finishing a TV pitch for a potential Nate Heller TV series, which will require me re-reading STOLEN AWAY and much of TRUE DETECTIVE, taking notes as I go; writing my draft of a “Barbara Allan” Christmas novella called ANTIQUES FRUITCAKE, not due for a while but necessary to deal with now, because of scheduling issues; and getting ready to write a western novel based on an unproduced Mickey Spillane screenplay. The latter prep will include spending many hours with that screenplay, looking at western reference books, and reading some ‘50s western novels by the likes of Jonas Ward and Harry Whittington, to help get the right flavor.

Not complaining, mind you. This beats my other paying jobs (sacking groceries, bussing tables) by some distance.

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Eliot Ness
Eliot Ness

Be sure to check out the Huffington Post piece on Eliot Ness that Brad Schwartz and I put together to defend the Untouchable from attacks from Jonathan Eig (Get Capone) and others, in reaction to the proposal that a new ATF building be named for him.

My pal and collaborator Matt Clemens visited the Twin Cities recently to read one of our short stories at Noir at the Bar.

Speaking of Matt, here’s a great review of WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER, which – like SUPREME JUSTICE – is a book Matt contributed mightily to.

Check out this very good article on cozy mysteries dealing with antiques. Barbara Allan gets some very nice attention here.

Still haven’t picked up THE WRONG QUARRY? Here’s an excerpt.

Here’s a great WRONG QUARRY review, demonstrating that members of my favorite sex (hint: not male) can relate to Quarry just fine.

And finally a review of QUARRY – the first book in the series. How odd and oddly sweet to see a novel that I began writing in 1972 at the U of Iowa Writers Workshop getting reviewed in 2014.

M.A.C.

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