Posts Tagged ‘Bye Bye Baby’

Rapping About Banging

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
The Big Bang
In Stores Now!

First off, Thursday night (May 20) at 7 pm, I will be reading from THE BIG BANG and speaking afterward at one of the really great indie bookstores, Prairie Lights in Iowa City. Here is the store’s own write-up on the event.

I don’t need to say much this week, because I said so much elsewhere. I am honored to have been asked to do a lengthy interview on THE BIG BANG and my relationship with Mickey Spillane (and Mike Hammer), appearing right now at one of the really, really great mystery sites, JANUARY MAGAZINE’S RAP SHEET.

Topping that off, the RAP SHEET will celebrate its fourth anniversary with a giveaway of four copies of THE BIG BANG and four copies of THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIKE HAMMER: VOL. 2 – THE LITTLE DEATH. These will all be signed and sent out by me, personally.

My thanks to J. Kingston Pierce for giving THE BIG BANG and me such a lavish platform to display our wares. Mystery fiction has few finer advocates than Jeff Pierce.

In addition, there have been some other terrific write-ups on the net lately.

That other great internet site, Bookgasm, gave THE BIG BANG a flat-out rave. You gotta check this one out.

The Noir Journal site has a terrific write-up on THE BIG BANG, with some great graphics plus bonus reviews of two Spillane classics, VENGEANCE IS MINE! and THE DEEP. Very smart stuff on the latter two books by a female Spillane fan.

You have to scroll down for it, but there’s a nice bit about THE BIG BANG courtesy of Bob Wade in the San Diego Union’s mystery column.

The one and only Paul Bishop – real cop, real writer – also said nice things about THE BIG BANG (and kindly provided a link to the Rap Sheet interview).

We’ve been hitting the internet jackpot lately, where some of the top mystery sites are concerned. That fine, funny writer Bill Crider has one of the very best sites, the kind worth checking three or four times daily. He likes the ANTIQUES series and did a splendid write-up of the current ANTIQUES BIZARRE.

And here’s some love for THE LAST LULLABY.

The last few updates have been on the brief side, I admit – I am burrowed in working on the second J.C. Harrow novel, and it’s a bear. I’m on page 410 and still have five chapters left.

Barb and I have plotted the next ANTIQUES mystery (the one after next year’s ANTIQUES KNOCK-OFF!). She has already written her first draft of the first chapter. The series is building in popularity and the Barbara half of Barbara Allan deserves the lion’s share of credit.

For many, many months, I’ve been going from one novel to the next, or at least from one project to the next, and I am frankly frazzled. I’m preparing to slow down some. Most of the rest of this year will be spent writing the JFK assassination Nate Heller novel. Well, about half of it will be reading research material, and half writing.

Also, I’ll be plugging away at RETURN TO PERDITION, which is at about the half-way point of its around 200 pages. This is the graphic novel finale to the PERDITION saga, although not necessarily the last PERDITION book. This is the first major Terry Beatty/M.A.C. project in some time.

Finally, let me assure those who care that we are in serious talks about both Ms. Tree and Quarry for reprint editions – the complete run of the former, and the first four (and now very expensive) novels about the latter.

More definite info soon….

M.A.C.

More on Collaboration and Reviews

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

You Can't Stop MeThis is a big week for us, with ANTIQUES BIZARRE and YOU CAN’T STOP ME going on sale everywhere. Hard to imagine two more different books, but I’m starting to hear from fans who are into both the cozy-ish if wacky mysteries about Brandy and her eccentric mother, and my more noir-ish stuff, like YOU CAN’T STOP ME, Nate Heller and Quarry.

Speaking of Quarry, over the weekend I delivered the new Quarry novel, QUARRY’S EX. It will be out this fall from Hard Case Crime. And yes, we do actually meet Quarry’s ex-wife, the woman whose faithlessness sent our anti-hero into the tailspin of professional killing. It has an indie movie set setting, and takes place in 1980. I have now done four Quarry novels for editor Charles Ardai – tying the four written back in the mid-‘70s for editor Patrick O’Connor at Berkley Books. There is serious talk of the first four novels coming out in uniform trade editions from a small publisher.

And I am sorry to inform Heller fans that the new Nate Heller novel, BYE BYE, BABY, will not appear until June 2011. I have done everything I can to ask the editor to move it up the list, but publishing moves in mysterious ways.

Last week, Barb wrote a very well-received column here about our collaboration as “Barbara Allan.” This week, Matt Clemens discusses collaborating with me at my pal Ed Gorman’s great blog.

Here’s a really fun QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE review that explores the RED HARVEST connection.

Publisher’s Weekly has reviewed the audio novel THE LITTLE DEATH and gives it a rave.

But PW also gave THE BIG BANG a less good review (presumably a different reviewer – and I’m not providing a link for this) which indicates how much of a crap shoot even the bigtime reviews are. This reviewer complained that the book would appeal only to Mike Hammer and Mickey Spillane fans (who else was it supposed to appeal to?) and complained that it didn’t read like one of my Nate Heller books (should my Nate Heller books read like Mike Hammer?). Dumb. In the same PW issue, though, a presumably different reviewer seems to like Hammer and his appearance in a forthcoming MWA anthology, CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT: MYSTERIES FROM THE DARK SIDE, saying:

“Mike Hammer gets into X-Files mode in Max Allan Collins’s and Mickey Spillane’s ‘Grave Matter,’ which successfully introduces a supernatural element into the case of a series of mysterious deaths in the ironically named town of Hopeful, N.Y.”

Meanwhile, the first Spillane/Collins Mike Hammer outing, THE GOLIATH BONE, is still getting positive reviews, including this fun one from a blogger.

Here’s an insightful review of the collection MEAN STREETS, which includes the Nate Heller story, “House Call.”

And, yup, THE LAST LULLABY keeps getting great notices, as on this blog.

Finally, courtesy of Nate Collins who saw it, ROAD TO PERDITION has been listed as one of the 75 must read’s in DC Comics’ 75 years of publishing. That will be 76, when RETURN TO PERDITION comes out!

M.A.C.

SCTV The Final Chapter

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

This will be an abbreviated update, mostly more pictures (see below) from our now legendary SCTV Reunion weekend at Second City earlier this month.

I am told the new Nathan Heller, BYE BYE, BABY, will not be out from TOR/Forge until the first half of 2011. That means it really will be ten years between Heller novels. If Heller’s new publisher is willing, I will make sure this doesn’t happen again. I am pushing for the Winter list, which means the book would be out in a little over a year.

I am working hard on KISS HER GOODBYE, the third of the Mike Hammer novels developed from unfinished Mickey Spillane manuscripts. In fact, I wrote on Christmas Eve Day and Christmas itself. Probably no writing on New Year’s Eve, because I have a Crusin’ gig at the West Liberty Country Club.

In the Not Exactly News dept., I am in early stages exploring getting the first four Quarry novels (from the ’70s) back in print in new uniform trade paperback editions. There may be limited hardcovers or a slipcased signed version, too. More when I have more….

Farewell to the oughts, and welcome 2010!

M.A.C.

SCTV Reunion
Shaking hands with the very gracious comedy legend, Eugene Levy (“As a comic, in all seriousness…”)

SCTV Reunion
Apologizing to Dave Thomas for making a fool of myself at our first meeting at a San Diego Comic Con, and to Martin Short for accosting him outside the Second City restroom. Comic geniouses.

SCTV Reunion
With Harold Ramis, who I pestered all weekend. He’s a special hero to me for his SCTV work and the classic film GROUNDHOG DAY.

SCTV Reunion
With the wonderful Catherine O’Hara.

SCTV Reunion
Letting Catherine O’Hara know she was great on CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM.

SCTV Reunion
With Colin Mochrie, self-professed PERDITION fan and hands down nicest celebrity at the Second City event.

SCTV Reunion
Barb with David Koechner, star of the very funny WAITING (and much more). Sweet, gracious guy. Why did he prefer posing with her to me?

SCTV Reunion
With the incredible Fred Willard. (Me: “You’re a madman.” Fred: “There’s a lot to be mad about!”)

SCTV Reunion
With Tim Kazurinsky (right) of SNL fame (appearing on THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIKE HAMMER VOL.2: THE LITTLE DEATH), and his nephew, screenwriter Josh Shull (center).

Quarry on a Roll

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Antiques Flee Market

Hey, don’t forget to pick up a copy of ANTIQUES FLEE MARKET out in paperback this week — by Barbara Allan (that’s Mr. and Mrs. Collins to you) — the winner of the Romantic Times Award for Best Humorous Mystery of the Year! Barb and I are so happy with the new, more whimsical cover-art approach Kensington has taken for this reprint, and for the forthcoming ANTIQUES BIZARRE.

The positive reviews for QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE continued last week, and I was honored to have Jeff Pierce at January Magazine (one of the best fiction news and review sites on the web) choose the book as his pick of the week.

Mostlyfiction provided a great review with a Collins reading list (a pretty good one, though omitting any movie and TV tie-ins, as well as a few random titles, like BUTCHER’S DOZEN and MURDER BY THE NUMBERS in the Eliot Ness series).

They also ran a Quarry-centric interview with me.

It’s really gratifying to have such web attention for Quarry, now that mainstream media sources for reviewing have dried up so dramatically. When THE LAST QUARRY came out, and DEAD STREET too for that matter, the books landed reviews (1, 2) in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. That seems a thing of the past, with EW’s book review section pared back. And of course lots of newspapers have dropped local reviewers in favor a handful of nationally distributed ones.

Quarry in the Middle

That makes web sites like the ones you’ve seen me link to recently vitally important for the future of books. Word of mouth is important, too.

A major reason I decided to write originals for Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime — as opposed to just letting him reprint the original Nolan and Quarry novels (my first Hard Case Crime book was TWO FOR THE MONEY, reprinting the first two Nolans, BAIT MONEY and BLOOD MONEY) — is that I wanted a new generation of readers to get to know my work. In reprint, I was honored to be among Westlake, Block, Erle Stanley Gardner and other masters of the medium; but I felt it was more important to be seen and read in the company of the new breed of noir writers, like Jason Starr and Christina Faust. By doing originals for Charles, I am part of the new wave, and not consigned to oldie-but-goodie programming.

I have not been terribly productive this past week. I am still decompressing from writing the new Heller, BYE BYE, BABY in under two months (not counting month upon month of research, of course — still a personal record, though). This week I will get back to RETURN TO PERDITION, the graphic novel finale of the PERDITION saga.

My son and your trusty webmaster Nate Collins is home for a visit, but he is spending a lot of his time working on two Japanese-to-English free-lance translation gigs that came in on top of each other, and he may also be doing some mystery stories in translation for a very famous American magazine. More on that later. In the meantime, when we are not working (Barb is writing her draft of ANTIQUES KNOCK-OFF), we’ll be having some fun, taking in movies (ASTRO BOY was lots of fun), watching/listening to DVDs with Riff Trax (TRANSFORMERS II was a riot but the length and stupidity of it wore us and the Riffers down), and going to see the great comedy group Broken Lizard next weekend. Nate and I watched the fun Sam Raimi horror film DRAG ME TO HELL over Halloween weekend, and Barb and I watched the excellent woven-anthology film TRICK ’R’ TREAT, which inexplicably was shelved by Warner Bros and went straight to video. Probably the best horror film of the last five years, and disheartening to think that studio execs found it less than worthy of wide release.

M.A.C.