Posts Tagged ‘Mallory’

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Kill Your Darlings Kindle $1, Bill Plympton on Kickstarter

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

Two quick notes before we continue with Max’s weekly update below:

Kill Your Darlings on the Kindle is $1.00 for the next five days, if you’re willing to jump through a couple small hoops. Here’s the deal—AmazonLocal is a website that offers discount vouchers for various local and national products and services (like rival websites Groupon or LivingSocial, if you’ve heard of those). Right now, one of their promotions is a $1.00 voucher redeemable for one of 25 select Kindle novels, including Mallory novel Kill Your Darlings. There is a limit of one book per customer.

Since this is kind of a new process, here’s how to do it—don’t be daunted, as Amazon provides detailed instructions throughout, and the whole thing took me less than five minutes.

Step One: Go to AmazonLocal. You can skip the subscription step, and if asked for a city, any city will have this deal listed for the duration.

Step Two: Order the voucher (you will be prompted to sign in with your Amazon account) and wait for your voucher code e-mail. The e-mail will also lead you through the rest of the process, which is…

Step Three: Go to the promotion page, enter your code by midnight Pacific time on February 7, and purchase one of the 25 books. There are plenty of good ones on there, including several of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, but since you can only get one, I of course recommend Kill Your Darlings as the only proper choice.

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Our good friend Bill Plympton (you may know him as I first did, through his brilliant and totally fried animations on MTV, or his Academy-Award nominated short Your Face) is running a Kickstarter funding campaign for his next animated feature, and there’s only three days left to help fund his project and its gorgeous new coloring style. Backer rewards include digital and physical copies of the completed feature, signed original drawings, and more. The video gives a better pitch than I ever could, so watch the video, and check out his Kickstarter page!

Your regularly scheduled update continues below….

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Collect ‘Em All, Kids!

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

Last week, Amazon offered for sale the new Thomas & Mercer trade paperbacks (and corresponding e-books) of fourteen of my novels, including two by Barb and myself appearing for the first time under our “Barbara Allan” byline (REGENERATION, BOMBSHELL).

These are outstanding packages, with outstanding covers, really just beautiful. I’m thrilled that these novels – all out of print, some out of print for years – are available again. It’s any author’s dream to have his or her work perpetually available, and one positive aspect of the changing world of publishing is that that dream has come true for many writers, myself included.

The five Mallory novels and the six “disaster” mysteries make up the bulk of the list, with the Barbara Allan titles and the standalone eco-thriller MIDNIGHT HAUL rounding it out. Virtually everything of mine is in print now – Perfect Crime has the Nolan and Quarry series, and Speaking Volumes has Eliot Ness.

The new Thomas & Mercer titles are priced very reasonably, and look for great promo deals from Amazon after the first of the year. I have done interviews on both Mallory and the disaster books, and Barb and I did a “Barbara Allan” interview, and I’ll let you know when and where those are going to show up. [Note from Nate: Click each cover for links to purchase Kindle, trade paperback, and audiobook editions at Amazon, major booksellers, as well as local independent booksellers via Indiebound]

Barb and I appeared at Centuries & Sleuths in Forest Park, Illinois, on Sunday. This was a great event – lots of fans, plus we were generously made a part of the Midwest chapter of the Mystery Writers of America’s Christmas party. In fact, my Q and A was the entertainment. It was a treat seeing so many wonderful writers, particularly my friends Bob Goldsborough and Raymond Benson, who are with me in the very small club of writers being chosen to continue great series (Nero Wolfe, James Bond and Mike Hammer respectively). Centuries & Sleuths, with its history and mystery theme, is one cool bookstore. The book tour has one last stop, in nearby Davenport’s BAM! on Dec. 22.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, be prepared for books, comic books, video games, rap music, movies, and other popular culture to be served up as a safe, convenient scapegoat. This is a very old, sour tune that our society just can’t get enough of – just like it can’t get enough of violent entertainment. Personally, I would like to see the assault rifle ban reinstated, and a campaign of education to advise people of the risks taken by owning a hand gun in a home where mentally disturbed and/or depressed people live. If you have a troubled loner son, maybe taking him to the shooting range to “learn responsibility” isn’t such a great idea.

The second of three installments of Dan Luft’s in-depth look at the Nolan series has just appeared. Smart stuff.

Take a look at this incredible TARGET LANCER review.

And speaking of censoring pop culture, here’s another nice advance review of SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT.

M.A.C.

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From The Basement It Arises

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
The Comedy Is Finished

A lost Donald E. Westlake novel, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, has been announced by editor Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime. My involvement was played down in the news release, but it came about when I told Charles about the existence of an early ‘80s Westlake manuscript in my possession. Don had pulled it from the market when publishers asked him to make it “funnier,” not understanding it was not meant to be a “funny” Westlake. He shared it with me and we were discussing some revision notions; the plan, as I remember it, was to take it out to market under a shared pen name. We were in the early stages of this when the film “The King of Comedy” emerged and shared the novel’s premise (accidentally, I think, although Don did do some things with Martin Scorcese). At this point, Don killed the project.

When Hard Case announced MEMORY as the final unpublished Westlake novel, I scurried down to my basement and found the moldy carbon copy in a drawer of Westlake materials. Re-reading it, I didn’t feel it needed my input at all – a terrific book, but not a funny one (wasn’t meant to be, obviously). I told Charles about it, he responded eagerly and had me send him a photocopy. I was supposed to write an after word for the book, discussing the novel’s origins and my relationship with Don. Since then, I’ve been told that Don’s representation prefers that the book stand on its own, and I respect and understand that. The media releases on this novel won’t tell the full story, because the public might misunderstand and think this was a novel that Don hadn’t been able to sell – no, it’s a fine novel that Don wasn’t willing to revise into a comic one. I’m proud that I had something to do with bringing one of Don’s novels into publication – he was a great friend, mentor and inspiration to me. Here’s how the public was informed, last week, of this rediscovered unpublished novel.

There’s a brief but nice Stacy Keach interview about KISS HER GOODBYE and other Mike Hammer audios here.

I have the idea that YOU CAN’T STOP ME is doing better on e-book than as a “real” book – this week Matt Clemens and I got a great review for the novel at a Kindle blog.

Mallory continues to receive more love, with another brief but nice write-up for the series in general and NICE WEEKEND FOR A MURDER in particular.

A while back I quoted from Dick Lochte’s terrific Mystery Scene review of the audio novel THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIKE HAMMER VOL. 3: ENCORE FOR MURDER. Here is the full text (you will see a rejected cover for the release for your trouble).

You might enjoy this very interesting review of the film “Slightly Scarlet” from James M. Cain’s LOVE’S LOVELY COUNTERFEIT. It begins my referencing my commentary track from the VCI DVD release.

I will be going off to Hollywood for several days of meetings on various film/TV projects later this week. Wish me luck, or break a leg or whatever.

M.A.C.

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Thrilled to be Nominated

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

A very pleasant surprise last week (actually, two of them): the International Thriller Writers have nominated YOU CAN’T STOP ME for Best Paperback and the Mike Hammer “Long Time Dead” for Best Short Story.

Matt Clemens and I had been told that YOU CAN’T STOP ME had made the short list of ten for the ITW honor, but we were nonetheless blown away by the actual nomination. This comes at a very good time for us because, frankly, the current Harrow book isn’t burning up the bookstands, and we are (in TV terms) “on the bubble” with the fledgling series.

If you have not read either Harrow – YOU CAN’T STOP ME and the current NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU – maybe this news will be enough to get ya off the dime. I believe the Kindle prices on both books are very low – under five bucks each last time I checked.

And of course it’s very, very rewarding to have a Spillane/Collins collaboration singled out. Some people dismiss the posthumous Spillane material, without even a read, citing “purist” notions about not wanting to subject themselves to a work started by one writer and completed by another. Apparently they never read Ellery Queen.

Anyway, here is the full list of the nominees:

http://www.thebigthrill.org/2011/04/2011-thriller-awards-nominees/

As I’ve said before, one of the cool surprises the net can serve up is a new review for an old book. Here’s a nice one about the Mallory novel, NICE WEEKEND FOR A MURDER. Mallory has been getting a little love lately, out in cyberspace, so maybe one of these days we’ll get him back into print.

OurTop Suspense Group anthology keeps getting great reviews, like this one. There are occasional complaints about typos and inconsistencies story-to-story, and we’re cleaning those up as we can – it’s a home-made effort by pros, understand. You can get it in actual book form now, and it’s really a beautiful-looking book. Reads good, too.

KISS HER GOODBYE keeps racking up nice reviews – this one is from somebody who I frankly think is getting jaded (he likes GOLIATH BONE and BIG BANG better – most reviewers and readers…including Jane Spillane…think KISS HER is the best of the trio), but overall it’s another good one.

Last week Barb and I wrapped up ANTIQUES DISPOSAL and got it shipped (well, e-mailed) to Kensington. We took two days off for a getaway (to Des Moines – yes, our life is a glittering, glorious, glamorous Jet Set fantasy) and came back for a nice weekend (not for murder) with son Nate, his girl Abby and our granddog, the supremely insane Australian Blue Heeler, Toaster. Also got in a really good Crusin’ gig at the local Eagles Lodge Hall, for Eagles pooh-bahs from all over the grand state of Iowa.

It is true, by the way, that Crusin’ will be playing at Bouchercon in St. Louis this fall. We will be having a handful of mystery-writer guests who will join us on a few songs. No instrumental sit-ins (that way lies madness), but we will have some guest vocalists. The first we’ve invited: Bob Randisi. Are you out there, Parnell Hall?

M.A.C.

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