Posts Tagged ‘Nate Heller’

Being Thankful

Tuesday, November 26th, 2024

With a contentious election behind us, and an even more uncertain American future ahead, the arrival of the holiday season and those family-oriented juggernauts Thanksgiving and Christmas threaten to make not all of the noises joyful. But speaking from a strictly personal perspective, I have plenty to be thankful for, starting with my family – a smart supportive bride who was beautiful when we married in 1968 and still is, astonishingly so; and a great, talented son and a terrific daughter-in-law and two bright, funny grandkids (Sam 9, Lucy 6).

There’s more. Two Christmas movies, Blue Christmas and Death by Fruitcake, have been added to my list of indie productions I’ve mounted when I didn’t think it likely I’d ever do another project of that kind again. Barb worked on both and co-produced the second; our son Nate toiled on both as well, and grandson son made it into Blue Christmas (both Sam and Lucy are in Death by Fruitcake). As is always the case on a film, I worked with cast and crew both old and new, and my creative circle grew.

M.A.C. on set of Blue Christmas

Despite health issues, I have managed to stay not just active but prolific, if not as much so as in the past. Barb is writing her draft of our next Antiques novel, a series we began twenty years ago. Our son Nate’s career as a Japanese-to-English translator continues to flourish, though it’s hard, hard work. I’ve written a ten-part audio drama, in post-production now, True Noir (directed by new friend Robert Meyer Burnett) based on the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective, with an all-star cast, and have another Heller to write for Hard Case Crime in the coming year – the 19th I believe. I have just completed a dream project, The Return of the Maltese Falcon, for publication by HCC/Titan in January 2026, and the final Mike Hammer novel, Baby, It’s Murder, comes out from Titan the day after my March third birthday, March 4 of 2025.

Regardless of how I might feel about the macro state of America, the micro world of the Collins family reminds me of Cary Grant being sent a telegram from a news service asking him, “How old Cary Grant?” And Cary Grant responded with, “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”

At the age of 76, I face a future that remains uncertain in that inevitable certainty. But being alive (thank you, Sondheim) remains a trip I’m pleased to still be taking, and the specific life I’ve been living has largely been sweet. The bittersweet is in there, too, of course. Many of my best friends and valued collaborators are gone. But how wonderful it’s been to have them in my life. I’ve finally hung up my rock ‘n’ roll shoes, but the talented and funny people I’ve known, the gigs I’ve been able to enjoy (and sometimes endure), are something I’m delighted to have experienced.

It’s not all good, of course. Both the far right and the far left want to control my speech, in varying ways. As I have long said, where the far right and the far left meet is at a book-burning – they’re just bringing different books. I’ve been cancelled by both of ‘em at various times in my career, which starts to feel like a badge of honor.

But, hell – I’ve been able to make a living in the storytelling business. Telling lies for fun and profit, as Lawrence Block said. Doesn’t get better than that.

So you bet I’m thankful.

And a lot of that is due to those of you who drop by here regularly who have supported my life-long journey to avoid actual work.

So on this contentious year at this wonderful, difficult time of year, let me say this: let’s put the “Thanks” into Thanksgiving. Corny, I know. But as my late friend, filmmaker Steve Henke, once said of me, “Max will write something nasty but then ruin it with something sentimental at the end, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

So thank you.

* * *

Quarry’s Return from Hard Case Crime is out right now, and a few reviews have rolled in. This is a particularly nice, smart one.

And this one’s nice, too.

Looks like the old boy has some life left in him. I started the series in the mid-1970s and against all odds it is still kicking.

Same could be said of its author.

* * *

Speaking of reviews, scroll down and read a nice one of Blue Christmas.

And this one.

And some nice Blue Christmas coverage is here.

And how about this terrific Blue Christmas review?

We’ve received a few negative ones, anyway two that I know of – one flat-out mean, another basically dinging us for being so low-budget, a hurdle the reviewer can’t get over. He’s been served a hamburger and, damnit, he insists on steak.

I get it. Doing a micro-budget indie film is a challenge, and the result is so different from the Hollywood variety – where millions of dollars can be spent on a movie called “low-budget” – that a little production like Blue Christmas requires understanding that a budget under $10,000 isn’t going to produce Gladiator 2.

I’m a big believer in meeting art (if I may be so bold as describe what I do as “art”) on its own level. What is it trying to do, and what were the obstacles that may have had to be overcome? That said, some of you may find Blue Christmas a bridge too far, and that frustrates me but I do understand. It’s very low-budget, and the reviewers (including the positive ones) often compare us to a community theater production (not always in an unflattering way). If you can’t meet a book or movie on its own terms – or if you feel those terms are at odds with your point of view, your tastes – I understand.

To put it in perspective, we couldn’t afford licensing a version of the song “Blue Christmas” for a movie called Blue Christmas. That would have taken ten times the budget we had for the whole flick.

But I will say this. As some of you know, Blue Christmas was written to be a bigger budget movie (by “bigger” I mean half a million dollars) back in the days when we did the two Mommy movies. But we weren’t able to make that happen. Periodically over the years, I tried to mount it, including as a stage play with Iowa PBS in mind, but never could get the job done. When I had the opportunity to do a rewrite for a micro-budget version and actually produce it…actually have it exist…I couldn’t resist. And I like this version just fine, and the way it works on (basically) a single set, emphasizing the Christmas Carol-like visions of private eye Richard Stone.

I’ll remind you Blue Christmas is available on Amazon Prime for under three bucks, on Blu-ray and DVD from VCI and MVD (available at Amazon and Diabolik and elsewhere), and on a few streaming channels for free but with commercials.

Now I’ll wind up this commercial and get back to the main attraction: me wishing you and yours a happy Thanksgiving.

M.A.C.

Prime Time for Blue Christmas; Farewell to Stephen Mertz

Tuesday, November 19th, 2024

Blue Christmas is available now on Amazon Prime for under $2.99 (to rent) in HD. It’s also on Fawesome, free, but there are commercials. Several other streaming services are considering it and I’ll post info here as that happens.

Now that the Blu-ray and DVD are out, we’ve had several really nice reviews, like this one.

We had a week-long run at the Palms multi-plex in Muscatine, Iowa (our home town) and Barb and I saw it twice, really loving how it looks on the big screen. The day before this update appears we’ll have had a nice screening at Muscatine Community College in the Black Box theater where we shot it.

Please support our little Christmas noir. If you get a chance to give us a decent star rating at IMDB, that would be welcome and appreciated.

Also, if you order the Blu-ray or DVD from Amazon, and like it, post a review.

And if you haven’t sent for it yet, consider going to the great physical media dealer Diabolik.

* * *

I have been approached by several folks about the Kickstarter page for True Noir. Apparently it hasn’t been updated of late. I am not directly associated with the page, but I’ve talked to Rob Burnett about it and he’s on the case.

There have been some delays in delivery of this ambitious project – a ten-episode immersive audio presentation of True Detective from my scripts. I can assure you this is an impressive production – everything I’ve heard has been terrific.

What happened is, to my understanding, initial plans to release the episodes one at a time, while the production was still in post, have shifted to waiting till the entire audio drama is done. The recording is entirely finished but editing and SFX are still in process, and the last two episodes haven’t been scored yet (but that’s coming – and this music is really impressive).

I will be doing mini-documentaries on each episode for inclusion on the eventual Blu-ray release.

* * *

When you live to be a certain age, or I should say when you are lucky enough to live to a certain age, you may come upon a sad and unsettling reality: more of your friends are dead than alive. I have lost bandmates, like Paul Thomas, Bruce Peters and Chuck Bunn, and Terry Becky (murdered in a motel room while touring); the brothers Van Winkle, Brian and Jim, and – unfortunately in the too rocky world of rock ‘n’ roll – a number of others. My filmmaking collaborator, actor Michael Cornelison is gone – he was part of Mommy, Mommy’s Day, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market, Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop and Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane. I basically retired from filmmaking when Mike passed, and only recently have I had the heart to pick up the mantle again.

Now three of my closest friends in the writing game are gone – a while back Ed Gorman, recently Bob Randisi, and now Stephen Mertz.

Steve had his cantankerous side but was cheerful and fun and funny even at his crankiest, and mostly he was a sunny presence, enthusiastic about writers whose work he loved and himself a dedicated professional. He was also a musician and a good one. He was a radio d.j. at times, and the kind of ideal presence you’d love to have with you pouring from the car radio on a long drive.

I don’t recall when I met Steve. He’s one of those people I feel I always knew. It was probably at a Bouchercon, a long-ago one. I just know that he was one of Mickey Spillane’s biggest fans and boosters, and to some degree our friendship was grounded in that.

We were also among a small handful who knew of the work of Ennis Willie, a mysterious figure (for years anyway) whose ‘60s work at the minor paperback house Merit Books ran to two dozen-plus titles that rocketed from his typewriter, a pulp-style writer who seemed to disappear as quickly as he emerged. Had Willie been killed in a car accident or maybe died of a disease? Was he a Black writer? Was he Mickey Spillane secretly writing under a pseudonym? These topics and more were discussed endlessly by Steve and me (and also Ed Gorman).

Ultimately our enthusiasm for his work flushed Willie out of the normal life he’d been swallowed into (he was a publisher in the South) and he was astonished and, I think, thrilled that Steve and I (and Ed) had been such advocates of his work, particularly the Sand novels, which were similar to Westlake’s Parker books but with an overtly Spillane touch. (Matt Clemens and I named our John Sand secret agent character after Willie’s hoodlum hero, Sand.)

Steve was also a big booster of Michael Avallone, who had become, unfairly, a kind of joke in the eyes of some when he was really a dedicated craftsman with perhaps a little too much defensive pride in his work…but that’s better than the opposite.

The biggest argument Steve and I had, over the years, had to do with Steve hiding behind pseudonyms, protecting his real byline for bigger, greater work that he felt he would accomplish later. My approach was, you never know if there’s going to be a “later” – I would slap my name on a movie novelization knowing that the young readers of such books might become lifetime fans of my work. And that proved the case.

Steve wrote scores of men’s adventure novels, and was a big advocate of the work of Don Pendleton, and wound up as one of the best ghosts of the later Executioner novels. Again, this solid work was hidden behind a byline that wasn’t his, and I encouraged him for decades to get his real name out there. But he went on writing as “Jim Case” and “Stephen Brett” and “Cliff Banks”…and “Don Pendleton.” Finally, in the last few decades, he did sign his own work, and did so with pride on such distinctive novels as Hank & Muddy and The Castro Directive.

Back when I was doing a lot of tie-in novels, Steve was the only person I recommended to a publisher when my work schedule didn’t allow – his Sudden Death was a fine example of a tricky craft.

And I let Barb know if anything happened to me, of all my friends – even including Bob and Ed – that Steve was the one to approach if I passed with a book half-finished.

Now here I am, on my own. It will be up to Barb and Nate, if I don’t finish something…and you better.

Steve, you were a fine friend and a fine writer, and a real sweetheart of a guy. I often said you would argue with a tree stump…but with a smile and laugh.

I can hear that laugh now.

* * *

Read about Ennis Willie (who published new versions of his work after the Mertz/Gorman/M.A.C. enthusiasm caught fire) right here.

M.A.C.

Many Happy Returns (Except For…)

Tuesday, November 12th, 2024

I stepped out from behind my usual “no politics here” stance last week by expressing my support for Kamala Harris. Wow, that really made the difference! Look, I am a centrist generally pissed off at both the far left and far right, having been cancelled by both in various eras. But I am grateful that nobody who follows this blog/update stepped up to slap me down last week. They respected or at least ignored my opinion. I had exactly one “pushback” on Facebook from somebody astounded that I would see Donald Trump as a threat to the rule of law. So at least I got one good laugh out of this.

The real winner of this campaign was social media for getting away with completely (a) blotting out any real news coverage in favor of this opinion and that one, and (b) making every one of us feel a sense of importance none of us deserve. Just this week I have had a movie I directed, and a book I am writing, lambasted by people who have not seen the movie and not read the book (not a surprise, since I haven’t finished it). I realize I am being a bit of hypocrite being opinionated in this – but how many of us now think our opinions are so important we need to express them in public, even when we are discussing a movie we haven’t seen, or a book that isn’t even out yet?

This is Alice in Wonderland stuff, boys and girls. And it’s going to get worse.

* * *

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E-Book: Google Play Kobo
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Quarry’s Return is out now and you should be able to find it at your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstores, but it’s also available at the usual online retailers.

I’ve said a few places that this may be the final Quarry novel, but let’s face it – I said that before (about The Last Quarry and Quarry’s Blood, to name two). So who knows?

This novel is very much a sequel or follow-up to the Edgar-nominated Quarry’s Blood, though like all of these books, each can be read out of order without causing you too much mental whiplash. What I’ve discovered about Quarry, via this one and the preceding book in the saga, is that I like writing about him when he shares with me my current age (he’s actually a tad younger). I think that’s because he was conceived, in the first novel (Quarry a.k.a The Broker), as being my age, very much my contemporary as a child of the 1950s caught up in the Vietnam era.

Nate Heller has also been older in more recent novels (Too Many Bullets is something of a concluding one, though I do have one more to write, which is next up on my novelistic plate). Those books got out of chronological order fairly early on – only the first three (True Detective, True Crime, The Million-Dollar Wound) are strictly chronological, although you could kind of lump the fourth in (Neon Mirage) as well. After that I’m all over the map with Stolen Away and Damned in Paradise and so on.

Speaking of Heller, True Noir – the ten-part fully immersible, M.A.C.-scripted audio adaptation of True Detective is deep into post-production. Plans to drop the episodes gradually, while the later ones were still in post, have been scrapped by producer Mike Bawden in favor of waiting till the entire ten parts are complete. There is merit in this decision. Release should be some time in December or very early January. Exactly how and where they will be released I’ll announce here, as soon I know it.

What I do know is the cast and director Robert Meyer Burnett have done me proud. We have a terrific Nate Heller in Michael Rosenbaum of Smallville fame, and the supporting cast is second to none.

Getting back to Quarry, I should note that we have another terrific audio book of this one read by the great Stefan Rudnicki.

As far as more Quarry is concerned, it frankly depends on my health and the interest of a publisher. As long as Hard Case Crime is around, and I’m around, I’ll probably find a way to write the occasional Quarry. Whether any future one will be about the geriatric Quarry or a flashback to his earlier days remains to be seen.

At my age, writing this kind of book, I face not only my advancement of years, but that of my readership, which (let’s face it) is pretty much cult-ish, despite the occasional break-through like Road to Perdition.

I have found it revitalizing doing several micro-budget movie productions (Encore for Murder, Blue Christmas, Death by Fruitcake); but even at this modest (!) budgetary level, funding is difficult. We’ll see how Blue Christmas and Death by Fruitcake fare.

Right now Blue Christmas is playing a week-long run at the Palms Theater in Muscatine. Seeing our little film on a great big screen, with terrific sound, has been gratifying. (It’s still there through and including Nov. 14.) It’s a testimony to what director of photographer Phil Dingeldein and producer Chad Bishop were able to achieve on a wing and a prayer.

Blue Christmas also out on Blu-ray and DVD right now. Lots of special features, including a nice bio documentary of yours truly done for Muscatine Community College. A good place to get the Blue Christmas Blu-ray online (in addition to the usual online retailers) is the great website Diabolik. They are a terrific outfit offering all kinds of off-beat items, including our little Christmas fable. Their price is in line with other online retailers and I’d love to see you support them.

As for the DVD version, you can go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and get it for eleven bucks and change.

Speaking of Blue Christmas, shortly after its run ends at the Palms Theater in Muscatine, there’s a special showing (open to the public) in the very Black Box venue where we recorded the film. This should be a great event and those of you in the eastern Iowa area may wish to take it in.


Hardcover:
E-Book: Nook Kobo Google PLay

Also out right now is the latest Antiques Trash ‘n’ Treasures comic mystery, Antiques Slay Belles. With Death by Fruitcake warming up as a release for next Christmas, with Brandy and Vivian Borne brought to life wonderfully by Alisabeth Von Presley and Paula Sands (co-starring with Rob Merritt who plays P.I. Richard Stone in Blue Christmas), Barb and I are happy to present another Antiques Christmas mystery. Sometimes the mystery of the Antiques novels is where to find the darn things. Our publisher, Severn House, is in the UK and sometimes it’s difficult to find the latest Antiques novel in a brick-and-mortar USA store (there have been some inroads with Barnes & Noble as well as mystery bookstores).

But you can absolutely get Antiques Slay Belles at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and whatever your favorite online retailer is likely to be.

Let’s face it. These are ideal stocking stuffers for a mystery fan – but choose wisely which of these items you stuff. Only the hardiest of souls out there might find both Antiques Slay Belles and Quarry’s Return (and yes, it’s a Christmas novel!) equally palatable. On the other hand, Blue Christmas would make a fine Christmas day family film, despite its noir-ish themes (same noir-ish themes as A Christmas Carol!).

* * *

Check out our Blue Christmas IMDB page!

This is quite a lovely review of Blue Christmas, very positive but frank about our low-budget indie feature.

Here’s another nice Blue Christmas review, if brief; you have to scroll down to find it.

Hey, movies don’t get much more indie or micro than this; but if you like my work, I think – I hope – you’ll impressed with what we came up with. Much thanks goes to our eastern Iowa cast, with Alisabeth Von Presley already receiving a Best Actress award from the Iowa Motion Picture Association for what is essentially a supporting role. And Rob Merritt as Richard Stone carries a good deal of the weight of the production on his shoulders and proves his value as probably the most popular, busiest actor in this region.

M.A.C.

Death by Blue Christmas & True Noir Kicks

Tuesday, September 24th, 2024

Last week’s update/blog was very short and I didn’t bother to post it to the various Facebook pages that follow me. So if that’s where you generally see these posts, you may wish to catch up with last week’s right now.

The truth is last week I forgot all about writing a post until my son Nate (who handles this for me) called me last minute wondering why I hadn’t sent it. This is the first time that ever happened and I’ve been writing these weekly posts for…ever.

Am I getting old and possibly senile? At least one of those two things is true and the other may be inevitable. But let me speak just a moment about the notion that I am the hardest working man in show business. People often comment on the prodigious amount of work I turn out. My standard response is, “Nobody sends money to my house if I don’t.”

I am undoubtedly a fast writer. Not Bob Randisi fast, but pretty, pretty fast, as Larry David might say. Nonetheless the amount of work I’ve produced is based on a couple of things: (a) slow and steady wins the race, and (b) I’ve been publishing since 1972. Do the math. No, really – do the math…I’m shit at it.

Several people have commented on how amazing it is that we shot our movie Death by Fruitcake in two weeks, then turned around and had it edited and essentially finished within another three weeks (the “we” being editor/d.p. Chad Bishop and me). What gets lost in that shuffle is that we’d been planning the movie since around April and I’d been full-time on pre-production starting the first of July.

This was a kind of experiment for me to see if I could do another movie at my age. We’d done Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder in 2022, but that was primarily a radio-style stage play that we shot in dress rehearsal and its one performance, then edited into a movie or program or…something. (You can find it as a special feature on the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane Blu-ray or on its own DVD, or on several streaming services. Gary Sandy is a wonderful Hammer.)

Encore got my filmmaking juices going again and we made Blue Christmas last year for release, well, right about now or anyway very soon. Some of you know that my novella, “A Wreath for Marley,” is a favorite of mine among my work. And maybe a few know that it was planned to be the follow-up to my movie Mommy back in the mid-‘90s, but when a sequel to that surprise success shouldered its way into the front of the line, Blue Christmas got lost in the shuffle (to mix a bunch of metaphors).

Many years later (last year specifically) I figured out a way to make Blue Christmas on one set, essentially, and on a six-day schedule. My longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein helped make that happen, and my editor/co-producer Chad Bishop brought it home.

Death by Fruitcake grew out of two things – the desire to make a second Christmas movie, since Blue Christmas was warmly received in its advance screenings and had stoked our ability to get VCI and MVD to bring it out on physical media. The other factor was the frustration Barb and I have had with our Antiques comic cozy mystery series almost becoming a TV series a bunch of times. We decided to make an indie movie and show Hollywood how it can be done.

Here is the trailer, which Chad put together and I tweaked a little bit; I think it’s rather wonderful.

And let us not forget that Blue Christmas comes out this holiday season. I was delighted when Diabolik, my favorite source for boutique physical media (that is, Blu-rays and 4K’s), picked our movie to showcase on their great site. You can pre-order it from them (or Amazon and a few other places) but here is the Diabolik link.

And in case you didn’t take a peek at it previously, here’s our Blue Christmas trailer.

Many of the Blue Christmas actors return in Death by Fruitcake, including star Rob Merritt, who is probably the most prolific and popular actor in Iowa. And we showcase Midwestern broadcasting legend Paula Sands (who was in Mommy’s Day!) and American Idol’s Alisabeth Von Presley as Vivian and Brandy Borne. They are, I have to say, wonderful in it. Barb agrees.

We hope to have a few premiere Fruitcake screenings here in Iowa yet this year, perhaps in tandem with promised runs at various Iowa movie theaters. Stay tuned for info.

But wait, there’s more!

The ten-part immersive radio drama, True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, successfully achieved its KickStarter goal and then some. You can read about it (and pre-order True Noir in several forms) right here.

In case you’ve arrived at this party late, True Noir is my 350-page adaptation of the first Heller novel, True Detective, directed by the great Robert Meyer Burnett and with an astonishing all-star cast headed up by Michael Rosenbaum. I’ve been attending many of the recording sessions via Zoom, and have heard advance examples of what Rob Burnett is turning out, and I can only say this will be one of the true (get it?) highlights of my long and lucky career.

True Noir has been getting considerable press attention. Check this out.

What else is happening?

Return of the Maltese Falcon awaits.

In other news, I have once again seen my reviled Batman work proving useful to Hollywood creators. I should say “seen,” because I haven’t watched the new Penguin series that recycles my origin of Robin (i.e., a little hoodlum who steals hubcabs). I haven’t watched the Penguin series because it’s obviously a reflection on how Batman keeps getting taken way too seriously. The whimsical villain the Penguin becoming a gritty noir character just has me shaking my head…although I realize I’m condemning something I haven’t watched, and certain people I respect like it. But, hey –- I’m the guy who never watched Wild Dog on Arrow. I had to bitch to get compensated for the use of that Collins/Beatty character, which may explain why I choose to do so little comics work these days.

Anyway, you can read about Penguin and me right here.

M.A.C.