Posts Tagged ‘Quarry TV’

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Quarry Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Tuesday, February 10th, 2015

Last week’s update was written before the news of the HBO/Cinemax pick-up of the QUARRY series (we ran a kind of news bulletin last week).

I have received a lot of public and private congratulations for QUARRY making it to TV. A few people who’ve got in touch are surprised that I’m not jumping up and down in elation, but the truth is that the feeling is more one of relief.

You see, we (I refer to Barb, Nate and me) have known that QUARRY was picked up for series for over six months. At least, I was told it had been picked up, and assured it was picked up, but was also told not to say anything about it in public. I know enough about disappointment in the TV/movie game to realize that until an official announcement is made, anything can happen. And that “anything” is usually bad.

I didn’t tell anybody about ROAD TO PERDITION the movie until Barb and I had been to the set and seen Tom Hanks and Paul Newman standing in front of a 35mm camera.

So it’s been nerve-racking – especially considering that the pilot was shot in August 2013.

The TV project I mentioned (without naming it) a while back was the writing of my script for QUARRY – episode 5, although my understanding is that elements of my script may appear in other episodes. I have done my rewrite and I have been paid. That was when this started feeling really real. The two writers who adapted the novels into a TV format – Graham Gordy and Michael D. Fuller – have been wonderful to me, and great to work with. Everybody attached to the show has first-rate credentials. QUARRY is in good hands.

Fans of the novels need to understand, however, that the concept of this eight-episode run (this may change if another season comes along) is to look at the start of Quarry’s hitman career. Aspects of Quarry that have been chiefly back story in the novels are the focus of the eight episodes, which start with Quarry’s return home from Vietnam and includes the Broker recruiting him into crime.

Also, the Southern setting – the show takes place in Memphis and will shoot in Louisiana and Tennessee – gives it a flavor of its own. Initially, that setting had more to do with finding an economically feasible location, but that region’s richness (particularly in the world of music) has found its way into the series.

Of the novels, the first one – QUARRY (originally THE BROKER) – seems to have had the greatest impact on the TV series. But that novel charts the ending of Quarry’s personal and working relationship with the Broker, while the TV series explores its beginnings. Those of you who follow the novels likely know that in the more recent Hard Case Crime books, I’ve gone back and explored the Quarry/Broker story in THE FIRST QUARRY and QUARRY’S CHOICE (also the short story, “Quarry’s Luck”).

The most ironic thing about the TV series is also one of the most gratifying: it’s a period piece, concentrating on the Vietnam aspect of Quarry’s background (that Quarry was a PTSD Vietnam vet and a sniper has taken on new resonance, thanks to Clint Eastwood). I say “ironic” because when the series began, it was decidedly contemporary and the Vietnam theme could not have been more current.

For the record, Quarry was created in the fall of 1971 when I was attending the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, where the first several chapters were discussed in class and mostly disliked (though those who liked it really liked it). On December 24, 1971, I got word that the Nolan novel BAIT MONEY had sold, and two weeks later that the Mallory novel NO CURE FOR DEATH had sold (both written at the Workshop, under Richard Yates). I put QUARRY away, at about the half-way point as I recall, and wrote sequels to both those books. I’m fuzzy on when I completed QUARRY – whether I returned to it, after the Nolan sequel (BLOOD MONEY) and the Mallory sequel (THE BABY BLUE RIP-OFF) were completed, or if I waited till I’d written three more Nolan novels that were contracted by Curtis Books. But I believe by 1974, it was finished and sold maybe a year later, finally published in 1976. I was again asked for three more books (from Berkley Books) and the first four Quarry novels appeared and disappeared without much notice. (Only EQMM reviewer Jon L. Breen noticed them, and saw potential in their author. He’s been a booster of mine ever since, bless him.)

Then the books began to gather steam as a cult-ish thing, leading to one more novel in the ‘80s (QUARRY’S VOTE, originally PRIMARY TARGET) and three short stories in the ‘90s. So while there hasn’t been a steady stream, Quarry has been active in every decade since his creation.

The short story “A Matter of Principal” got a lot of attention, appearing in several anthologies and leading to an award-winning short film of the same name from my screenplay and then the feature film THE LAST LULLABY, which I co-wrote. The novel THE LAST QUARRY reflected my screenplay (minus the co-writer imposed upon it) and was presented as contemporary, with Quarry a man in his fifties. It was intended as the most perverse ending to the series possible: a happy one.

The unexpected success of THE LAST QUARRY led me to head back in time and do what we call in the comics business “continuity inserts”…although I don’t pretend the continuity is flawless. What the hell – Rex Stout couldn’t keep track of Nero Wolfe’s address and phone number.

The last thing I ever expected to be doing was writing a new Quarry novel in 2015, let alone doing that with a Quarry TV show casting its pleasant shadow. I have, incidentally, completed that book, QUARRY IN THE BLACK, which is another story about Quarry in the Broker years. I should say “completed,” because I have to sit down today and probably tomorrow and read it again and do tweaks and catch typos and continuity glitches.

Anyway, to all of you who expressed your thanks and/or delight about this QUARRY series happening, thank you very much.

* * *

The TV news was all over the Internet last week. You don’t have time to read all of the stories and I don’t have the inclination to post all of the links (actually Nate does that, and he won’t have that inclination, either). But here are some of them.

Comics Mix is the rare place that puts the emphasis on the creator of Quarry (you know…me).

Here’s another.

And another.

Here’s a local one from the Quad Cities, which doesn’t even rate as the columnist’s top story (a prophet in his own town kind of thing).

Some, like this one, hit the Vietnam aspect harder.

The AV Club, not surprisingly, gets somewhat snarky about it. I remember when I was young and smart…well, I remember some of it.

The “American Sniper” connections led to this kind of coverage.

And finally…what’s this doing here? A really sweet review of THE MILLION-DOLLAR WOUND!

M.A.C.

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Note From The Bunker #2

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015

[Nate’s note: Before we get to the regularly scheduled Update, we have some breaking news:

QUARRY ON CINEMAX

Cinemax today officially announced an eight-episode series order to drama pilot Quarry. Production will begin March 30 on location in New Orleans and Tennessee. Created and executive produced by Graham Gordy & Michael D. Fuller. Based on the novels of Max Allan Collins, the show will be directed and executive produced by Greg Yaitanes (Banshee), along with executive producer Steve Golin (True Detective).

Quarry tells the story of Mac Conway (Logan Marshall-Green), a Marine who returns home to Memphis from Vietnam in 1972 and finds himself shunned by those he loves and demonized by the public. As he struggles to cope with his experiences at war, Conway is drawn into a network of killing and corruption that spans the length of the Mississippi River. Jodi Balfour, Peter Mullan, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Damon Herriman co-star, along with Jamie Hector, Edoardo Ballerini and Skipp Sudduth. “This nuanced and dynamic show marks an exciting moment in the evolution of Cinemax programming,” said HBO’s Michael Lombardo.

An HBO Entertainment production in association with Anonymous Content, the series is also executive produced by Matt DeRoss, David Kanter, Max Allan Collins and Ken Levin. Additional writers on the series include Jennifer Schuur and Max Allan Collins.

Cinemax has been making strides in original programming with dramas Banshee and The Knick, the latter earning the sister HBO network its first awards nominations.

And now, back to the Update….]

* * *

Here’s the first major review for the upcoming Mike Hammer novel, KILL ME, DARLING – and it’s a great one from Publisher’s Weekly no less:

Kill Me, Darling

Set in 1954, Collins’s seventh posthumous collaboration with Mike Hammer creator Spillane (after 2014’s King of the Weeds) is one of his best, liberally dosed with the razor-edged prose and violence that marked the originals. The New York City PI has hit the bottle hard after his longtime assistant and love, Velda Sterling, abandoned him with a one-word note. Then Mike’s friend on the NYPD, Pat Chambers, tells him that Velda has surfaced in Miami, on the arm of Nolly Quinn, a notorious mob-connected pimp. Mike cleans himself up and heads south to rescue Velda from Quinn, only to find that she doesn’t want to be rescued. Collins faithfully follows Spillane’s successful formula, including frequent gunplay, menacing thugs, and betrayal. He even matches Spillane’s colorful turns of phrase (e.g., “My bullet shattered his smile on its way through him and out of the back of his head”). Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency. (Mar.)

* * *

I am still working on the new Quarry novel and might finish this week, if all goes well. But a writer never knows. I often say that I never get writer’s block, which is the kind of boast than can catch up with you. No writer’s block, that’s true in its way, but I do have bad days.

A typical bad writing day for me happens as follows. I have a very good writing day, turning out more pages than usual, and I am floating on a cloud of genius. Then, that night, going to bed around midnight, having gone blissfully and quickly asleep, I wake up at 1:30 a.m. Wide awake. I do my best to get right back to sleep, but no go. I go downstairs, read something until I get sleepy, which takes an hour to two hours. Then I sleep in my recliner for a while, wake up after a while and trudge back to the bedroom, where I get to sleep right away. But I wake up at the usual time, after a very disrupted night’s “rest.”

The writing day that follows is almost always a disaster. I do write. But I am not my usual nimble self. What’s normal for me is ten to fifteen pages of finished draft. Last week, after my rocky night, I spent all day on four pages.

Some of that has to do with the research that is now required of a Quarry novel, now that they have become historical books themselves, in their quirky way. I spend as much time chasing details on Google or in reference works as I do writing – not that different from the Heller process.

But the way I do a Quarry novel is much different than a Heller. Because of the historical crimes involved, a Heller novel is tightly plotted, with each chapter detailed in at least a paragraph in a document that can be anywhere from ten to thirty pages long. With Quarry, my chapter outline reverts (not surprisingly) to the approach of my early career, with each chapter indicated by a sentence or two. For QUARRY IN THE BLACK, my outline says for chapter one: “Quarry gets job from Broker.” Another says: “Quarry and Southern gal connect at club.” That’s it. The rest is done on the fly.

That really works for Quarry, but if I’m having an off day? He is just not himself. Like I am not. Sometimes I can power through it. Sometimes I can come back in the evening (which I did with the four pages mentioned above, which turned into seven) but not always. Being older doesn’t help.

And there’s that other thing that writers never talk about – that as writers we change from day to day. Make that second to second. Back in the ‘80s, before word-processing programs automatically saved every now and then, I lost an entire chapter of the Eliot Ness novel, THE DARK CITY. It was devastating. When I knew the chapter was gone, really really gone, I started over and did my best to remember it.

Of course, I couldn’t. The chapter, as it now exists, covers the same ground. But it’s not as good as the one I lost. If I were to lose this little essay and start over, it would be substantially different and none of the phrasing would be replicated. In the mid-‘80s, I lost a chapter of PRIMARY TARGET (aka QUARRY’S VOTE) and the same process happened: I tried to remember it and only came up with a shadow of what it had been.

If a writer starts working on a story or chapter in a novel on Monday morning, even working from a detailed outline, it will be substantially different that if he waited till Tuesday afternoon. We, like what we write, are works in progress. We hope it’s progress, anyway.

A number of people lately have asked me what order to read the Quarry novels in. Chronological would seem to make sense, like starting with THE FIRST QUARRY, moving to QUARRY’S CHOICE, then QUARRY aka THE BROKER, sliding the later-written books into continuity. But THE BROKER was written when I was in my early twenties; THE FIRST QUARRY and QUARRY’S CHOICE were written by a man in his sixties. Do you understand why my advice would be to read the books in the order I wrote them? Because the writer who did the first four Quarry novels was a very different one.

* * *

Here’s an okay review of SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, but the reviewer doesn’t quite get it….

Here’s a fun review of DAMNED IN PARADISE.

And now, with the blessing of being snowed in, I will head back to the bunker. Only I’m already there.

M.A.C.

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Hooray For…

Tuesday, August 26th, 2014

Barb and I spent most of last week in Hollywood (California, not Florida). I rarely make trips out there, but this trek was to make “pitches” to various networks about a Heller TV show, and to take a few meetings (there’s a nasty phrase) about the QUARRY TV show.


Beautiful blonde spotted in the Beverly Hills Hotel lobby. Movie star?

First, QUARRY. Though a pick-up has not been announced, everything looks good – promising, let’s say. The meetings I took, both with the writers heading up the potential series and with the top execs at Cinemax, were encouraging.

As for Heller, the pitch meetings went very well and we have some interest. If you’re Heller fan, it’s premature to start doing cart wheels. At this stage, assuming a HELLER series will happen is like sending out birth announcements on your way out to a singles bar hoping to pick somebody up. But it’s a start.


Confused tourist outside CAA shortly before being seized by security.

The pitch process was interesting and a little odd, from a book writer’s point of view, anyway. For a long time – almost a year – I have worked with a top management company to develop a “pitch document.” I don’t remember ever polishing a piece of writing more times or more thoroughly, and I had expected I’d either be reading it or working from an outline of it. I practiced doing it both ways with Barb (don’t take that out of context) and hated the two approaches equally. One of the handful of things I do well is speak extemporaneously, and neither approach tapped into that.

Early in our marriage, when I was starting to publish novels and would do speaking engagements for the Rotary or whatever, I would prepare not at all, and it would make Barb very nervous, very anxious. She insisted that I prepare, that I do the next speech from notes. I did, and I sucked. After that, Barb gave her blessing to me winging such speeches, and never got nervous for me that way again.

I was relieved when, last Monday, my prep for the pitch meetings (set for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) included the news that I would not be using the pitch document. That I would be talking extemporaneously to the network execs. I don’t get nervous or anxious in front of audiences, and these pitch meetings included very high ranking people at some of the most famous cable networks. But I was loose and not intimidated, and pretty funny frankly, which I think helped.

Oddly, the pitch document was not left behind at any of the five networks we saw. Apparently you need to have such a document in case somebody asks to see it. But nobody did.

It was a stressful trip (my God I hate those freeways), and expensive, which is why I’ve only gone out to LA for pitch meetings on two prior occasions in the last ten years. But HELLER is important to me, and is a series I would like to be involved in myself, as opposed to just handing it off to talented writers and doing the occasional script.

We’ll see.

Did I mention it was expensive out there? It’s a shock to a couple of Iowa rubes to go out for a light lunch at a casual corner cafe and spend sixty bucks for it (a salad for Barb, fish tacos for me). But I was able to stop at my two favorite places in LA – Amoeba Records and Book Soup. At the latter, a customer recognized me as I was buying a magazine, and was dismayed at not having any of my books along for me to sign. Here’s a tip: everywhere you go, bring my books along. You never know when I’m going to show up.


A director and his star on the red carpet.

On the social side, Barb and I had dinners with Leonard and Alice Maltin; actor (Second City vet) Larry Coven of MOMMY’S DAY and REAL TIME: SIEGE AT LUCAS STREET MARKET; and Mommy herself, Patty McCormack. The latter was a splurge evening for us – we took Patty to supper at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and sat in a booth talking up a storm for almost four hours. I was a director taking his star to the Polo Lounge, and it felt very good.

* * *

Here’s a nice review of SUPREME JUSTICE, which has drifted down the Kindle bestseller charts some but is still hanging on nicely.

M.A.C.

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You Slay Me

Tuesday, October 8th, 2013
Bouchercon 2013

Here are two images courtesy of Kensington editor Michaela Hamilton – a photo of Barb, Matt Clemens and me at the recent Albany Bouchercon (courtesy of Mike’s friend Gene) and the cover of the new Trash ‘n’ Treasures Christmas novella, ANTIQUES SLAY RIDE.

Antiques Slay Ride

SLAY RIDE is available only as an e-book, and is the first of three such novellas (all with Christmas themes) that will appear over a three-year period. This one came out very well, and works as an introduction to the series and the characters if you’ve never tried one of these novels by Barbara Allan (Barb and me).

Barb is working on her draft of the next full-length novel in the series, ANTIQUES SWAP – at about the half-way mark. I am deep into SUPREME JUSTICE, a political thriller for Thomas & Mercer, that Matt Clemens has helped develop. It’s due November 1 and, with any luck, I’ll make that deadline.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER has done very well so far, particularly on e-book, which is Thomas & Mercer’s long suit. As I write this, we are still number #1 in serial killer books. If you had a chance to read it, or EARLY CRIMES, let me again say how much positive reviews (however short) are helpful. I’ve been told by a credible source that even negative reviews can be helpful at Amazon and Barnes & Noble – statistics apparently show that books with no reviews don’t sell as well as books with primarily negative reviews. Right now we’re at 34 reviews and a four-star average for WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER. (EARLY CRIMES has 13 reviews and a five-star rating, which is very nice for such an offbeat little book.)

Barb and I have been watching horror movies, in honor of Halloween, with an emphasis on 3-D (we are set up for that in my office). The new 3-D blu-ray of the classic HOUSE OF WAX (SCTV fans, all together now: “Have you theen my paddleball?”) is quite wonderful and shows how effective and fun 3-D effects can be (from an eyepatch-sporting director who could not perceive the effect himself). Though it’s not a great movie, AMITYVILLE 3-D is also out on blu-ray as part of a boxed set of Amityville movies, and it too has wonderful 3-D effects, as well as a strong performance from the too-little-seen Candy Clark.

On the other hand, we tried to watch GATSBY and bailed after twenty minutes of pretentious self-conscious bilge. I avoided this in the theater but gave in to my 3-D curiosity for an attempted home viewing. I never dreamed Baz Lurhmann could make a film more dreadful than his MOULIN ROUGE, but he seems to have knocked the ball out of the park and into the crapper – based on the twenty minutes we watched. (Barb: “Are you having fun?” M.A.C.: “Not in the least.” Barb: “Can we stop watching this?” M.A.C.: “Absolutely.”)

We also took in the 3-D version of GRAVITY at our new multi-plex and were far less impressed than the critics at Rotten Tomatoes who give it 98% fresh. It’s an impressive piece of filmmaking in the technical sense, and well-acted, working fine as a thrill ride. The story, such as it is, is weak, with Sandra Bullock’s character in particular poorly thought through. It’s probably worth seeing, but keep in mind it’s one of those one-damn-thing-after-another movies. It also has one of those New Age orchestral scores with a wordless soprano caterwauling in a vaguely spiritual manner – the kind I hope never to hear again.

Here’s my blurb: “Way better than GATSBY!”

* * *

There’s a really nice review of several Hard Case titles, including SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, at Barnes and Noble’s web site.

Here’s a nice review of COMPLEX 90.

Finally, no firm news on QUARRY for Cinemax yet, but here’s an interesting interview with a mention of the pilot from an HBO exec.

M.A.C.

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