A Thrill a Minute

Review - THE BITCH, by Les Edgerton

2012-01-28T21:31:00.001-05:00

Jake Bishop is a two-time loser, a B&E specialist who is down to his last shot at life. One more conviction and he'll be sent away for good as part of Michigan's three strikes and you're out habitual offender law, or The Bitch, as it's known to the cons.

But Jake has no intention of ever seeing the inside of a prison cell again. He learned a trade - hairdressing - while on the inside and discovered he's got a talent for it. Using hard work and a little luck, Jake turns his newly discovered talent into steady employment and eventually the opportunity to open his own shop.

Jake is determined to turn his life around, and he's doing it. His wife is pregnant with their first child, his shop will be opening in just a few weeks. Things couldn't be going better.

Until he receives a call from his from his old prison cellmate, Walker Joy, that is. Walker is fresh out of the can, and Jake owes Walker big-time, thanks to an incident that occurred in prison. The ex-con is planning a big score. He needs Jake's help and has come to collect on the debt.

One last job.

And that's how it starts. Things go rapidly downhill from there for Jake Bishop, who is forced to walk a razor-thin line he hoped never to walk again, knowing that getting caught would mean the end of his family, his freedom, his life.

I finished reading THE BITCH last night and haven't stopped thinking about it since. Les Edgerton has written a rare crime novel, making a sympathetic character out of a guy most people would cross the street to avoid if they saw coming the other direction.

THE BITCH isn't for everyone. If you prefer your crime fiction sanitized, suitable for all viewers, you're probably going to want to stay away from this particular novel. It's violent and gritty and profane. It's also incredibly human and even, at times, tender, as we watch in open-mouthed horror a guy forced into a course of action that can only end one way - badly.

I'm a pretty easy grader when I review books. I write novels, and I know how much blood, sweat and tears go into the process, so I don't often have a whole lot to say about any book that's openly negative. But a book like THE BITCH makes me question my reviewing process because it's so head-and-shoulders above most other fiction.

I love noir fiction precisely because it's so real. I consider Tom Piccirilli the master of modern noir, and I'm here to say Les Edgerton has vaulted himself to a position right behind Piccirilli with THE BITCH. I give this book five stars, only because I can't give it six. Or seven.

It's just that good.

I Won't Be a Virgin After Friday Night

2012-01-18T19:55:00.000-05:00

I don't mean that; get your mind out of the gutter, for crying out loud. I've got three kids!

No, what I'm talking about is my first-ever author appearance. Friday night, from six to nine p.m., I will be appearing at Zorvino Vineyards' second annual Author's Night. Here is the very classy flyer they provided, which not only looks awesome, contains all the pertinent details:

See? Very classy, which is pretty much what you would expect from an event being held at a vineyard. Not that I would know; I don't even drink wine. In fact, I wasn't even aware New Hampshire had any actual vineyards. Breweries, sure, but vineyards?

All of this classiness only serves to make me even more nervous than I would expect to be. But an author should make appearances, right? And this is probably the most painless way to do it, considering I will be one of seventy-five or so ~~vultures~~ authors, all looking to ~~make sales~~ mingle and sip wine.

And in case you didn't notice, Major Don West will be there, and Lost in Space was just about my favorite show ever when I was growing up, with the possible exceptions of Batman and The Three Stooges. See what I mean? Classy.

Also appearing, although not listed on this flyer, will be Manchester Channel Nine's meteorologist Josh Judge. Meeting him will not only be cool, it will give me a chance to get a few things off my chest regarding that gigantic blizzard from late-October. He better show up with his game face on.

Anyway, I would love to see you there, and if you do show up (Free wine!), please be sure to ~~take pity on me~~ stop by my table and say hi. I'll be easy to spot - just look for the old guy who reminds you of the nerdy kid standing in the corner watching all the cool kids at the junior high dance.

Did I mention you can snag a pen? My ~~savior~~ wife ordered very cool pens with my website on them to give out at this appearance, and any others I may make ~~if hell freezes over~~ if anyone would like me to speak at their event. She's the best and even if I look out of place at a classy vineyard, my pens will look right at home.

So if you're kicking around southern New Hampshire this Friday night with nothing to do (As if - this is New Hampshire!), or think you might have occasion to sign legal documents or something before you get home and don't have a pen handy, I would love it if you stop by and say hello. Browse some of the stuff from some outstanding local authors, pick up a signed book or seventy, and ask Major West why they didn't just kick that damned Dr. Zachary Smith out on his ass after about the fifth episode. That's what I would have done.

Winner of the Free Kindle Fire!

2012-01-12T19:19:00.000-05:00

My "Win a Free Kindle Fire" contest ended Monday at 9 a.m., and I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to enter. My goal in running the contest was to introduce my work to some new readers and maybe gain a little exposure prior to my new supernatural suspense novel, PASKAGANKEE, being released by StoneGate Ink later this month.

In conjunction with the running of the contest, I lowered the price of THE LONELY MILE to 99 cents for six weeks, a savings of 67% off the regular ebook price of $2.99, so even if you weren't the winner of a Kindle Fire, I like to think you took a little something out of the contest, anyway.

So here we go. Just in case you weren't glued to Twitter or Facebook to find out the results of Tuesday's drawing, I thought it might be nice to post them here, too. Congratulations to Karen Maria of Rollinsford, NH, the winner of the Kindle Fire! Hopefully you get lots of use out of it...

If you're curious, the way I ran the drawing was to assign a number to every entry. I then went to http://www.random.org/ and fed the numbers into their random number generator. The number that was spit out belonged to Karen.

It was a lot of fun doing the contest, and while I don't have immediate plans to run another, I fully expect to do more promotional stuff in the future. If that sounds enticing to you, be sure to follow me on Twitter, @AllanLeverone, on Facebook, or sign up for my (very sporadic) newsletter under the "Contact" tab at my website, http://www.allanleverone.com/.

Thanks again to everyone who entered!

My Three Favorite Reads of 2011

2011-12-09T19:48:00.000-05:00

I used to read a lot; roughly seventy books a year. I would finish one novel and immediately start on the next. My library card probably spent more time out of my wallet than in.

Then I started writing seriously and found that making time to write cut deeply into my reading time. Don't get me wrong, I still love to read and always will, but instead of reading seventy books a year, now I'm probably down to around twenty.

That being the case, I almost never try a book any more that I'm not reasonably sure I'm going to enjoy, which in some ways is a shame. It's kind of fun to take a chance on an author or a book title I've never heard of, with a description I'm a little leery about.

But on the other hand, reading only books I believe I'm going to enjoy makes it really difficult to pick my favorites. Plus, as a writer, I know how much blood sweat and tears it takes to write a book, so I'm not about to trash anyone's work.

And I want to be clear about one thing: This is a list of my favorite books of 2011, not necessarily the best books of 2011. I didn't read anything close to the number of books to be able to venture an educated opinion on the best books. But I sure do know what I like, and I really dug the following three titles.

So, without further ado, here we go. My three favorite books of 2011:

#3 - The Bastard Hand - Heath Lowrance, New Pulp Press

This book was my introduction to Heath Lowrance's work, and it held me spellbound from the first page to its final, shocking conclusion. Lowrance uses exquisite powers of description to evoke a rich southern aura, while weaving a tale of sex, violence and corruption.

I reviewed The Bastard Hand back in April, if you're interested in a fuller description of the book, but if you enjoy noir, or even just outstanding fiction, you're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't yet checked out this debut effort.

Heath Lowrance has followed The Bastard Hand up with a short story collection and several standalone shorts, and you can't go wrong with any of them. Rumor has it he's working on a second novel.

#2 - The Paradise Prophecy - Robert Browne, Penguin

Robert Browne is a former screenwriter who penned his first novel just five years ago. I had read most of his previous work and enjoyed it when I picked up The Paradise Prophecy, but had no idea what I was getting into. Robert Browne has stepped up to the next level with this book, writing a thriller that puts him in a class with the best of the best.

The Paradise Prophecy is based on John Milton's Paradise Lost, but if that premise sounds dry and uninteresting, all you have to do is open the book and you'll lose yourself in a globetrotting thriller filled with intrigue, deception and a final, supernatural apocalyptic confrontation.

I was fortunate enough to interview Robert Browne in October, and found him to be not just a talented author, but a gracious and humble individual as well. Considering the ability he demonstrates with his latest book, that's saying something.

#1 - Every Shallow Cut - Tom Piccirilli - ChiZine Publications

I love genre fiction, and one of the elements of genre fiction I love the most is noir. It's gritty and brutal and honest, and for my money, the leading practitioner of modern noir fiction is Tom Piccirilli. Every Shallow Cut might just be the best thing he's ever written.

It's a novella - a noirella, as he likes to call them - and not a full-length novel, but that didn't matter to me and shouldn't matter to you. Every Shallow Cut cuts like a knife and packs a punch that will stay with you long after you've finished reading. Piccirilli picks at scabs we can all relate to with his work, and he's going to have a hard time topping this beauty.

I reviewed Every Shallow Cut back in March, if you're interested, but if I were you I wouldn't bother checking it out. Just go to Amazon or wherever you prefer to buy your books, and get this one. You'll be blown away.

Actually, I can say that about all three of my favorite reads for 2011. You can't go wrong with any of them.

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You still have more than four weeks, but why wait? Check out this post to find the three simple requirements to qualify for my Free Kindle Fire promo. Someone's going to win it on January 9, and it may as well be you...

Excerpt from my Delirium Books novella, HEARTLESS

2011-12-06T20:40:00.000-05:00

My second Delirium Books horror novella is titled HEARTLESS. Release of the limited edition hardcover is scheduled for January 17, but the ebook edition became available yesterday.

I'm very excited about HEARTLESS, because it's not only one of the darkest things I've ever written, it's also a damned good story. You can check out the novella description here or here if you're interested. You can also purchase an ebook copy at either site.

An excerpt is available at the DarkFuse site, but if you'd like to check out a slightly longer excerpt, you've come to the right place. Here ya go:

Prologue

The bodies of the sacrificial victims were lined up side by side on the massive stone altar, naked and spread-eagled, wrists and ankles lashed securely. Some had been drugged into unconsciousness but most were awake and aware. And terrified.

The sun slid gradually below treetop level, bringing shade but precious little relief from the brutal heat to either the spectators or the participants in the upcoming sacred ritual.

Some of those awaiting sacrifice sobbed and moaned, some begged for mercy to uncaring ears, some few even lay stoically, their faces impassive, their fate understood and accepted. From off in the distance a drumbeat pounded out a slow but steady rhythm, its purpose known only to the holy men at whose command this ritual was to take place.

Despite their nakedness, the victims’ bodies were coated with a sheen of sweat, the result of intense fear and the oppressive jungle heat. Mosquitos and other insects buzzed and swarmed, feasting on the exposed flesh with impunity, adding to the misery of those waiting to be sacrificed.

Almost imperceptibly the pace of the drumbeat began to increase in intensity and a sense of excitement rippled through the crowd of onlookers. Over the rim of the temple a group of holy men appeared, arriving atop the hundreds of stone stairs dressed in colorful ceremonial garb, surrounded by wives, aides and elders. Frightening masks depicting birds of prey and other wildlife covered the holy men’s faces, and the men chanted softly to themselves, their language indecipherable to the majority—but not all—of the sacrificial victims.

The first holy man moved with a deliberate pace to the restrained body occupying the northernmost position on the altar, a young boy perhaps fifteen years of age, a prisoner of war chosen to be the first sacrificial victim. The boy’s features were contorted in terror and his body quivered and shook but he refused to cry. He looked the holy man in the eye, refusing to beg or plead, choosing instead to die with his dignity intact.

In his hands the holy man held a sacred short-bladed knife, its handle inlaid with jewels and precious stones. The holy man lifted the knife to the sky, still chanting softly, his robes fluttering briefly as the barest hint of a hot jungle breeze passed over the temple like the breath of a demon and disappeared. Then the holy man bent over the young warrior and with a smooth stroke, sliced into the boy’s skin, his hand steady and sure, and the boy cried out more from shock than pain.

Blood spilled out of the warrior-child, leaking down both sides of his skinny body and onto the reddish-brown stone of the altar, the discoloration the result of countless similar ceremonies conducted over the course of countless centuries. With shocking swiftness, the holy man plunged his hands into the open chest cavity of the prostrate warrior, and now the boy screamed, his panicked voice loud and horrified, issuing out across the treetops of the jungle, echoing back to the blood-crazed onlookers from some faraway hillside.

The holy man completed the ancient ritual and stepped back, sated, as a second holy man moved to take his place, stopping in front of the next terrified sacrificial victim. In his hands he, too, held a sacred knife, which he brandished to the sky, imploring the gods of darkness to accept this holy sacrifice and remain at bay. Then he bent over the next victim, as sure-handed as the previous holy man had been.

The man lashed to the altar screamed. And the ceremony continued.

1 - Gary

Gary Newton waited impatiently in line, backpack slung over one shoulder, wishing for shelter from the intense heat of the late-summer sun. The ice cream stand—his intended destination—nestled comfortably in the shade, the tiny building ringed by a half-dozen towering fir trees, but the line of anxious customers waiting for service stretched at least a hundred feet across the dirt parking lot. Gary guessed it would be a minimum of ten minutes before the line inched forward to the point where he could take advantage of the shade.

Impatient young children, hands clutched tightly by bored parents, shared the line with teenagers on first dates, young married couples looking for a way to get out of the house without breaking the bank, and entire Little League baseball teams celebrating a win (or a loss) the way Little League wins and losses had been celebrated in small American towns for decades.

And there were girls. Lots of girls.

Some stood in rowdy groups of a half-dozen or more, others in pairs, even a few who seemed to be in line by themselves. They ranged in age from very early teens to very early twenties, but they all seemed to have one thing in common—they were dressed skimpily. Tank tops and jeans shorts seemed to be the uniform of the day, although plenty of girls flaunted their individualism by featuring athletic shorts or bike shorts, and T-shirts.

This incredible array of girls was the reason Gary found himself here today, although the prospect of enjoying an ice cream was just fine with him as well. Gary Newton was somewhat of an expert on girls at small town ice cream stands, having sampled dozens of them—both girls and ice cream stands—over the last few years. It had been his experience that the hotter the day, the better the pickings, and with the thermometer nudging one hundred degrees, today’s outing had the prospect of being damned successful.

The sun beat down on his shoulders and he could feel the back of his neck beginning to burn. A baseball cap protected the top of his head, covering the embarrassing hereditary issue of premature hair loss. Gary had read once that male pattern baldness skips a generation, which he counted as very bad news, since his father still had a thick, full head of hair in his fifties, but his grandfather had been bald as a fucking cue ball.

The line moved slowly, people shuffling forward as those at the ice cream stand’s sliding screen window seemed to be choosing their flavors with agonizing slowness. Aside from the fact he wanted to get out of the sun, though, Gary didn’t care. He had nowhere to go and no particular timetable in which to get there. The heat was uncomfortable, sure, but the slow-moving line provided plenty of opportunity for scoping out the girls. For checking out the merchandise, so to speak.

Members of a girls’ softball team, probably high school age, milled about a few feet in front of Gary and he watched them closely. A couple of the players looked as though they may merit closer observation, but on the whole, the pickings were pretty slim on this team. He had seen plenty of softball teams in plenty of small towns, and Gary was of the opinion that softball uniforms in general did nothing to accentuate the female form. A girl would have to be a real stunner to look like anything other than a bag of potatoes in the typical softball uniform. He knew his attitude was small-minded and sexist. He didn’t care.

So he ruled out the softball players. It didn’t matter; there were plenty of fish in this particular sea. And sitting at one of the ancient picnic tables provided by the owner of the ice cream stand were two of finest-looking guppies Gary had seen in a long, long time. They looked as though they might be college students. Both girls sat facing the ice cream stand, sharing a long wooden bench, leaning with their backs against the edge of the table.

Girl One’s long, bare legs were stretched in front of her and crossed at the ankles, her pink sneakers coated with dust kicked up by cars driving in and out of the dirt parking lot. Her long black hair was tied up in a ponytail and she had threaded it out the back of a baseball cap very similar to Gary’s. Even from this distance, close to a hundred feet, he could see her skin was bronze and flawless.

Her friend—Girl Two—sat next to her, their shoulders almost touching as they worked on their ice cream cones. Girl Two was nearly as pretty as Girl One, with the same olive skin and jet-black hair, the color of a moonless night at three a.m. Her hair was cut short, though, where Girl One’s was long, but aside from that minor difference, they almost looked as though they could be sisters. Girl Two sat atop the bench Indian style, legs crossed beneath her.

Both girls worked their ice cream cones furiously, clearly anxious to finish the treats before they melted away to nothing. Despite their best efforts, thin rivers of melting ice cream—Vanilla fudge? Chocolate chunk? At this distance Gary could not be sure—began trickling down the wafers of the cones. The girls ate faster. The ice cream melted faster, eventually being smeared around the cones by their delicate fingers.

Girl One shook her head and popped her fingers into her mouth one at a time, sucking them clean. Girl Two said something to Girl One and Girl One dissolved in laughter, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Girl Two barely cracked a smile. Then, to Gary’s astonishment, they turned at exactly the same time, as if their movements had been choreographed, and stared directly at him. Girl Two lifted her right hand and placed it in front of Girl One’s face and Girl One sucked the fingers clean, one at a time, exactly as she had done with her own hand just moments before.

Both girls continued to gaze directly at Gary, who stood, mouth open, entranced by the semi-erotic display. How the hell had the two girls known he was watching? They were separated by dozens of people, and neither girl had given any indication of being aware of his presence until they turned together. And, in fact, he had only become aware of them seconds before.

The whole thing was almost creepy, but Gary didn’t much care about that. If the girls were trying to embarrass him, to make him avert his eyes, it wasn’t going to come close to working. He locked onto Girl One’s gaze, his lips curling into a sly smile. People walked between them and he didn’t notice. Somewhere in the distance a baby cried and he didn’t notice. The air was filled with the ambient sounds of people talking and he didn’t notice.

Striking up a conversation with two girls rather than one went against every rule Gary had established for himself over years of carefully planning and executing his crimes. There were too many ways things could go sideways with two victims. It was foolish to even consider taking both of these girls. It was also exactly what Gary Newton had decided to do.

If you're interested in reading more, please consider downloading the entire novella. It's 19,000 words in length and is available in all ebook formats, at DarkFuse, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

And, oh yeah. You may think you know where the story is going with this excerpt, but you're wrong...

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A quick reminder: there are still nearly five weeks remaining in my "Win a Free Kindle Fire" contest. If you'd like the opportunity to win a brand-new Kindle Fire, a $199 value, you can enter here!

Interview with Horror Author Andrew Wolter

2011-12-01T12:08:00.000-05:00

About this time last year, I learned of a brand-new charity drive founded by horror author Andrew Wolter. The charity was called Horror Against AIDS, and the goal was to provide toys for Christmas to children in the Phoenix, Arizona area affected by the epidemic of pediatric AIDS.

I had gotten to know Andrew Wolter through social media and our shared love of horror and dark fiction, and when he asked if I would consider supporting his cause, all I needed to do was check out the charity's website and I became an enthusiastic supporter.

Andrew is now in the middle of the second annual Horror Against AIDS toy drive, and as December 1 marks the twenty-fourth annual World AIDS day, it seems the perfect time to post my latest author interview.

Andrew Wolter is the author of the novels The Rules of Temptation, Nightfall, Much of Madness, More of Sin and the upcoming Seasons in his Abyss: A New World Mythos, as well as numerous short stories. He very graciously agreed to undergo a lengthy interrogation without the benefit of his lawyer...

You’re in the middle of your second annual charity drive, Horror Against AIDS. For those who may not be familiar with this cause, can you tell us a little bit about it?

I formed the Horror Against AIDS fundraising group in 2010 to help bring awareness and raise funds for children who are affected by HIV/AIDS. As both a dark fiction author and non-fiction columnist for a nationwide LGBT publication, I felt it would be a great idea to pull my resources from leaders and fans in the horror and LGBT communities to help in the battle against this horrible epidemic.

The funds raised through my Horror Against AIDS fundraiser go toward the purchase of toys for the children of Logan’s Playground (A Sanctuary for Children Affected by HIV). Logan’s Playground is located in Phoenix, Arizona and houses approximately 150 children whose lives have been affected by HIV. Without the help of such fundraising, these kids wouldn’t have the means to enjoy Christmas.

A toy drive seems like an unusual choice of charities for a dark fiction author. Why this particular cause?

I have always been a major supporter in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Throughout the years, I have seen a number of friends and loved ones affected by this epidemic. I have looked this untamed beast in the eyes and have suffered the horror which it has brought to the lives of those around me. It made me realize that some of the most terrifying plots in the world of horror fiction couldn't compare to the pain and hell of those affected by AIDS experience. Four years ago, I witnessed the last days of my best friend pass away from his longtime battle with HIV/AIDS. It caused my rage to come out, stronger than ever, in advocating AIDS awareness to all.

Since then, I have used what free time I've had to get involve with a number of projects revolving the LGBT community. From being an active member of the Human Rights Campaign to Thanksgiving drives benefitting the homeless, to being a strong voice in the “It Gets Better” campaign, I have done my best to use my voice to bring both tolerance and awareness to the issues affecting the LGBT community (my community).

Last year, I decided I wanted to do something more for the LGBT community. Not that everything I had done and was currently doing wasn't enough; rather, I felt the need to take the next step in making my voice heard on the issues that were closest to my heart. I thought to myself, Imagine the possibilities if you could take your strong followings from both the horror industry and LGBT community! Hence, I decided to create the group Horror Against AIDS.

During the Christmas season, many charities compete for a seemingly shrinking pool of resources. What would you say to readers who may be trying to decide what charity to donate to?

While there are many fantastic charities from which people can choose to donate, my biggest concern in this is how much of the money is truly going to the cause. Many charities claim to be “non-profit”; however, a number of them don’t consider certain overhead as an actual expense. Thus, I’m aware of several “large” charities in which 100% of the donations do not go to their cause. When donating monies to any charity, I always take it upon myself to ensure that 100% of all funds are going to the cause. This might mean having to talk with charity organizers or directors, but to know that every dime donated goes to the actual cause (this is the case with the Horror Against AIDS fundraiser) is the only factor in my decision to donate to certain charities. While I am by no means putting down charities that are household names, I prefer to stick with organizations where I know that every dime donated is accounted for.

You say you want to be known as an author without genre limitations. In an age where the so-called experts claim book sales rely on “branding” and marketability, how do you feel this affects your work?

This question comes up often.

I think my ability to go against and blend genres has definitely affected my sales (not necessarily the work itself).

I don’t feel a writer should be limited to a scene or characterization because it may be considered “over the top.” If a tale contains the fundamentals of a plausible story (beginning, middle, end, etc), it deserves to be both published and read. I don’t limit myself at all. My characters can be crude and my scenes tend to be graphic (layered with sex and gore). Ultimately, there is a moral to each of my tales and novels. That is what my readers have grown to love. I’m not afraid to mirror the pure reality of our daily lives (as much as we may want to keep certain exploits secret) into the actions and mannerisms of my characters.

Being that I don’t believe in limitations, I think the only boundaries that haven’t been pursued are those silenced by the voice of the author in the name of current trends and which books are selling thousands of units. I may not be a bestselling novelist, but my voice is strong. I’m not afraid to use it, and that is what readers enjoy about my works.

What’s most important to me is that I am content with the work I produce.

You recently released an updated and unabridged version of your 2008 novel, NIGHTFALL. What’s been added to the new version and why re-release it?

Two factors went into the re-release of NIGHTFALL. One being the availability to my readers at an affordable price; the other being the book being available with it’s original content.

One of the battles I faced with selling the initial manuscript was that the word count exceeded 150,000 words. In addition, another reason the novel was "passed up" by a couple publishers was that they felt two scenes in particular were potentially too graphic for readers (one of them incorporating bestiality). While I took such rejection in stride, I continued to shop the manuscript to other publishers. Ultimately, my persistence paid off when a small press contracted the novel. However, part of the publisher's decision to put the novel in print included cutting back the length of the book and toning down the two scenes in question previously pointed out by other potential publishers.

In August of 2008, NIGHTFALL became available to purchase. Although the original manuscript was altered and scenes omitted, the novel still made for a long book (almost 100,000 words). In a publishing world that was beginning to feel the excessive cost of printing, manufacturing and shipping such a lengthy novel, NIGHTFALL would see this reflected in its retail price. As a result, the book became available as a “collector's hardcover edition” with a hefty price tag. While it sold well, I longed to have my readers experience the book the way it was intended and at a cheaper cost.

Fast forward to 2011. With a brimming technology providing various electronic book platforms, I discovered that I could allow NIGHTFALL to be released the way it was initially intended. With the advent of Amazon Kindle, along with the growing interest in e-books, not only did I discover a way to forego the worries of a publisher's manufacturing and shipping costs, but I also found that I could present the original content of NIGHTFALL to the reader.

While the story remains the same, the unabridged version of NIGHTFALL contains additional references and those two “questionable” scenes to help further the readers experience with the characters.

Can you name some of the authors and/or works which have influenced you the most as a writer?

While there are so many great authors and works that have been a major inspiration, the following authors (and their works played a pivotal role in helping shape my writing):

Poppy Z. Brite’s DRAWING BLOOD and EXQUISITE CORPSE made me unafraid to create gay characters as major players in a story without having their sexuality become the crux of the plot.

John Rechy’s CITY OF NIGHT and THE COMING OF THE NIGHT taught me how to use sex between my characters as an instrument to move a plot forward.

Armistead Maupin’s TALES OF THE CITY series of books gave me insight on creating memorable characters with which readers could easily identify.

Of course, the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker taught me how to incorporate the most fantastic creations in a tale in which I could induce fear without compromising the belief of the story as a whole.

Hypothetical situation #1: You are marooned on a desert island, but before your ship sinks, you are given the opportunity to grab any one book of your choosing. What book do you choose, and why?

My choice would be Oscar Wilde’s THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. I never tire of reading Wilde’s prose. The ideology expressed in that particular book (the purpose of life being to experience everything without any limits or boundaries) would make for a great mantra on an island that would offer a new, unexplored territory for me.

Hypothetical situation #2: You are given a choice by the Gods of Publishing. Your books can either bring you tremendous monetary wealth or they can be universally acclaimed as outstanding by the critics. Which do you choose, and why?

I would definitely choose the outstanding acclaim by critics. I’ve never seen myself making millions of dollars as a writer. In fact, I’m content with my writing allowing me to pay my bills and have a few nice things. Thus, the monetary wealth wouldn’t tempt me at all. However, to know that world of my tales are being praised and shared with others is enough to keep the stories coming for a long time.

What are you reading right now? What’s next on your “To Be Read” list?

I just finished reading Robert Dunbar’s MARTYRS AND MONSTERS . I must say that the book was a breath of fresh air in a world in which the horror genre is becoming less literary. Next up is Clive Barker’s ABARAT: ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT and a return to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (the latter being research for an upcoming project).

Thanks very much for taking the time to visit A Thrill a Minute. Any last words of wisdom you’d like to share with my thousands hundreds dozens handful of readers?

I’ve always been a firm believer in going after your passions and “owning the dream.” Quite often, I tell people that they are the only ones standing in the way of all they can achieve. Thus, I’ll end the interview on that note.

Thank you for having me as a guest. I truly appreciate it!

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As the Christmas season gets into full swing, there's no question we're all bombarded by people and causes, all seemingly itching to get their hands on your wallet. In a shaky economy, it's not always easy to determine what charities will be receiving your hard-earned cash.

If you have the means and opportunity to donate and are looking for a worthy cause to support, please consider checking out Andrew Wolter's Horror Against AIDS. I did and am proud to be able to help provide a Christmas for children facing a future most of us cannot even imagine...

Win a FREE Kindle Fire!

2011-11-28T11:52:00.005-05:00

I read today that Amazon expects to ship six million Kindle Fire tablets this quarter alone. Most of the people receiving one will pay two hundred bucks, as it seems Amazon has no intention of discounting their brand-new product so soon after its release.

But you can get one absolutely free! I will be giving away one Kindle Fire to one lucky winner, and you only need to follow three easy steps to qualify:

1 - Follow me on Twitter, @AllanLeverone.
This is how I will be notifying the winner at the end of the contest, so you've gotta follow me. Plus, every once in a while I actually say something interesting. You wouldn't want to miss that.

2-Purchase and download a digital copy of my thriller, The Lonely Mile.
It's priced at just 99 cents through the end of the contest. This is the book New York Times bestselling author Debbi Mack calls "suspenseful and well written," and bestselling author Scott Nicholson calls "a taut crime drama full of twists and conspiracy." And it's less than a buck. What the hell's wrong with me?

3 - Post an honest review of The Lonely Mile at Amazon.
Posting a review is easy and painless, and it doesn't have to be long and in-depth. It doesn't even have to be positive, just keep it honest and constructive.

And that's it! Follow those three steps and you will be entered - thanks for your interest in my work and good luck!

Legal stuff:
One Kindle Fire tablet will be given away. The contest runs six weeks, from November 28, 2011 until 9:00 am ET on January 9, 2012.

One winner will be randomly selected and notified through Twitter message on January 9. That winner will have 48 hours from the time of the first Twitter message to provide me with their name and shipping information, either through Twitter or email.

If, after 48 hours, the winner has not gotten in touch with me, that person will forfeit the Kindle Fire and a new winner will be randomly selected. The new winner will then have 48 hours after notification to provide me with his or her shipping information.

The review of The Lonely Mile must be honest and constructive. It does not have to be positive and it does not have to be lengthy for you to qualify to win. Whether you loved the book or hated the book, all I ask is that you keep the review constructive. The review must show "Amazon verified purchase" under your name. This is the only way I have of knowing you actually purchased the book.

All decisions regarding all aspects of this contest - and any questions which may arise - will be made by me and will be final.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me - thanks again and good luck!

Cheating your way to a best-seller - Achieving sales the Q.R. Markham way

2011-11-10T14:38:00.000-05:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for Q.R. Markham. His novel, ASSASSIN OF SECRETS, was receiving good reviews, presumably selling okay. Then comes the charge that whole paragraphs, maybe even sections covering several pages, of Q.R. Markham's novel were ripped off from other books.

It's a dark and stormy night for lots of red-faced reviewers, too, including Kirkus, which gave ASSASSIN OF SECRETS a starred review, and Publishers Weekly, which also awarded it a starred review and even mentioned an "obvious Ian Fleming influence," the ultimate in irony, apparently not realizing it was less "influence" and more "stealing."

Author Jeremy Duns did a little digging, and according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, came up with "at least 13 novels" whose copyrighted material was lifted word for word by Q.R. Markham for his novel. Duns, who was fleeced into providing an author blurb for the book, calls it "the worst case of plagiarism I've ever seen."

Frankly my dear, Q.R. Markham - which isn't the thief's real name - doesn't give a damn, apparently. He at least has the good sense to hide behind a pseudonym, not that a fake name will do him any good now.

The frustrating part of this farce for any author who has worked to create entertaining fiction and labored largely in the shadows of anonymity is that this ~~shameless thieving dirbag, devoid of any shred of integrity~~ person is now selling copies of his book hand over greedy fist at Amazon, despite the fact ASSASSIN OF SECRETS (Kind of an ironic title now, if you think about it) has been pulled by it's publisher, Little, Brown, and is no longer available.

As I write this, ASSASSIN OF SECRETS is ranked #234 in all books at Amazon, including #5 in Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue, and #73 in Suspense Thrillers, all stratospheric ranks I have yet to approach as the author of two thrillers.

So, Mr. Q.R Markham (I did a little digging and discovered Q.R. stands for "Quite Red-faced), congratulations. You are now famous. Maybe not in the way you wanted to be, but hey, in today's society any sort of fame is worthwhile, right?

Personally, after seeing how your book has benefitted from your shameless, shameful thievery, I've decided the time has come for me to come clean about an incident from my past. In the ninth grade, I got caught cheating on an algebra test. That's right, the kid behind me ratted me out to the teacher when I wouldn't share the answers with him.

It was both the beginning and the end of my criminal career, as I decided a life of crime and deception was not worth the potential embarrassment of being caught, something Q.R. Markham might be discovering even as we speak.

But here's the thing. I did it. I cheated. I think it's time now that you went straight to Amazon and ordered my thriller, THE LONELY MILE to discover what all the fuss is about. Teach me a lesson just like you're teaching Q.R. Markham a lesson by ordering his book.

Please. It's the right thing to do.

Review: "That Damned Coyote Hill," by Heath Lowrance

2011-11-04T18:43:00.002-04:00

I was introduced to Heath Lowrance's work last spring, when I read his debut novel, THE BASTARD HAND, and was blown away. My full review of that book is here, if you'd like to check it out, but suffice it to say I discovered, in THE BASTARD HAND, an author who can mix it up with the best of them, creating fictional worlds where you're never quite able to get comfortable, where the good guys ain't necessarily all that great and the bad guys might not be exactly what you think they are, either.

In other words, I discovered a guy penning material more or less in anonymity that any big-time author could be proud of, if only he had the balls to write it.

That feeling was reinforced when I read Lowrance's short story collection, DIG TEN GRAVES. I meant to post a review here but never got around to doing so, being the lazy slackass I am. Let me just say this about DIG TEN GRAVES. If you don't get chills down your spine when you finish reading the first story, "It Will All Be Carried Away," you might as well drive to the funeral home and have them shoot you up with embalming fluid right now, because you're already dead.

The rest of the collection is just as good, and I spent a lot of time after I ifnished reading it trying to figure out why it held such a strong appeal for me. The answer? Heath Lowrance writes the kind of stories I try to write. He's like a good football running back, getting you to think he's going one way, and then he turns on a dime and goes in a totally different direction. I love that.

All of which brings me to the latest Heath Lowrance gem, a digital short released by Trestle Press titled, "That Damned Coyote Hill." It sounds like a western for good reason - it is.

Also, it isn't. I'm not a big fan of westerns - I got more than my fill watching Gunsmoke every week as a kid. It was one of my dad's favorite shows and we only had one TV. If you don't know, Gunsmoke was on TV forever and I'm pretty sure I saw every freaking episode. Twice.

So it took me a while to get around to reading "That Damned Coyote Hill." Well, let me tell you, I'm a damned fool. This quick-reading tale - somewhere in length between a short story and a novellette - grabs you from the very beginning and doesn't let go of your ass until the last word, when you put it down, shaken, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

It's something out of Quentin Tarantino's worst acid-induced nightmares. It's something entirely different than what you expect. Believe it. Whatever you think you're getting into when you begin reading "That Damned Coyote Hill," I'm here to tell you you're wrong.

I've said it before and I'll say it here: Heath Lowrance is the writer I want to be when I grow up. Do yourself a favor and download "That Damned Coyote Hill" to your Kindle. It's only ninety-nine cents. You won't regret it. Unless you're just waiting for that last dose of embalming fluid.

The genesis of a short story

2011-10-18T18:42:00.000-04:00

One question I get asked all the time is "Where do you get your ideas?" Usually by people that have read some of my darker stuff, and usually as they glance around uneasily, trying to remain casual while they map out an escape route while trying not to be too obvious about it.

You might think it would be an easy question to answer, but just the opposite is true. Many of the stories I write started out going one way before being hijacked by the characters or the situations, and moving off in an entirely new direction, with me simply scrambling to keep up. Sometimes they start out as snippets of song lyrics, or snatches of overheard conversation, less often they're inspired by news stories or personal experiences.

The one thing they usually have in common is that when I'm done, they rarely resemble what I envisioned when I started.

Every once in a while, though, the genesis of a story is perfectly clear. My story in the latest issue of Needle Magazine, "The Ticket," is a perfect example.

You may or may not know - or care, for that matter - that in my second job (AKA, The One That Pays The Bills) I am employed by the FAA as an air traffic controller. It's a job I've been doing for nearly thirty years, and one which I enjoy, because it keeps my interest while I'm working position, and especially because it affords me a fair amount of time to devote to writing while on my breaks, away from the radar scopes.

About a year-and-a-half ago, one of my coworkers took a few days off suddenly. Why? He was celebrating winning half a million bucks on a lottery scratch ticket! I'm not the most knowledgeable gambler in the world (Buy me a beer if we ever meet up and I'll tell you my Las Vegas slot machine story - I guarantee you can't top it for sheer embarrassment value), but I had no freaking clue you could win that much on a scratch ticket.

I don't play them very often, maybe three or four times a year at the most, and probably the biggest jackpot I've ever scratched off is five bucks. My daughter won $75 on a scratch ticket a couple of years ago and I was blown away by that. So when I heard this guy had won five hundred grand I immediately thought two things:

1 - That lucky bastard, why couldn't it have been me? and,

2 - How can I use this in a story?

Or maybe it was the other way around, I can't really remember. Anyway, out of that serendipitous event, "The Ticket" was born. Beyond the circumstances of the jackpot - a scratch ticket - there's not really any resemblance between the real-life event and the story.

I embellished the jackpot amount in "The Ticket," figuring if a half-million dollar scratch ticket was cool, a million would be even cooler, and in my story the air traffic controller suddenly became a guilt-ridden gangland enforcer who views his unexpected windfall as the perfect opportunity to leave his old life behind and go straight. Unfortunately, his sense of timing sucks, and he scratches the ticket in the presence of his boss, Fat Tony Filichiccia, who decides he deserves a cut, too.

How my lottery winner works out his dilemma is something you'll have to buy Needle to find out. I can tell you my coworker didn't have to go through anything close to what my character does. Unless his wife is particularly greedy.

And that's the genesis of a story.

Strange but true addendum: About a year later, the same coworker won another hundred grand. On, you guessed it, a scratch ticket.

Interview with bestselling author Robert Browne

2011-10-08T17:48:00.001-04:00

"I wouldn’t want to drop dead and leave behind a manuscript full of holes."

It's always interesting to me to discover the different routes authors take to publication. In the case of Robert Browne, this meant chucking a career writing screenplays to sit down half a decade ago and pound out his first novel, KISS HER GOODBYE, on nothing but faith.

Four more novels have followed, each garnering sales and acclaim, including Browne's latest release, THE PARADISE PROPHECY, which for my money qualifies as the thriller of the year.

In addition to being a kick-ass writer, Rob's extremely approachable and a truly nice guy. If you're not familiar with his work, you need to change that, and as soon as possible.

He agreed to wire himself up to my lie detector and answer every ruthless question I threw his way. Here is the result:

Your background is in writing screenplays. What possessed you to leave an established career and embark on another path as a novelist, when you had no clue whether you would be successful? Did you just wake up one day and decide to write a book?

Well, the first mistake is assuming it was an established career. I had been knocking around Hollywood for over a decade taking pitch meetings, doing the dance, but after a sale to Showtime and several close encounters that fell through at the very last moment—as is typical of Hollywood—I found myself writing cartoons like Diabolik and Spider-Man. Not that this wasn’t fun and fairly lucrative, but it just wasn’t what I had envisioned for myself.

Ever since I was thirteen years old I had wanted to write a novel. I had a few aborted attempts in the drawer, but figured at my advanced age it was time to do or die. So I sat down and wrote KISS HER GOODBYE, never believing for a moment that it wouldn’t sell. I don’t know why I felt that way, but fortunately, I was right.

Along those lines, I picture authoring a screenplay as being a much more collaborative process than authoring a novel. Is that the case, and did that play any part in your career change?

There are pluses and minuses to collaboration. When I was writing cartoons, I collaborated with a great guy and showrunner named Larry Brody. Brody and I hit it off and became friends and the collaborative process was great. He plotted and outlined the stories, I wrote the scripts, adding dialogue, etc. We were both, essentially, doing what the other guy didn’t want to do, so it worked out well.

With movies, the collaborative process can be great until you disagree. Then screenwriters are fired and replaced. They’re disposable. Most screenwriters understand this going in, however.

The only thing that really played a part in the career change was the desire to finally sit my butt down and write what I’d always wanted to write: novels.

Would you ever consider returning to your screenwriting roots?

Sure. I enjoy writing screenplays. I also think they’re relatively easy to write. Certainly a lot easier than novels. For me, at least. When the pilot for KISS HER GOODBYE was shot for CBS, the producers asked if I was interested in writing any episodes if it went to series. Any guesses what my answer was?

Your latest novel, THE PARADISE PROPHECY, is a sweeping supernatural thriller that takes the reader on an adventure through the centuries and around the world. Having read it, the book strikes me as potentially career-defining. Do you agree, and did you originally intend for THE PARADISE PROPHECY to be such an ambitious project?

The Paradise Prophecy was not really a book I had planned to write. It came about through conversations with Dutton, in a discussion about the ultimate bad guys. The fallen angels from Milton’s Paradise seemed to fit the bill and it took off from there.

The funny thing is, I was slowly gravitating away from doing supernatural stuff and suddenly here I was writing a book that’s more supernatural than anything else I’ve ever written. A big, rousing epic about angels and demons and a conspiracy to destroy the world.

You told me once that you spend as much time as it takes to make your work as clean as possible on the first go-around, and rarely write more than one draft. This is exactly opposite how I write, so I find it fascinating. Did you really write a book as complex as THE PARADISE PROPHECY in a single draft, and if so, how long did it take to complete?

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t think THE PARADISE PROPHECY is all that complex. Complex emotions, maybe, a lot of history and intersecting storylines, but if you step back and look at it, the story is pretty straightforward.

But Paradise is the exception to my usual rule, because it took two drafts. I wrote the first one is four months and wasn’t happy with it. And when I turned it in, I knew my editor would request changes. It was great to have his objectivity, because I went back and spent another four months completely rewriting the second half of the book. I had the story down, but what I needed was more historical and emotional depth—and I worked hard to include that.

And when I say draft, by the way, a draft for me is probably about ten drafts for someone else. I don’t leave a scene or a chapter until I’ve rewritten it a dozen or more times and feel it’s ready for the printing press. My mother always told me to wear underwear without holes, to avoid embarrassment in case of an accident. I guess I took that advice to heart. I wouldn’t want to drop dead and leave behind a manuscript full of holes.

I read on your website that Batty and Callahan will be returning in future books, making this your first series after authoring four stand-alone novels. Can you drop any hints as to where the reluctant partners will be heading next?

If and when they do return, I’m sure it will be to explore some of the things left open in the first book. Like the mysterious D.C. connection. But it’s all up in the air at this point. I won’t put a word to paper until I feel I have an idea that warrants it.

Can you name some of the authors who have influenced you as a writer? When did you know you wanted to devote your life to the written word?

The two writers who have influenced me most are William Goldman and Donald Westlake. I read a Westlake novel when I was thirteen and was so enthralled that I immediately knew this was what I wanted to do for a living. Tell stories. A few years later I read MARATHON MAN by Goldman and was completely blown away. If you compare my style of writing to either of theirs, you’ll definitely see the influence.

Hypothetical situation #1: You are marooned on a desert island, but before your ship sinks, you can grab any one book of your choosing. What book would that be, and why?

I’m going to cheat and say it would be my Kindle, with several books on it by my favorite authors like Westlake, Goldman, McBain and Donald Hamilton—to name just a few.

Hypothetical situation #2: You are given a choice by the Gods of Publishing. Your books can either bring you tremendous monetary wealth or they can be universally acclaimed as outstanding by the critics. Which do you choose, and why?

The money. Critical acclaim doesn’t pay the mortgage.

While I do enjoy reading a good review, I honestly couldn’t care less what the critics think. The only reviews I’m interested in are reader reviews. There’s nothing more satisfying than an email from someone who responds positively to your work. If I can give to them what my favorite authors have given to me, I’ll be a happy man.

I do care about money, however. Quite a bit.

What are you reading right now? What’s next on your “To Be Read” list?

Right now I’m reading OBSESSION by Debra Webb, which hasn’t been released yet. Next on my list is THE HYPNOTIST by Lars Kepler, which I’ve heard good things about.

Thanks very much for taking the time to visit A Thrill a Minute. Any last words of wisdom you’d like to share with my ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ ~~dozens~~ handful of readers?

Words of wisdom would require me to be wise. But the truth is, I’m just struggling to figure it all out like everyone else—especially with the rapid and radical changes the publishing industry is facing right now.

I’ll let you know if I succeed.

I'm on Twitter and the world will never be the same

2011-10-01T15:59:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago, in July of 2009 to be precise, I wrote a blog post in which I questioned why in the hell I would ever join the Twitter craze. "Why would anyone care what I've eaten for lunch?" I wondered.

I still wonder that, especially since I often just have black coffee for lunch. I admit it, my diet is horrendous, but my point is this: What could be more boring? What's kind of funny about that post, though, is that in it I said, "Maybe the light bulb will go on with me someday, typically a couple of years after everyone else, and I will begin tweeting like mad, updating my thousands of followers on every facet of my fascinating existence."

Well guess what, folks? That day has arrived, roughly two years later, as I so presciently predicted back in July, '09.

That's right, I'm now broadcasting live on Twitter, @AllanLeverone, allowing my ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ dozens of followers to learn my every waking thought, from what I'm having for lunch (again, coffee, probably) to the latest review of one of my books (but only if it's a good one, probably), to whether I have any chance at all of getting that suddenly available Red Sox managing job (not freaking likely).

As I said at the end of that post two years ago, "...maybe I'll get the attraction of Twitter in a few years. When I do, watch out; you're going to learn my every waking thought. Yikes."

All I can say is I apologize, because here it comes.

But if you'd like to be on the cutting edge of learning about my coffee addiction or being among the first to know when I have a new book coming out (hint: it might be sooner than you think), I invite you to follow me and if you do, I'll likely follow you back.

Every once in a while I get a flash of inspiration and actually say something interesting. And you can always ignore all my other tweets.

Of Book Reviews and Sock Puppets

2011-09-22T23:48:00.000-04:00

For authors who do not sport household names, life's eternal quest is for ways to get your work in front of readers who enjoy the genre you write in but who may not have ever heard of you. I'm no exception, and for months I read and heard that spending time on Kindle Boards was potentially valuable in terms of building exposure.

Well, I've recently been more active on Kindle Boards, not just as a way to raise my profile, but also because there are some truly interesting discussions taking place twenty-four hours a day there, and it's a place where authors and readers can gather to discuss issues surrounding the thing we all have in common - books and the written word.

And it's been pretty enlightening. The subject of book reviews is always one that generates enthusiastic responses, both from authors and readers, but sometimes not in the way I would have expected. Case in point: Sock puppets.

Up until a few weeks ago, if I saw the words, "sock puppet," I would have pictured a Muppet or maybe a Fraggle. But in the world of Kindle Boards, a sock puppet is not a good thing. It refers to an author who convinces his friends and family to write flattering reviews - or even worse, who generates accounts under false names and writes reviews for his own work - on Amazon or Goodreads, with the intention of artificially inflating the book's appeal and hopefully gaining increased sales.

The practice is distasteful and dishonest and pretty much universally decried by both authors and readers alike, and for good reason.

The thing I find interesting, however, and which I've wondered about in the back of my mind as the reviews have come in for my newest thriller, THE LONELY MILE, is the fact that many posters on Kindle Boards feel they have a sharp eye and are quite skilled at picking out "sock puppet reviews." It's easy, they say. Find a book with universally good reviews and there's a decent chance many, if not all, are sock puppet reviews.

Here's why I've wondered about that: The reviews for THE LONELY MILE have been universally good. On Amazon, to this point, the book has received nine five-star reviews, with four four-star reviews mixed in, and no threes, twos or ones.

And I can't help wondering, is that fact costing me sales with people who have never heard of me? Has anyone checked out THE LONELY MILE's Amazon page because he was considering buying it and then shaken his head, clucking and smug, and passed on trying it out because the reviews are simply too good?

I hope not, and not just because I would like to sell as many copies of my books as I can. I believe in doing things the right way, and I hope you won't think I'm hopelessly naive when I tell you it would never have occurred to me to open multiple Amazon accounts for the purpose of reviewing my own book. My mind doesn't work that way.

In fact, I've expressly discouraged my family and close friends from reviewing my work precisely because I wanted to avoid any hint of dishonesty. I believe in my work and I'm confident that most people who try it, assuming they enjoy a good thriller, will feel they've gotten their money's worth when they reach the end.

Now, this is not to say THE LONELY MILE hasn't received reviews from people who have been introduced to my work either through FINAL VECTOR or POSTCARDS FROM THE APOCALYPSE, my short story collection, and enjoyed them so much they went on to read my other work and then review it.

Also, I'm nearing the end of my second blog tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Tours, and many of the reviewers of THE LONELY MILE are the same book bloggers who reviewed FINAL VECTOR when I toured for that book. They enjoyed my first book so much they were anxious to review my second, and I'm not about to apologize for that; just the opposite, in fact. I'm proud that my work prompted people who read books all the time to want to read more of my work!

But sock puppetry? Not here. I wouldn't even wear socks except it gets darned cold here in New Hampshire.

Writer's block? We don't need no stinking writer's block!

2011-09-13T18:33:00.000-04:00

There are a few things I get asked a lot when people find out I write books. Probably the most common question is, "Are you making any money?"

The answer, of course, is "Yes." The minute I sell one book I'm making money. A better question would be, "How much money are you making?", but most people are too classy to bring themselves to ask it.

And that's good, because I wouldn't answer anyway. At least, not until I'm making a shitload of money.

Probably the second-most common question I hear is, "Where do you get your ideas?"

That one's a little tougher, because in most cases, it's not the sort of question I can answer with one word, or even one sentence. Most of my plot ideas come from a mish-mash of sources, some of which I don't even understand.

Sometimes it's a song lyric that strikes me and gets my imagination racing. Sometimes it's a real-life situation, although when that happens, my story usually strays far from the actual situation that inspired it. Sometimes it's a dream, and I know that sounds silly, but I've gotten more than one idea for a kick-ass story that just popped into my head in the middle of the night.

Most often, though, the honest answer is, "I have no idea." A hint of a thread of an plot takes hold inside my head and begins to grow, like a plant. Or a cancer. In most cases, the idea has to simmer for awhile before I do anything with it. I mulled over the initial idea for my Derringer Award-nominated story, "Independence Day," for months - over an entire winter, as I recall - before I ever wrote a word on it.

But the question I really wanted to talk about today is the one that I would estimate I get third-most often: "Do you ever get writer's block?"

Easy answer: No, because I don't believe writer's block exists. Bestselling author Vincent Zandri wrote an outstanding blog post that included this subject a couple of weeks ago, one which I agree with wholeheartedly.

The gist of that blog post is this: If you're serious about selling your work, writing is a job. It's a fun job, to be sure, and it's a job where you can make your own hours and work in your underwear and take as many breaks as you want, but at the end of the day it's still a job.

And if you approach it as a job, you begin to realize that what many people view as "writer's block" is really nothing more than either laziness or a reluctance to put in the time at work. I suppose you could consider those two things to be one and the same.

Writing fiction is the act of stringing words together in entertaining ways while telling a story, so an unwillingness to put time in at the keyboard is the kiss of death if you consider yourself a writer. There are days when the words flow with an almost ridiculous ease, and there are other days when writing anything that makes even a minimal amount of sense is like pulling teeth, but at the end of the day, under either condition you need to sit at the keyboard and do your job.

As Vincent Zandri says, "If you're a writer your job is to show up at work every day and write...If your dad was a lawyer, did he ever get lawyer's block? If your mom was a nurse, did you ever hear her complain, 'I've had absolutely nothing to nurse about for the last six months'?"

That answer is perfect. Of course, it's also kind of long-winded to give to someone who really doesn't care that much, anyway. So most of the time when I'm asked the question about writer's block, I sort of mumble my way through an answer, saying something about working hard and continuing to write my way through it when it happens.

Okay, maybe I'm being just slightly less than honest, but, hey, I can only stay on break for so long; I've gotta get back to work!

Google Plus must be lame because here I am

2011-08-22T17:41:00.000-04:00

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a "tech guy;" I've never exactly blazed any kind of a trail in the digital revolution. And I know that may seem kind of strange considering my first two novels have been published exclusively electronically.

The fact of the matter is I don't enjoy electronic gadgets, mostly because I don't care about taking the time to learn how to use them. This explains why the years when VCR's were changing over to DVD players was such a stressful time for me.

Sure, I have a cell phone - I have three kids, how could I not? - but while the rest of family owns Droid smart phones, and I'm constantly suffering serious pressure to join the club, I'm happy with my LG something-or-other that doesn't get the Internet. Although I can check my email on it, so maybe it does, I'm not quite sure.

See what I mean? I don't care much about that stuff.

But here's the thing: When I decided to start writing books, I knew I needed a way to market my work, as well as to network with readers and other writers.

The solution? I opened a Myspace account (or, to be more accurate, my wife opened it for me)! But just about the time I cowboyed up, everyone else was jumping the Myspace ship for that shiny new Facebook thing. I didn't want to leave Myspace, because, after all, I had taken all that time to learn how to use it and Facebook seemed so . . . foreign.

Eventually, though, I could no longer ignore the mass migration. I would make a post on Myspace and could practically hear it rattling around in cyberspace.

So, when I could no longer convince myself Myspace was where it was at, I opened up a Facebook account (or, to be more accurate, my wife started it for me)! But, you guessed it, just about the time I figured this Facebook thing out, everyone else had discovered that shiny new Twitter thing.

Well I haven't quite worked up the courage to start a Twitter account yet, although I'll probably do that fairly soon (are you listening, honey?). I still find it very hard to believe anyone besides my immediate family would want to hear my 140-character thoughts on anything, and I know even they're ignoring me most of the time.

And now there's another problem: there's a newer shiny thing taking off, called Google Plus, or maybe just Google +, I'm not too sure. This is supposed to be like Facebook, only better, and of course Facebook was supposed to be like Myspace, only better.

What's a Luddite to do? I'm just about ready to dip a toe into the Twitter ocean and here comes something else! Pretty soon the world will be all social media, all the time. Or maybe we're already there. As you may have noticed, I tend to lag a bit.

Anyway, I'd like to apologize to the folks at Google who, I'm sure, have worked very hard on their Google Plus (or Google +) project. I just joined, thanks to the possibly misguided invitation of Chris White at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink.

This, of course, means you are no longer cool, Google Plus, because by the time I find you, all the cool kids are on to something else. Sorry about that.

The Digital Revolution Continues

2011-08-15T09:48:00.000-04:00

I saw a couple of different things this week that really reinforced to me how much the digital revolution has taken over the publishing industry.

HarperCollins released their sales figures for the year, and my first thought was, "What the hell kind of calendar are they on?" I always thought the fiscal year went from October through October, but apparently that's not the case at Harper. Anyway, they claim ebook sales for the year of twelve percent, but for the third quarter of nineteen percent.

My suspicions have been that by Christmas ebook sales will account for close to twenty-five percent of book sales overall, and if the nineteen percent figure at HarperCollins for third quarter sales is accurate, I don't see anything to make me believe twenty-five percent won't happen. Unless the percentage goes higher.

On a related note, bestselling author Scott Nicholson blogged about the accelerating trend of bookstore closures, and how that fact doesn't necessarily mean shelf-space is declining. In fact, he says, it's just the opposite when you consider virtual shelf space. "The decline in new paper books is way more than offset by the avalanche of new digital titles."

"We aren't killing bookstore," he says. "We are birthing a new Golden Era of literature, by writing and reading and sharing ideas..." Whether you'd rather hold a paper-and-ink book in your hands or prefer the convenience of an ereader, it's a fascinating post and one well worth your time.

Another blog post from another of my favorite authors dealt with the digital publishing revolution as well. Noir author Heath Lowrance released his first book, THE BASTARD HAND, back in March as a trade paperback edition. The book is available now digitally as well, and in this post, Lowrance analyzes the pluses and minuses of both options:

"The feel of an actual book in your hand, one that requires you to turn pages and stuff, is comfortable to me and I suspect I’ll always prefer that...But: if you’re milling around Amazon, window-shopping at the Kindle store, you come across so many great books for SO cheap… a book for anywhere from .99 cents to 3.99 is, honestly, just a killer deal, especially considering that you get to read it within SECONDS of finding it."

Lowrance goes on to say his sales of THE BASTARD HAND have been much more brisk digitally than for the print edition. As an author, the whole point is to get your work in front of the readers' eyes, and he seems to recognize that the price advantage and ease of delivery for digital books makes a big difference.

My own experience is pretty one-sided. Both of my novels and my short story collection are available only digitally, and while I would love to see them all in print, I understand and accept that the vast majority of my sales would still come from the digital editions. It's much easier for readers to justify spending 99 cents or $2.99 or even $7.99 for a digital book from an author they don't know than spending much more than that for a hardcover edition or trade paperback.

Either way, I keep writing, knowing I can tell a story, taking full advantage of the breaks as they come my way...

When a recommendation is not a recommendation

2011-08-04T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm the first to admit the nuances to technology escape me most of the time. When I was a kid there was no Internet, no computers. "Television" meant a huge black and white TV set with rabbit ear antennae sticking out of the top which received three stations. Four, if you counted PBS. Five, if you wanted to watch Channel Nine out of Manchester, NH, which came in as mostly snow.

The point is, while I'm as up on technology as a fifty-one year old man with little interest in tech stuff can be, a lot of the rules of the road associated with that tech stuff mystify me.

Case in point: Like most authors, I'm constantly looking for ways to promote my work. I thought I had stumbled upon one when I discovered the "Recommendations" section in Goodreads. If you're not familiar with it, that's where readers can go to post genres or other information they are looking for from potential books, and other Goodreads members can suggest books fitting their requirements.

Perfect! I figured I could network with readers looking for the things I write about, and respectfully suggest my book to those readers. Which I did. To probably a dozen or so readers, before being informed that what I was doing was highly inappropriate and could result in me being banned from Goodreads.

Yikes.

If you know me, you know self-promotion doesn't come easy to me under any circumstances. If I had my way, I wouldn't do any of it. The last thing I want to do is be known as someone who tries to skirt the rules. I looked at the Goodreads thing as an opportunity to connect with people looking for what I was offering. I didn't mass-email anyone, I personalized every contact I made, and I only contacted people interested in thrillers who were looking for a new book to read.

Obviously, I won't be doing that any more, although it still seems to make sense. Supply and demand, and all that.

I've always felt that if you didn't make a few mistakes every now and then you weren't trying hard enough, and it was an honest mistake, so it doesn't really bother me that much, but to everyone I contacted on Goodreads who was seeking a thriller recommendation, I apologize, although most of them didn't seem to mind.

So now I'm back to trying to think of ways to get my book in front of motivated readers' eyes. Anyone have any ideas? I'm open to suggestions...

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapters Eight and Nine

2011-07-28T09:40:00.000-04:00

Today is the final day of my week-long introduction to my brand-new thriller, THE LONELY MILE ($2.99 from StoneHouse Ink). Here we go with Chapters Eight and Nine...

CHAPTER 8

—Martin shoved the girl hard, directly at the guy. The pair went down instantly in a tangle of arms and legs, crashing to the tile floor with a thud.

The moment they fell, he turned and sprinted for the entrance, barely slowing as he raced through the glass double doors, smashing into them and rocking them back on their hinges. He burst into the brutal May heat radiating off acres of pavement and sprinted toward his truck, passing the confused sheep who had been lucky enough to rush out the plaza doors at the onset of the confrontation. They huddled in groups of two or three, staring dumbly at him, no one quick or daring enough to try and stop him.

Martin tumbled inside the cab, fumbling with the key, finally jamming it home and cranking the tired engine of the ancient vehicle. It grumbled and complained and eventually turned over, and Martin yanked the wheel to the left, heading toward the interstate and freedom. It was a shame to have to give up his trophy. He already knew this failure would rankle him for days, and he could expect a brutal dressing-down from his contact, a person who was never a model of patience, even when Martin delivered on time.

He had been incredibly lucky; he knew that. He had recognized immediately what the hero’s play was going to be; it was the only one he had when he didn’t pop Martin from behind in the first place.

And the guy had only made one, little mistake; a tiny one, really, which would not have made any difference at all were it not for Martin’s superior intelligence. When he was roughly four feet away, the wannabe hero removed his left hand from his weapon—a Browning Hi-Power, Martin had noticed—and, when he did, instead of lowering his gun closer to his body where he could use his bulk to protect his grip and keep it away from Martin, he left his arm straight out, holding it away from his body. The moment Martin shoved the girl, the gun became useless, taking the brunt of the collision, and the hero’s arm lifted toward the ceiling. Had he been holding the gun closer to his body, he might still have been able to squeeze off an accurate shot.

A pathetic rescue attempt by just another pathetic loser. Martin flashed a triumphant smile at no one, grinning easily despite the adrenaline-fueled tremors wracking his body, enjoying the moment before getting down to the business of completing his escape.

He had no doubt that someone, probably several people by now, had already punched 9-1-1 into their cell phones and reported something bad going down at the rest stop. Undoubtedly, even now the police were speeding toward this interstate exit, sirens wailing, blue lights flashing, the cavalry riding in on their white horses to save the day. Well, they were going to be disappointed, because they would be too late.

CHAPTER 9

Before they even hit the floor, Bill knew he had blown it. Not majorly blown it, not dead-teenager-bleeding-out-on-the-floor blown it—after all, the girl was safe and sound, even now beginning to untangle her arms and legs from his as the kidnapper exited the scene like Usain Bolt running the hundred-meter dash—but still, there was no denying he had committed a huge error in judgment by getting close enough to the kidnapper to allow the guy the opportunity to make such an obvious play.

Still, what else could he have done? Maybe the guy hitting the bricks was the best thing that could have happened, all things considered. The alternative was unthinkable—a desperate man loose inside the building with a lethal weapon in his hands and several dozen potential victims just waiting to be slaughtered. Not a pretty picture.

The girl moaned as she rolled off him, and Bill pushed himself to a kneeling position. A sharp pain radiated from his left elbow, offering a convenient reminder of which body part had made impact with the floor first, although the back of his head had placed second in a photo finish. He could feel an egg-sized lump rising already.

He shook his head to clear some of the cobwebs and concentrated on the young girl lying next to him. “Are you all right?” he asked, and she shot him an incredulous look that would melt steel, a look only a teen can pull off.

Then she giggled nervously. It was probably a reaction to the pent-up stress caused by the terror of the attempted kidnapping, but the sound was incongruous and unexpected and reminded Bill of his own daughter, Carli, who was roughly the same age. He wondered where this girl was from and whether she might have been friends with Carli if they had grown up together.

They sat on the floor staring at each other, and, in a shaking voice, the girl said, “That was him, wasn’t it?”

“Him?”

“Yeah, you know, the I-90 Killer,” the girl said, with a heaving sob and a shudder that wracked her entire body.

Bill had no doubt that was who it was; the likelihood of some other lunatic haunting highway rest stops, stalking and kidnapping teenage girls using exactly the same methodology as the I-90 Killer was practically nil, and although Bill had foiled this kidnapping attempt, the pathetic dirt bag was going to get away while he sat here on the floor rubbing his sore elbow.

The girl seemed okay, at least physically. And her mother and father were even now running across the glass-littered floor of the plaza toward the two of them.

“Oh, God,” the girl whimpered, her chalk-white face crumbling as her parents drew near. Allie’s father lifted her from the floor, and her mother drew her into her arms, her father hovering protectively over both of them. Allie turned her face into her mother’s shoulder and started to cry.

Bill rose to his feet, staggered, and dropped to one knee, spitting out a curse. His head was swimming. He must have knocked it harder than he realized. He picked up his Browning off the floor where he had apparently dropped it in the violence of the collision—some hero, dropping his gun at the critical moment—and began moving in an unsteady gait toward the rest stop doors that the failed kidnapper had blasted through just moments before.

By the time Bill crossed the fifteen feet to the doors, he felt a little more like himself. He was suffering the beginnings of what he suspected was going to be a whopper of a headache, and lightning-bolts of pain radiated from his left elbow, but overall, he knew it could have been much worse. He was still alive and so was the girl.

He picked up the pace, hitting the doors at a dead run, jarring them violently backward for the second time in less than a minute, and was rewarded with a metallic screech that sounded like an accusation. The unseasonable heat and humidity descended on him like a wet blanket as he leapt the four steps from the plaza to the concrete walkway, staggering slightly upon landing and continuing forward into the parking lot. An elderly couple approaching the plaza did a double take. Bill wondered what he looked like to them and decided he was probably better off not knowing.

In a way, he supposed he must look like a freaking lunatic, chasing after a guy armed with a deadly weapon, who—if, in fact, he really was the legendary I-90 Killer—was rumored to have murdered at least ten people, probably more. And Bill had no doubt the guy would not mind adding one middle-aged fool to his tally.

By the time he had taken three running steps onto the hot pavement, Bill realized it was hopeless. There were probably over a hundred cars in the mammoth lot, and while it wasn’t even close to being full, the odds of picking the I-90 Killer’s vehicle out of all of the ones glittering in the bright May sunshine when he had no idea what it even looked like were stacked overwhelmingly against him. For all he knew, the guy had been parked in the first row and was already gone, even now speeding down the highway, anonymous and safe.

Bill slapped his hands together and screamed in frustration, and as he did, his headache spiked and the I-90 Killer roared past him, not twenty feet away, tearing along the parking lot access lane toward the on-ramp leading to the eastbound lane of the interstate. He was driving a battered, off-white box truck that trailed blue smoke as he made his escape. The vehicle had obviously been repainted, and not professionally, containing no apparent markings. Bill shuddered, thinking about what horrible fate might have awaited that young girl back inside the rest stop had the man gotten her into the back of that truck.

He peered at the rear of the vehicle in an attempt to decipher the license plate, but the heavy blue smoke pouring out of the exhaust made an effective screen. Bill could see the plate but could not make out any of the numbers or letters; he couldn’t even tell whether it was a New York or a Massachusetts tag, or maybe neither. He cursed again and wondered if the escaping kidnapper realized how lucky he was right now to be driving a vehicle that needed a ring job.

Bill began sprinting toward his vehicle to give chase. How hard could it be to catch that crappy truck?

----------

Bestselling author Scott Nicholson says, "Allan Leverone delivers a taut crime drama full of twists and conspiracy," and acclaimed crime fiction author Dave Zeltserman says THE LONELY MILE "will carry readers along..."

If you like what you've read over the past seven days, please consider purchasing your own copy at one of the following links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

My website: http://www.allanleverone.com/

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapters Six and Seven

2011-07-27T10:19:00.000-04:00

Day Six of my week-long introduction to my new thriller, THE LONELY MILE ($2.99 from StoneHouse Ink), brings us, appropriately enough, to Chapter Six. But I wanted to thank everyone for the positive response to the book in its first full week, so here are Chapter Six and Seven. Sometimes my generosity astounds even me...

CHAPTER 6

Martin froze, instantly aware the shouted warning was meant for him. For perhaps two seconds, nothing happened—the silence was all-encompassing and unnerving—and then, like a dam bursting, chaos erupted in the plaza. A shrill, high-pitched scream echoed off the ceramic tiles in the big, open room. Trays filled with dishes fell to the floor, glasses shattering and dishes breaking as their owners spotted the guns and dove for cover. Tables crashed onto their sides, and the more physically gifted among the travelers vaulted the counters, thudding to the floor on the other side. Those lucky few near the plaza entrance simply ran out the door.

And still Martin did not move. He hugged the girl tightly, frantically calculating the possibilities. It could not have been a cop who shouted the warning—they were required to identify themselves. So it had to have been a citizen; an ordinary Joe who had seen the kidnapping go down and decided to play hero. That was good; he might still be able to get out of this.

Martin turned slowly and carefully, avoiding any sudden or unusual movements that his attacker might interpret as threatening. He kept his handgun firmly planted in the girl’s side, shoving it hard against her ribs in an unspoken warning not to do anything stupid, like running toward her misguided—and soon-to-be dead—savior.

In front of Martin, the girl whimpered softly, breathing hard, clearly terrified, her weight heavy on his arms as he pulled her tight against his body, using her as a human shield. He completed the turn, dragging her around with him, and found himself face-to-face with the same man who had bumped him just seconds ago. The man was crouched, his weapon held in a two-handed shooter’s grip, the barrel trained steadily on the center of Martin’s body, which meant it was now also trained on the girl.

Martin smiled, knowing that, no matter how powerful the man’s handgun was, it was useless unless he could shoot like Annie Oakley. The odds were that he would hit the innocent victim if he attempted to fire now, and, unless the guy was totally off his rocker, he would not do something so rash. The man had had his chance to take down Martin when his back was turned, and he had blown it.

If the busybody had just fired his weapon, then this would all be over, with Martin lying face down on the cold, plaza floor, blood and life soaking out of him. Instead, the fool had offered a ridiculous fair-play warning, like he thought he was Marshal Dillon patrolling Dodge City, and just like that, his only chance at taking the advantage away from Martin had evaporated. Now Martin was back in control.

His smile widened into a cocky grin. The buttinsky was dressed in a blue windbreaker with “Ferguson Hardware” stitched on the breast pocket. It should have been a dead giveaway to Martin that the dude was carrying. It had to be ninety-five degrees outside; there was no possible explanation why someone would don a jacket in this heat unless it was to cover a concealed weapon.

Martin mentally kicked himself, careful not to let the guy see his anger. He didn’t want the wannabe hero to know he was anything other than supremely confident. But there was no way he should have overlooked such an obvious warning sign—it was one of those careless mistakes he had sworn he was too smart to make. Well, he could still escape this disaster, and, when he did, he would chalk the episode up as a valuable lesson learned; one that was annoying and stupid and inexcusable, but one that he would never make again, that was for sure.

Martin knew he was in control. He continued backing toward the doors, pulling the girl with him. He smiled at the man with the gun, oblivious to the chaos around him as the sheep bleated pathetically, roused from their torpor and completely lost now, confronted with this frightening and confusing new reality.

The hero still had not moved. He remained in a crouch, holding the gun on Martin and his new girlfriend. Martin wondered if it had occurred to the Good Samaritan yet that he had lost control of the situation. Probably not, this guy was just another idiot. He was brave, Martin would grant him that, but he highly doubted this hardware store man could match Martin’s intelligence or cunning.

The idiot would find that out soon enough.

CHAPTER 7

Bill kept the Browning trained on the kidnapper who still held the girl tightly in front of his body. The guy had a creepy grin plastered on his face, and the girl was wearing an expression of sheer terror. Bill was suddenly thankful for his long-ago military training and the hours spent firing weapons in the desert blast-furnace of Iraq, honing his technique until he had total confidence in his ability with firearms. He had been an expert marksman in the service, and he hoped the intervening years hadn’t dulled his accuracy.

The panicked noises in the food court—the sounds of screaming, cursing, running feet, and breaking glass—were dying down. Out of the confusion, came the plaintive sound of a wailing woman’s voice. “Oh God, he has Allie! He has Allie!”

Bill ignored the tortured voice, tuning it out along with all the other chaotic, background noise. They were distractions he didn’t need. He knew he had to remain sharp and focused, because the next few moments would determine whether this whole mess ended well or disastrously.

The kidnapper continued to smile, his eyes sharp and predatory. Maybe it was a trick of the harsh fluorescent lighting inside the rest stop, but his teeth appeared long and yellow—wolfish even.

He stared Bill down as he slowly edged backwards, the challenge in his eyes unmistakable. The kidnapper had regained the advantage, and worse, he knew it. There was no way Bill could fire on him now without risking hitting the hostage. For just a moment, he was back in Iraq, the intense heat and dust and life-and-death pressure returning with a vengeance, so real he felt that, if he opened his mouth, it would fill with burning desert sand. He hesitated, his hand beginning to lower, and then he shook his head, clearing it of the cobwebs, and once again raised the weapon, training it on the scruffy-looking man and his young victim.

It was a classic standoff. Bill knew he couldn’t fire on the kidnapper because of the hostage, but the kidnapper couldn’t shoot the girl either because he would lose his shield and open himself up to a bullet. What he could do, however, was shoot Bill and back straight out the door.

The kidnapper seemed to reach the same conclusion as Bill, and at the same time. His grin widened. It was unnerving. He slid the gun smoothly away from the girl’s body and pointed it at Bill, who rose from his crouch and began moving forward ever so slowly, matching the kidnapper step for slow step. The two handguns were now pointed almost directly at each other.

Now what? If he could move close enough to the girl, maybe he could grab her and pull her out of the scumbag’s grasp, using his own body to shield her from harm. What he would do after that was still a little unclear. As plans went, Bill knew it was pretty thin, but he couldn’t come up with anything better, and felt control of the situation slipping away, sliding inexorably toward a disaster involving death, tragedy, and regret.

He crept closer, neither man speaking, the girl sobbing quietly in the man’s arms, pulled tightly against his body. Under the circumstances, Bill thought, she was doing an admirable job of keeping herself together. From his peripheral vision, he was aware of the rest of the people in the crowded plaza watching the confrontation from behind overturned tables, peeking over counters and around booths and chairs. The chaos of a few seconds ago had resolved into a low murmur, a buzz of shocked excitement as the observers began to realize that they, at least, were not in any immediate danger.

The pair with the weapons pointed at each other were now eight feet apart…now six…four. The gunman holding the hostage shuffled steadily backward, dragging his reluctant companion with him, and Bill moved forward, steadily closing the gap.

Still, neither man spoke. Neither man fired. The tension was palpable. Something was about to break, something had to happen soon, but no one had a clue what it was, least of all Bill Ferguson.

He continued moving forward, finally reaching a point where he could smell the rancid stench of the kidnapper’s fear. Outwardly, the man appeared calm and in control, an arrogant smirk pasted on his face, but the sweat dripping from every pore revealed his tension. The odor was sour, and Bill nearly gagged.

He was close enough now. It was time. He stopped moving and pulled his left hand off the grip of the Hi-Power, leveling the gun with his right hand in the direction of the kidnapper and his hostage. Still operating mostly on instinct, Bill reached forward to grab the girl’s right shoulder and yank her toward him, to spin her behind him to relative safety, to shield her with his own body. He moved as quickly as he could, his hand flashing out toward the girl, and as he did—

----------

The final installment of my preview follows tomorrow! If you like what you've read, please consider downloading a copy to your ereader for just $2.99 at one of the following purchase links:

My website: http://www.allanleverone.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapter Five

2011-07-26T11:33:00.000-04:00

On to Chapter Five of my new thriller,THE LONELY MILE ($2.99 from StoneHouse Ink):

CHAPTER 5

Bill approached the entrance to the restrooms, dodging left and right, avoiding masses of people, all seemingly oblivious to everyone and everything around them. A fat, middle-aged woman with thinning brown hair waddled straight at him, staring through him as she careened toward the food counters like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. He stepped nimbly aside and let her pass, shaking his head, half in frustration and half in amusement when it became clear she had had absolutely no intention of altering her course. The woman shot past, trailing a wake behind her like a big rig blowing by an economy car out on the interstate.

As he sidestepped the overweight woman hell-bent on her next meal, Bill bumped into a thin, wiry man in a billowing t-shirt who was apparently headed toward the restrooms as well, rocking him onto his heels. The man glared at Bill, who smiled and offered an apology.

“No problem,” the stranger mumbled unconvincingly, and turned away as if anxious to end the brief encounter. Bill stared in surprise at the man’s back for a moment before shrugging and turning again toward the restrooms. He advanced three steps before being forced to step aside again, this time to dodge a young woman exiting the ladies’ room. She was a teenager, tall and blonde, with hair streaming behind her in a ponytail protruding from the back of a New York Yankees baseball cap. Her head was raised and her searching eyes bypassed Bill. It was clear she was looking for someone.

Two more steps brought Bill to the men’s room entrance, a feeling of ill-defined unease nagging at him. He had served two terms on the ground in Iraq half a lifetime ago and learned very quickly that the fastest way to an early, sandy grave was to ignore what your senses were telling you, even if you couldn’t quite decipher the message.

Something was wrong.

He stopped and turned. A man bumped into him from behind and muttered, “Jerk,” then kept walking into the men’s room. Bill ignored him. The wiry guy he had nearly deposited on his butt over by the rack of t-shirts a moment ago was no longer there. Bill watched as that man walked away quickly, now approaching the blonde girl from behind.

When the man reached the girl, he moved to her right and raised his left arm as if to drape it over her shoulder. Bill’s first thought was that the man must be the girl’s father, but that didn’t make any sense. He was too young, and there was no way she could have missed seeing him as she came out of the ladies’ room if they were acquainted; they had to have passed within a foot of each other. The man was obviously unknown to her.

Bill’s internal alarm bells were jangling now, his sense of vague unease morphing quickly into full-blown dread. What happened next caused all the other people milling about to melt away from his consciousness until only the blonde girl and the strange, wiry man existed. The man continued to raise his arm, hooking it over her shoulder as if preparing to settle her neck into the crook of his elbow. With his right hand, he pulled a handgun out from under the back of his shirt and pressed it discreetly against her ribs while bending down and whispering in her ear, clearly warning her not to scream. Then, the man lead her rapidly toward the double doors and the intense heat of the parking lot. And a certain escape.

Bill did a double take, not sure his brain was correctly processing the information his eyes were sending it. He glanced quickly around the plaza. Everyone was still milling about, oblivious to the drama unfolding in their midst. He shifted his attention back toward the man and the girl. The man was hustling the girl out. They had nearly reached the exterior doors.

In a precious, few seconds they would be out of the building and crossing the parking lot to some waiting vehicle where he would spirit the young girl away. Bill made a snap decision, one which he would later question, and, in some ways, come to regret.

Bill Ferguson sprinted forward, dodging passers-by, closing the distance on the still-unsuspecting man and the teenage girl, unsnapping his Browning from its holster as he moved. He held it like a football, cradled in his arms against his chest, hopefully out of sight, but readily accessible. He would approach the kidnapper from behind, use the butt of the pistol to club him in the head, and pull the girl to safety. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it would work, because the man still didn’t see him, and—

—A kid holding a gigantic iced coffee in his hands arms backed directly into him. The kid was having an animated conversation with his buddies in a booth, backing away from them, his attention diverted. The drink flew out of his hands and crashed to the floor, and a tidal wave of iced coffee splashed around his feet. The kidnapper turned for a split-second to see what was causing the commotion, and just like that, the advantage of surprise was lost.

Bill changed the plan on the fly, dropping into a shooter’s crouch and taking dead aim at the center of the man’s back. The guy’s head was turned but his body continued to face the door. Bill still had a clear, unobstructed shot.

He held the Browning in two hands, making a conscious effort to keep his grip loose and relaxed, and screamed, “Freeze!” at the top of his lungs. The man stopped instantly and stood stock-still. His gun remained firmly planted into the girl’s side, but at least he hadn’t pulled the trigger. Yet.

One full second of utter, monastic silence fell over the inside of the rest stop. No one spoke. No one moved. The clatter of plates and silverware stopped. Cash registers fell silent.

Then, all hell broke loose.

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Chapter Six to follow tomorrow! If you like what you've read, please consider downloading a copy to your ereader for just $2.99 at one of the following purchase links.

My website: http://www.allanleverone.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapter Four

2011-07-25T11:03:00.000-04:00

We've reached the midpoint of my week-long introduction to my new thriller, THE LONELY MILE ($2.99 from StoneHouse Ink), the novel Dave Zeltserman says "will carry readers along..." Here is Chapter Four:

CHAPTER 4

Martin pushed open the door and entered the rest stop, grateful to be out of the heavy, hot, summery air. Already, his light t-shirt stuck to his back uncomfortably. He mopped his brow with the palm of his hand, scanning the interior of the crowded building for any cops who might be sitting on their fat butts drinking coffee and eating donuts like some stupid, living cliché. There were none. He relaxed a bit and began the process of searching for a likely prospect. The plaza was set up like a shopping mall food court, with counters running in a long semicircle around the back of the room, beginning immediately to the left of the glass double doors and terminating to Martin’s right at the entrances to the men’s and women’s restrooms.

Spaced at intervals behind the counters were the usual fast food suspects: the pizza place, the fried chicken place, the burger joint, the coffee shop, the ice cream and frozen yogurt franchise. Tables and booths filled the spacious open dining area, with carts and stands more or less randomly scattered throughout the room hawking t-shirts, knickknacks and cheap collectibles.

The place was filled. Martin loved the bustling activity, the way all the people were so absorbed in themselves, in their own little worlds, that they took note of little else. Even now, after more than a dozen kidnappings in plazas like this one all along the eastern portion of I-90, most people remained blissfully ignorant, unaware of their surroundings, certain of their own safety, apparently believing that random tragedy would always strike the other guy.

Martin walked slowly toward the pizza counter, not because he was interested in eating, but because that vantage point offered the clearest view of the open room, and thus it offered the best opportunity to scan for potentials. He was reasonably certain he had already made one “withdrawal” from this particular plaza, maybe even his very first, but there had been so many over the last three-and-a-half years that they all began to blend together, a satisfying mishmash of pretty young things forcibly abducted in broad daylight in front of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of potential witnesses.

He regretted losing clarity in the memories of his earliest conquests, but it was inevitable, really. In a way, those fuzzy remembrances served as testament to his methods, to the fact that he was so good at what he did. He had been at it so long and taken so many girls that the details of all but the most recent kidnappings had begun to merge together into a kind of delicious, nostalgic stew. Perhaps he couldn’t recall the specifics of all of them, but, in total, the memories served to warm his heart, to cause a little tingle in his belly whenever he thought about them. You couldn’t ask for much more than that in this world.

Besides, it’s not like I’ll forget any of them, with my trophy case stocked with precious souvenirs, ready to display more. He thought about the collection of locks of hair and the rings, watches, and other jewelry he had saved from his conquests, and he knew that, as risky as keeping the prizes was—if the authorities ever searched his house, they would certainly be his undoing—it was well worth it. Besides, he was much smarter than the people pursuing him, so as long as he continued to exercise caution in his hunting, he knew he had nothing to fear. What exactly was the point of exercising his admittedly peculiar interest if he could not enjoy the fruits of his hard-fought labors?

Martin scanned the plaza, his practiced eye immediately zeroing in on a few potential targets, attractive girls in their late teens or early twenties. He was fortunate that he was mostly permitted to indulge his taste for slim blondes and brunettes; his contact only demanded that they be young and attractive. This process of selecting a companion was where things could get a little dicey. He had to be careful to choose a target whose family or friends weren’t paying too much attention to her. It was getting more and more difficult. With each passing success, the media coverage of the I-90 Killer became more and more sensational, causing nervous parents to pay that much more attention to their daughters.

At least for a while.

Then, time would go by, Martin would lie low, and the coverage would die down as other stories moved into the news cycle, picking up again only after Martin plucked another victim out from under the not-so-watchful gaze of her parents or friends.

Martin strolled past the pizza counter, moving behind the lines of people. He passed the line for the pizza and burger joints, taking his place in the crowd of people waiting to buy a cup of coffee. His heart hammered wildly in his chest and he practically quivered with anticipation. This was the hardest part: the knowledge that he was so close to his next plaything but would have to wait to enjoy her, but he forced himself to slow down and proceed with caution.

This sense of caution was exactly why he would never be caught. Others of his kind rushed in with little or no regard for the potential consequences of their rash actions. Or they were careful in the beginning but became sloppy after a few successes, leaving themselves open to committing the kind of mistakes that resulted in capture, humiliation, and, eventually, life in prison or even the death penalty.

Not Martin Krall. Martin Krall was too smart for that kind of carelessness. He knew when to take bold, decisive action and when to hang back and observe, and this was the time to hang back and observe. Scan and plan before leaping into action.

The line at the coffee counter moved slowly. Its length surprised Martin because of the stifling heat outside. Of course, like most coffee franchises, this one offered the thirsty patron all sorts of fancy iced drinks and frothy ten-thousand-calorie concoctions composed mostly of water and sugar, and Martin figured the majority of the sheep were probably purchasing those. He waited patiently, eyes continually scanning the crowd behind his mirrored sunglasses, keeping tabs on the pair of girls he had determined were the most promising targets.

Finally, he reached the front of the line. A tall, skinny kid in his late teens with serious acne issues and long, greasy, blond hair looked down at him through bored, blue eyes. Pinned at a careless angle onto his shirt was a nametag that read “Jamie.” The shirt was wrinkled and partially untucked. “Help you?” he asked.

Martin was immediately turned off. He was no neat freak, not by any stretch of the imagination, but this kid reeked of grime and germs. It was disgusting. Martin’s first instinct was to turn away. He certainly didn’t want to drink anything “Jamie” had put his dirty paws all over. But then he stopped himself. Waiting all that time in line and then leaving without buying anything just as he got to the counter would be noteworthy. It would make him stick out. It would make people remember him.

That kind of reaction was unacceptable, especially considering what would soon take place here today. He reluctantly forced a smile onto his face, wondering whether it looked as insincere as it felt, and said, “Small coffee, please.”

The kid stared at him without moving, as if Martin had spoken in some foreign language. For a second, Martin wondered if maybe he didn’t speak English, but of course, that was absurd. He had been waiting behind a whole group of people, most of whom must have been speaking English, and no one else seemed to have had any trouble. What was this moron’s problem?

Finally, the kid asked, “Hot?”

Now it was Martin’s turn to stare uncomprehendingly. Of course it was hot; it was at least ninety degrees outside, for crying out loud!

Suddenly, he realized what the kid was asking. His earlier supposition that most of the people in line were buying those iced drinks was right on target, and this idiot wanted to be sure he understood Martin’s order correctly. “Yes, hot,” Martin said, trying and mostly succeeding in keeping the sneer he felt out of his voice. “I’d like hot coffee.” He said it slowly and deliberately.

The kid drew the brew out of a huge stainless steel urn set up on a counter behind him, then handed the cup to Martin and received payment without another word. Martin wanted nothing more than to stiff this loser out of a tip—his service was poor and his personal hygiene nonexistent—but of course that might draw the attention of some of the sheep, too, so he reluctantly dropped a quarter into the plastic tip jar, strategically placed next to the cash register, and moved away, grabbing a table near the front of the room where he would have a decent view of the entire place.

No sooner had he sat down, than he spotted, “the one.” There was no doubt about it. She was perhaps seventeen, tall and athletic, willowy, all coltish legs and youthful energy, with long, blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She was perfect—just what Martin liked, and just what the others would like as well. The girl was entering the plaza, traveling with a man and a woman, presumably her parents. She was not one of the likely targets he had been monitoring, and he congratulated himself on his patience.

The family moved into the plaza and immediately split up, the girl turning right toward the restrooms and Mommy and Daddy staking out a spot at the end of the line for the burger joint all the way across the room. There were so many people milling about at the moment that Martin figured there was no way they could even see the restrooms from where they were standing. Perfect.

Martin left his coffee untouched on the table—just as well, he thought; he didn’t really want to drink it after that greaseball behind the counter had touched it —and meandered slowly toward the restrooms. The men’s and women’s rooms were adjacent to each other and featured open doorways with interior walls preventing anyone from seeing in.

He took his time, moving slowly. The plaza was busy and there was a pretty decent chance the girl would have to wait for a stall inside the restroom. Even if she didn’t, it would take at least a couple of minutes to do her business and wash her hands.

Stopping at a t-shirt stand a few feet from the rest rooms, Martin pretended to check out the cheap wares while he waited for the girl. Shirts with silly puns on them competed for attention with other shirts featuring scenic views of the Adirondack Mountains or one of the thousands of lakes dotting the region. The only thing they had in common was that they were all poorly made and overpriced.

Martin watched the restrooms surreptitiously, knowing he would get only one chance to do this right. Hopefully, the girl would exit the ladies’ room alone, but even if she didn’t, it would pose no more than a minor problem. The girl’s parents were still cooling their heels in line at the hamburger joint across the plaza, and anyone who happened to walk out of the ladies’ room at the same time as the target would undoubtedly be in a hurry to get her food and drink and head out, and so would be paying scant attention to the pretty blonde girl.

Martin Krall patted the Glock 9mm, jammed into the waistband of his jeans and covered with a long t-shirt, and waited. The girl would walk out of the ladies room any second now. He could feel it. He didn’t know how he could tell, but he could. He had done this many times before.

He stood at the display stand surrounded by the cheap t-shirts and all of the unsuspecting people and waited, unnoticed, a predator stalking its prey.

----------

Chapter Five to follow tomorrow! If you like what you've read, please consider downloading a copy to your ereader for just $2.99 at one of the following purchase links.

My website: http://www.allanleverone.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapter Three

2011-07-24T11:14:00.000-04:00

Day Three of my week-long introduction to my brand-new thriller, THE LONELY MILE, $2.99 from StoneHouse Ink...here's Chapter Three:

CHAPTER 3

Bill Ferguson sat alone at his table, one arm resting along the back of the booth’s bench seat, legs stretched comfortably across the red vinyl. Steam swirled lazily from his mug as he sipped his coffee. He loved the coffee they served at this busy rest station off Interstate 90 in western Massachusetts. It wasn’t the fancy upscale stuff the yuppies seemed to enjoy overpaying for, but it definitely hit the spot.

As the owner of a pair of moderately successful independent hardware stores, one located in rural Massachusetts and one in rural upstate New York, Bill had occasion to travel I-90 often, ferrying inventory between stores and taking cash receipts to the bank. Whenever possible, he tried to take a few precious minutes out of his day to sit back and enjoy the coffee while watching the world pass by, here, at this rest stop.

The weather today was atypical for a late spring day: hot and humid; more like August than May. Sweaty travelers, most dressed in shorts and t-shirts, hurried inside to use the facilities and stock up on food and drinks before barreling back onto the highway to mix it up with the rest of the early-season vacationers. The chaotic activity had a certain anonymity to it—like the practiced avoidance of the big city, where people could be packed, shoulder to shoulder, on public transit or elevators and still manage to ignore the strangers around them. Most of the vacationers’ interactions here were limited to completing a transaction at one of the fast food franchises inside the plaza, wolfing down their food and drinks, and heading out.

In contrast, long-haul truckers slouched in to sit around long tables, sipping coffee and shooting the breeze with their buddies as they falsified their drivers’ logbooks in case of a surprise inspection by the DOT somewhere down the road. Bill could pick out the longtime truck drivers pretty easily; they carried themselves low to the ground like sports cars, as if the gravitational pull from decades of sitting in the driver’s seat had somehow gradually compressed them. The truckers spent their days in solitude, breathing exhaust fumes and covering mile after mile of paved highway with only the radio for company. Unlike the vacationers, who seemed to view the people around them as intrusions to be avoided at all costs, the truckers tended to be outgoing and talkative here, at least to others who earned their living behind the wheel.

Bill raised his coffee to his lips with his left hand, enjoying the slightly acidic taste as it burned its way down his gullet. With his right, he absently traced the bulge of the Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol secured in his worn, leather, shoulder holster. A loose-fitting blue windbreaker with “Ferguson Hardware” stitched with off-white thread on the breast pocket concealed the handgun nicely. He carried the weapon whenever it was necessary to transport cash or valuable merchandise for his stores, and, in sixteen years, he had never had occasion to pull it out of the holster unless he was at the practice range.

Running his hand over the outline of the weapon, Bill caressed it like a security blanket, which he supposed, in a way, it was. Carrying large sums of money at all hours of the day or night on an interstate highway, often lonely and secluded over the forty-mile stretch between exits for his stores, was no kind of avenue to a long and healthy life, and, although Bill had never yet run into trouble, he knew you could never be too careful.

He drained his coffee with a satisfied sigh and stretched his muscles, feeling the usual popping and cracking of bones and tendons—signs of turning forty last year. He set his mug on the table and rose. The coffee was good, but nothing lasted forever. His failed marriage testified to the wisdom of that theory.

Oh, well. It was time to use the facilities, hit the road, and get back to work.

----------

Chapter Four to follow tomorrow! If you like what you've seen, THE LONELY MILE can be purchased for $2.99 at

My website: http://www.allanleverone.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapter Two

2011-07-23T11:15:00.000-04:00

Day Two of my week-long introduction to my new thriller, THE LONELY MILE, from StoneHouse Ink, brings Chapter Two:

CHAPTER 2

May 22

Martin Krall was a ghost. He was a wraith. He was legendary. He haunted Interstate 90, its ribbons of pavement winding their way through the mostly rural towns and thickly forested hills of western Massachusetts and eastern New York. He was invisible, ethereal, terrifying. In the mental movie playing nonstop inside Martin Krall’s head, he saw himself as omnipotent, invincible, taking what he wanted when he wanted it. The mere mortals populating the surrounding areas were powerless to stop him and afraid to try.

Today, what Martin Krall wanted was a girl. A teenage girl, specifically, closer in age to twenty than ten. Someone developed, with curves. Martin was not into the nasty stuff that so many of his contemporaries were hung up on, the guys who took young children and did disgusting things with them. He never understood the urge to enjoy a child in that way and was thankful he was more advanced than that. More evolved.

He pulled his aging, white, cargo truck—it was practically invisible, like a raggedy street person sleeping in a cardboard box, ignored by the passers-by—off I-90 and onto the access ramp leading to the massive parking lot of the interstate rest area. He passed a sign on the right directing the big eighteen-wheel tractor-trailers to “Keep right here.” Those gigantic dinosaurs merited their own special place in the lot. Martin slowed as he drove past and then eased into the second right turn, the one leading to the parking area for normal-sized vehicles.

He cruised the access lane, scanning the rows of parked cars and trucks as he eased past, finally selecting a parking spot three rows from the entrance to the travelers’ plaza and shutting the engine down. It knocked and bucked for a couple of seconds, as if disagreeing with Martin’s decision, and then gave up. Martin made a mental note to get the old piece of crap tuned up soon. He couldn’t really afford the expense, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to risk getting stuck somewhere like this with a vehicle that wouldn’t start. That sort of disaster could land him on death row.

The authorities had been chasing Martin for years, ever since the first kidnapping way back, more than three years ago now, but they had never come close to catching him. Martin was confident they never would, despite the fact that he always used the same five-hundred-mile stretch of highway as his hunting ground. He was smart, and, much more importantly, he was careful.

So many of the men who shared his particular predilection made the mistake of getting careless or resorting to boastful, showboating tactics that invariably led to their downfall. Things like taunting the police with cutesy notes or ill-advised telephone calls, or leaving behind little “calling cards” for the media, as if they thrived on the attention and notoriety.

Martin wondered what these idiots were thinking when they did such self-destructive things, virtually ensuring themselves an appointment with a lethal injection, all in the name of notoriety. Of cheap self-promotion.

Martin hated publicity. He would have preferred that the public never learn of his existence, although by now that dream was nothing more than the most baseless sort of wishful thinking. Somewhere around the third kidnapping, a clever television news reporter hung a nickname on Martin, a nickname that stuck to him like vacuum wrap and forever removed his cloak of anonymity.

Martin Krall was “The I-90 Killer.”

He stepped out of the cab onto the parking lot, the searing midday heat softening the pavement and radiating off it, warming his legs beneath his jeans and causing a sheen of sweat to break out on his forehead. Martin slammed the driver’s side door, leaving it unlocked, and turned toward the plaza entrance. It would be foolish to lock the truck; it was a work truck, with no remote control locks, and Martin knew he might be leaving in a hurry, hopefully with a new playmate in tow. Plus, he was a ghost and his truck was as invisible as he—who would pay the least bit of attention to a nondescript, beat-up old box truck adrift in a sea of shiny, much newer vehicles?

Things slowed as they always did when Martin was hunting, seeming to move at half-speed as he strode purposefully toward the glass double doors of the travelers’ plaza. Families with children of varying ages jostled Martin as he walked, some moving, as he was, toward the rest area, and some away from it and back to their cars, refreshed and ready to hit the highway. They all looked to Martin like they were walking underwater, their movements almost painfully slow and exaggerated. Martin assumed this strange phenomenon, a sensation he experienced every time he hunted, was a function of his heightened sense of awareness, of his advanced, predatory instincts.

All of the travelers were potential victims, although they didn’t know it, and none saw him or were even aware of his presence among them; he was a lion stalking among oblivious sheep. It made sense, though. Martin Krall was a ghost—invisible, ethereal and terrifying. The sheep instinctively seemed to move away as he approached, the Red Sea parting for Moses, mothers holding their children’s hands a little tighter without even realizing they were doing it.

Martin felt incredibly alive and hyper-aware. Today was a special day. Today Martin Krall would add another victim to his collection.

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Chapte Three to follow tomorrow!

THE LONELY MILE can be ordered at http://www.allanleverone.com/, or at

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

THE LONELY MILE excerpt - Chapter One

2011-07-22T12:29:00.001-04:00

To celebrate the release of my brand-spanking-new thriller, THE LONELY MILE, and in a bold-faced effort to whet your appetite for my work, I will be posting the first seven chapters here, one a day over the next seven days. This is the book bestselling author Scott Nicholson calls "a taut crime drama full of twists and conspiracy," and critically acclaimed, multi-genre-talented author Dave Zeltserman says "will carry readers along..."

Enjoy, and if you like what you read, please consider going to Amazon or Barnes and Noble for the full download...thanks!

Chapter 1

May 1

Amanda Lawton sagged sideways, groggy and disoriented, her blonde hair hanging in sweaty strings in front of her eyes. The heavy duct tape attaching her arms and legs to the wooden chair was all that kept her from falling to the cold, cement floor. She shot a pleading look at her captor, trying to focus on him through the disorienting effects of fatigue, hunger, and the drugs he’d forced on her. The thin man swam in and out of focus, moving around in her field of vision like a jittery Casper, although he was not a ghost, and he certainly wasn’t friendly.

This new room he’d moved her to—she thought it might be one of those aluminum-sided rental storage places—yawed and buckled in her watery eyesight. This must be what it feels like to be adrift on a small boat in heavy seas. Her stomach lurched. She thought she might puke. Please don’t let him gag me.

Her captor wrapped a final strip of the reinforced tape around each of her legs until they were completely immobile, then stepped back to admire his handiwork. Amanda knew this was her chance, probably her last chance, to beg for her life and her freedom. Maybe she could play on his sympathies, if he had any, and his humanity—if he was actually human—to plead with him to let her go.

She sat silently, though, trying to focus her gaze on him and failing, attempting to sit up in her chair and failing at that, too. What could she possibly say to him that she hadn’t already said? What pleas could she try? What promises could she make? Over the past week, the nightmarish seven days that had seemed like an eternity, Amanda had begged and reasoned, threatened and cried.

Nothing had worked. Nothing had made a bit of difference. He’d handcuffed her to a filthy little bed in the damp, nasty basement of his crumbling house, taking her when he wanted her in all sorts of different ways, feeding her when he felt like it, making her beg for the bathroom, in general, treating her like an animal or a piece of garbage while lovingly whispering words in her ear that were totally inconsistent with his treatment of her.

Amanda was in despair. Why had she let him grab her and throw her into his truck? How could she have been so careless? She would never again see her home. She would never again see her boyfriend or her parents or her college roommates. She would never hang out at the pizzeria in her tiny hometown, listening to music on the old-fashioned jukebox and teasing the local boys by wearing tight jeans and tank tops. She would simply disappear.

I guess I already have.

Amanda Lawton began to cry. She hadn’t thought it possible, she thought she had exhausted her tears at least three days ago. She had no words left to plead with her captor, but the tears came of their own accord. She cherished the tears. The tears meant that, somewhere deep inside the terrified shell of her former self, there was a sliver of hope, a dream that she might still escape the fate laid out for her by this awful man.

She was wrong.

Her captor stood and watched her cry, impassive and unmoved. He raised his arm slowly and pointed to one side of the tiny enclosure. Amanda tried to follow his gesture, which required intense concentration thanks to the cocktail of drugs she had been forced to take before he brought her to this new prison. “See the tiles on these walls?” he asked.

Amanda shook her head, trying to clear it. Why would he think she cared about the walls?

“Do you see them?” he repeated, the annoyance clear in his tone.

Amanda nodded, stifling a sob, still confused. “Yes, I see the tiles on the wall.”

“Good. These are professional-grade acoustical tiles, very expensive and very effective at accomplishing their purpose. And do you know what that purpose might be?”

Amanda shook her head again, confused and disoriented, but not so confused that she couldn’t tell he was playing with her, taunting her. Somehow this meaningless little humiliation hurt worse than all the indignities he had forced on her over the past week. It was the last straw.

She closed her eyes and sniffled as the tears came harder. She knew the man well enough by now to know this would only infuriate him, but she couldn’t help it. Of course, she was right.

“Answer me!” he shouted. “What is the purpose of these incredibly expensive tiles?”

“I don’t know.” Amanda sobbed, not wanting to die but wishing that, if his plan was to kill her, he would just hurry up and do it already.

“Thank you,” the man said with exaggerated politeness. “Now, was that so hard?” The swiftness of his mood changes was unpredictable and frightening. “Since you’re now showing an interest, I’ll tell you. Those professional-grade acoustical tiles are so expensive because they are extremely effective at muffling noise and preventing it from leaving this room. Radio stations and music studios use them to preserve the integrity of the recording and broadcasting process, and the people I deal with use them to preserve the integrity of their operation, which, in this case, means not allowing anyone outside of this room know that you are here inside it.

“Now, in case you’re wondering, and undoubtedly you are, this little “office,” as I like to call it, is located in an out-of-the-way area surprisingly free of traffic. Not many people come here at all, either by car or on foot. But in the event someone does pass by while you’re here, you can scream all you want at the loudest volume you can manage, and all you will achieve for your effort will be a set of strained vocal cords.

“My point, sweetheart, in case you are so addled by my drugs you need me to explain it, is that, even though I will be leaving soon, and I’m not sure how exactly long you’ll be here, it will do you no good to call for help. It would be a pointless waste of effort and would only serve to tire you out for no good reason. There is a bright side, however. I know you fear for your life, but you needn’t. My home was merely a waypoint for you, and your stay, as pleasant as it was for both of us, represented no more than a temporary interlude for you before continuing your journey to your new, permanent home.”

Amanda shook her head. “Permanent home?”

“That’s right. I’m not exactly sure where you’re going. It might be the frozen wastelands of Russia or the deserts of the Middle East. It all depends upon who my contacts are currently negotiating with, but I can tell you it won’t be here in the United States, or even on the North American continent. That would be too risky for all involved. Do you understand?”

Amanda nodded. She understood. She wished she didn’t, but she did. She tried again to raise her sagging body and sit upright in the chair. It wasn’t easy, with all four limbs duct-taped to a big, wooden monstrosity that looked like an electric chair—not to mention with the drugs coursing through her body. She strained and worked and eventually managed it, and she felt marginally more comfortable. But the tiny enclosure with no windows felt like an oven.

Her stomach lurched again. Sweat streamed down Amanda’s forehead and into her eyes, stinging them and mixing with her tears, and her vision jumped and blurred. She vaguely registered her scraggly captor turning and walking toward the door.

At least it looked as though there would be no gag stuffed into her mouth—why bother if nobody could hear her scream anyway? When he reached the door and swung it open, taking one last long look back at her, she threw up all over the floor.

Her captor shook his head in silent rebuke and walked out the door into the bright May sunshine. It slanted in through the open door for just a moment like an unfulfilled promise, and Amanda wondered if she would ever see the sun again. He closed and locked the door. She waited to hear the sound of his rattletrap truck starting up, of him driving away, but she didn’t hear a thing. Of course, the incredibly expensive acoustical soundproofing tiles.

She counted to one hundred in her head, nice and slow, and when she was sure he must be gone, she tested his theory about the tiles. Amanda Lawton screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And he must have been right. Because nobody came.

-----

Chapter Two to follow tomorrow...

Purchase links are available at http://www.allanleverone.com/, as well as http://www.amazon.com/The-Lonely-Mile-ebook/dp/B005DAX06I and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lonley-mile-allan-leverone/1104328433

Dinosaurs and the Borders Closure

2011-07-18T20:29:00.000-04:00

I don't claim to be a business expert, okay? I'm lucky if I can match my khakis with my golf shirt without benefit of helpful Garanimals. So I don't mean to imply that I could be CEO of anything, particularly a business facing the challenges bookstore chains and publishers are facing in today's rapidly changing environment.

But I read a statement today that literally made my jaw drop, or at least hang open for a few seconds, giving me the look of a mouth-breathing idiot. Even more so than usual.

Inside a Wall Street Journal article by Mike Spector and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg discussing the pending closure of the remaining 399 Borders stores, which will result in 10,700 people losing their jobs, was the following statement: "The chain's demise could speed the decline in sales of hardcover and paperback books as consumers increasingly turn to downloading electronic books or having physical books mailed to their doorsteps."

Or, as explained by CEO of Hatchette Book Group, David Young: "When you lose literally miles of bookshelves, it's going to have an impact."

Am I the only one who sees the tail wagging the dog here? It amazes me that something which seems so obvious to me has apparently escaped the attention of both the people who write about the business side of books and the people who run the business side of books.

And that is this:

Readers aren't going to begin downloading more ebooks because the Borders chain is closing, it's the other way around. The Borders chain is closing because people are downloading more ebooks!

In my opinion, this perfectly illustrates the disconnect that will doom the dinosaurs of the publishing world, those publishers and booksellers who just simply cannot grasp that the literary universe has changed (not is changing, has changed) in a very fundamental way, and is never going back. Things will never be the way they were for hundreds of years; that ship has sailed and isn't coming back.

The ability or inability of the largest publishers and booksellers to adjust to these changes will ultimately play the dominant role in determining which of them will survive and in what form. Everybody knows that. The problem is, the more hide-bound and entrenched the organization, the harder it is to effect that change. It takes a lot longer for an aircraft carrier to change course than a speedboat.

I don't mean to imply that there was no understanding of publishing's new realities at the top of the Borders food chain specifically; it's entirely possible upper management did everything they could to help the company survive and just weren't able to pull it off.

And the apparent misunderstanding of the primary cause of Borders' demise by the article's authors is pretty harmless, too. But if I was employed by Hatchette Book Group and I read the quote attributed to their CEO, David Young, I would be pretty freaking nervous right now. Might be time to get a jump on things and start polishing up the ol' resume, before that Hatchette falls. On their heads.

JK Rowling and Life After Harry Potter

2011-07-13T16:35:00.000-04:00

A couple of days ago I read an article about JK Rowling, in which the Harry Potter creator says she has written lots of material since the publication of the final Potter book in 2007, but "wanted the last film out of the way before I made any moves on the publishing front."

Obviously, marketing must have played a role in that decision. Any book Rowling releases will be the subject of a massive publicity blitz, and media scrutiny rarely seen in the literary world, two things that would likely serve only to take attention away from the Potter films, possibly costing Rowling and others mountains of money.

But I wonder if there weren't other factors involved in her decision as well. What do you do if you are the creator of arguably the world's most commercially successful literary character? How do you follow that up? Where do you go when you're already on top of the world?

The Harry Potter universe has spawned an army of adoring fanatics, people who are bound to view any Rowling creation that follows the Potter books with suspicion or even outright disdain, measuring any book that follows against an unrealistic yardstick.

So where do you go from here if you're JK Rowling? Do you create another fantasy universe or do you go off in another direction entirely?

Whatever JK Rowling decided to do - and the decision was apparently made years ago, as she continued writing after finishing the Potter series - she has the luxury of being able to satisfy only her own creative desires. She's richer than the queen of England, literally, and should remain so regardless of the fate of whatever she writes from here on out.

It's a problem I wouldn't mind having, and yet I can't help but wonder how uncomfortable a time it will be for JK Rowling as she approaches Life After Harry. My guess is she hasn't felt this uncertain since she was the only person in the world who had ever heard the name Harry Potter.

Free Casey Anthony Immediately!

2011-07-06T15:05:00.002-04:00

As I write this, a travesty of epic proportion is occurring in this country, an injustice that must be remedied immediately. An innocent young woman - sorry, a "not-guilty" slut* - sits in a jail cell, falsely imprisoned for a crime she did not commit. Or at least, acquitted of a crime everyone who has been paying attention - except twelve people - knows she committed but the state couldn't prove.

In any event, this young woman - sorry, this "not-guilty" slut* - was convicted of nothing more than lying to police investigators, and, what the hell, everyone does that, right? Everybody lies to the cops. Caught speeding? Sorry, officer, I was late for work. Possession with intent to sell? Nah, come on, gimme a break, it was just for my personal use.

Besides, the innocent young woman - sorry, I keep making that mistake, the "not-guilty" slut* - suffers from the affliction of being a pathological liar**. The good folks at Merriam-Webster define "pathological" as "altered or caused by disease," or "being such to a degree that is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal."

Obviously, it would be unfair to expect a pathological liar** to tell the truth, particularly to law enforcement investigators who are desperate to find the innocent young woman's - sorry, did it again, "not-guilty" slut's* - missing child, who has been gone for over thirty days and the pathological liar** supposedly has no clue where she is.

Or maybe she really does know? She's a pathololgical liar**, after all, so who can say for sure?

In any event, all these messy charges involving a two year old child being murdered by the one person who is supposed to protect her, the tiny decomposing body stuffed into a laundry bag and carried around in the innocent young woman's - oops, the "not-guilty" slut's* - car before being dumped in a swamp like so much garbage, while she partied thirty nights away, no longer apply.

The unjust imprisonment of the innocent young woman - sorry, the "not-guilty" slut* - must end. Immediately. The definition of the word "slut" - again, according to the good folks at Merrian-Webster, is "a promiscuous woman, especially, prostitute."

Obviously, forcing this slut* to sit in jail for three years for a crime of which she is innocent - sorry, "not-guilty" - is a travesty of justice which must be rectified immediately. It is unfair in the extreme to expect a slut* to sit in jail, denied the companionship (at least of the male variety) she so much desires.

Release Casey Anthony immediately. There are clubs to dance in. There are hot body contests to compete in. There is a "beautiful life" to be lived. Well, at least for her.

---

*Slut - This is an indisputable legal fact, so entered into the record by Casey Anthony's own defense team.

**Pathological liar - This, too, is an indisputable legal fact, also entered into the record by Casey Anthony's own defense team.

JK Rowling says, "Bookstore? I don't need no stinking bookstore!"

2011-06-25T14:34:00.000-04:00

I love bookstores. I've been an avid reader since I was a little kid, and anyone who loves books will be able to relate when I say there aren't many things better in life than spending a couple of hours browsing through the new releases, trying to decide what to buy next.

I mention this as a preface to the following question: What obligation does an author have to try to support bookstores, the vast majority of which are struggling mightily, caught between a down economy and the ebook publishing revolution?

As basically an outsider to the debate (my debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR, was published in ebook form only, as will be my followup, THE LONELY MILE, at least for the time being), I can't help but be amused by the bookstores' hysterical reaction to the news out of Merrie Olde England that JK Rowling intends to make the ebook editions of her smash Harry Potter series available ONLY through her own Pottermore website, bypassing not just Amazon, but the brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble, Borders, Waterstone's, and all other physical booksellers.

Why am I amused? Because as a mostly unknown author it would be ~~just about~~ impossible for me to have ink-and-paper editions of my upcoming StoneHouse Ink thriller, THE LONELY MILE, stocked in any of the gigantic chain stores, even if there were ink-and-paper editions to sell, even in my own local area.

Space is limited in a bookstore, obviously, and why would Barnes and Noble allot any of that valuable space to an author most people have never heard of? Even if I begged and groveled? It's a financial reality that the bookstores have to allot space to the books they believe will best sell. In genre fiction, that means stocking the biggest names only.

Nothing personal; it's just business. It only makes sense from a financial perspective.

But of course, JK Rowling is one of those "biggest names." She might just be the biggest of the biggest names. The launches of her Potter books have been EVENTS, each one more gigantic than the last, with anxious and adoring fans lined up around the block outside the stores, waiting breathlessly for the midnight opening of the store on release day, so they could rush in and spend their money on the latest Harry Potter adventure.

But here's the rub, the thing I find so deliciously ironic. JK Rowling is the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room. I don't mean that literally - she looks quite lovely - but in a very real way she has outgrown the need for bookstores or anyone else to help sell electronic editions of her work. The very thing that made her book releases so attractive to bookstores - her unparallelled popularity - has made her realize there is no reason to share any of the take with bookstores or anyone else.

I'm sure there's nothing personal; it's just business. It only makes sense from a financial perspective.

So all of this leads back to my original question: Does JK Rowling - or any author, for that matter - have any obligation to support brick-and-mortar bookstores? Or does the continuing rise of ebook popularity mean the symbiotic relationship between authors and bookstores is doomed?

A Locke to join the club

2011-06-21T18:27:00.000-04:00

Let's play a little game. I'm going to throw the names of a few authors out there, and you tell me which one doesn't fit with the others.

Ready?

Okay, here we go: James Patterson. Nora Roberts. Lee Child. Michael Connelly. John Locke.

Any thoughts? Which one doesn't fit?

Okay, okay, I'll come clean. I cheated. The answer is that there is no name out of the above five that doesn't fit with the others. Those five, along with Stieg Larsson, Charlaine Harris and Suzanne Collins, make up the Kindle Million Club, that is, the eight authors who have sold over a million Kindle books.

So all of those authors fit with the others, but there is one who is different. John Locke. If you're a mystery/thriller reader, maybe you recognize the name; maybe you've even read one or more of his books. But if you're not, the name likely means nothing to you.

That's because, although the other seven members of the Kindle Million Club are established, world-famous authors with the backing of large publishers and promotional budgets, John Locke is independently published - what used to be known, in the olden days of a year or two ago, as self-published. In other words, he did it himself. No Random House. No Penguin. No Ballantine. Just John Locke.

According to the Kindle Direct Publishing newsletter, as of two days ago, June 19, John Locke had sold 1,010,370 Kindle books, joining the other seven names mentioned above in the rapidly-growing club of authors who have sold over a million Kindle books. Around a year ago, James Patterson became the founding member.

But the name John Locke is a groundbreaking one because he is the first independently published million-selling Kindle author, although he undoubtedly will not be the last. My understanding is that my friend and fellow StoneHouse author Vincent Zandri is well over a third of the way there, and with new Zandri books coming out at a dizzying pace - I'm convinced there are really three Vincent Zandri's, each one typing madly away in an office somewhere - Vin is practically a lock to reach the club at some point in the not-too-distant future, too.

If you take a quick glance at the Amazon bestselling lists or the John Locke page, you will notice immediately that John Locke's books sell for considerably less than the other seven members of the club, many of them for a lot less. As an independent (self) publisher, one person controls the pricing of John Locke's books - John Locke.

And although a price point of 99 cents might seem ridiculously low, like he is practically giving his work away, a little quick math tells you that with a thirty percent royalty from Amazon on books priced at 99 cents, even if every single one of John Locke's book sales occurred at that price, the man has earned $303,093.00 from his work, almost all of it in the last year.

Giving away his work? Doesn't seem like it with those numbers, does it?

As a fellow thriller author whose first book, FINAL VECTOR, was published by an Indie publisher, Medallion Press, and whose second book, THE LONELY MILE, will be released this summer by another Indie publisher, StoneHouse Ink, and whose first horror novella, DARKNESS FALLS, will be published in September by highly-regarded horror Indie publisher Delirium Books, I look at those numbers closely. I gaze lovingly at them, like a new mother at her swaddled infant, imagining what might be.

Would I love to get a contract with Random House? Duh. Of course I would. Do I feel it's necessary to get a contract with Random House to develop a readership and brisk sales for my work? Absolutely not.

Thank you, John Locke. Congratulations on joining those other famous names in the Kindle Million Club, and I hope your success continues. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an inspiration.

Euphoric Cleveland celebrates NBA Championship

2011-06-13T19:46:00.001-04:00

Law enforcement authorities last night praised Cleveland sports fans for their orderly behavior as the city celebrated its first professional sports championship in nearly a half-century, after the Dallas Mavericks dispatched the Miami Heat in six games to win the NBA Championship.

"Fans of the underdog everywhere can appreciate this," one exultant partier exclaimed. When reminded it wasn't actually a Cleveland team that won the series, he said, "Well, no, of course not. But here in Cleveland we still look at this as a victory. When you haven't won a championship in any major professional sport since 1964, you take what you can get."

There were scattered reports throughout the city of the occasional spontaneous Lebron jersey-burning, causing mild concern from fire enforcement officials. "Obviously," one firefighter said, "we don't ever condone bonfires in the city, but you can't really blame people from celebrating, given the circumstances."

He went on to add, "The thing that surprises me is that there were so many of those damned things left after last spring, when you couldn't swing a dead cat around here without coming across another flaming Lebron James jersey."

A high-ranking figure in Cleveland city government, who spoke to this reporter only after receiving assurances of anonymity, said, "Let's face it, of course we'd prefer to see the Cavs win a championship, but at this point, we're not that fussy. We just want to celebrate. I'm thinking of taking my partying talents to South Beach just to keep the celebration going."

Perhaps one delirious fan put it best when he said, "This is the best feeling ever! I can't wait until next year to make it two in a row. I know it's not easy to win back-to-back titles, but since we only need one of twenty-nine teams to win, I like our chances."

Review of NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM, by Julia Madeleine

2011-06-07T19:03:00.000-04:00

Justine Jameson has her share of problems. She's a teenage single mother of an infant baby, recently moved back in with her father and stepmother after the failure of her relationship with the baby's father. Her parents' relationship is hanging by a thread, as is her father's business.

And that's not the worst of it. Justine hears things; voices in her head warning her of a horrible fate awaiting her child, warning her she is incapable of caring for a baby, making her fear for her very sanity.

When the dysunctional family buys a recently foreclosed home in a tiny, isolated New York town, things go from bad to worse for Justine. Her father works long hours attempting to save his business, her self-involved stepmother disappears for long stretches at a time, and Justine feels isolated and alone until she meets Rory Madden, a bad-boy Irish expatriate who sweeps her off her feet.

But Rory Madden may not be exactly what - or who - he appears. His past is one of violence and deception, and his motives are unclear, at least to Justine. When she discovers a strange text message on her stepmother's cell phone, a deadly chain of events is set into motion that threatens everything Justine Jameson holds dear, and death and destruction lurks around every corner.

NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM is Julia Madeleine's second book, and it is written with an eye for detail that draws the reader into the plot. As the wheels of apparent coincidence and ill will begin to turn faster and faster, the suspense builds until the reader is left turning pages in a breathless attempt to discover who - if anyone - will survive a violent showdown.

The characters are layered, developed fully and richly, and every one of them has a secret which influences their actions. It is this fully developed characterization which, more than anything else, draws the reader in and makes him care about the outcome of the book, which remains in doubt right up until the very end.

Julia Madeleine is a name to watch, and NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM is a winner.

Review of LIQUID FEAR, by Scott Nicholson

2011-06-03T21:01:00.000-04:00

A girl brutally murdered in a motel room, the corpse discovered by a man who may or may not be who he thinks he is.

A meeting between two old friends in a coffee shop, interrupted by a driverless car smashing through the wall, barely avoiding crushing them to death.

A long-ago clinical trial of an experimental drug which may or may not have been responsible for a young girl's death; a trial which may or may not have been abandoned by the scientist in charge of the research.

These are the seemingly unrelated events that form the basis for LIQUID FEAR, the new thriller from author Scott Nicholson, the prolific horror/thriller author of such genre standouts as DISINTEGRATION, SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD and THEY HUNGER, among many others.

This book is as timely and relevent as it is exciting and pulse-pounding. Barely a week goes by without the shocking news of another drug originally approved for use, then pulled off the market due to unexpected and dangerous side effects.

LIQUID FEAR builds on that premise, offering up a psychotically driven researcher who doesn't know when to quit, an upwardly mobile politician, and a group of drug trial subjects a decade removed from an experience they would love to leave in the past but can't quite figure out how to manage it.

The goal of any thriller is to draw the reader into the plot, making him care about the characters and continue turning the pages relentlessly, holding his breath to see what will happen next. Scott Nicholson accomplishes all this and more in LIQUID FEAR, crafting a novel you won't want to put down until you turn the last page.

I highly recommend this book. You'll never look at your prescription medication in quite the same way again.

Interview with noir/crime author Julia Madeleine

2011-05-31T12:37:00.001-04:00

One thing I've learned about the writing community as I've taken this journey to publication is that it's filled with some very cool, interesting people. The stories of some of these authors would rival the stories in their books, and over the past couple of years I have made connections and struck up friendships with people I would never have imagined.

One of those people is noir/crime author Julia Madeleine. A tattoo artist from north of the border, Madeleine owns a small business with her husband, and in her down time writes some of the most dark and disturbing fiction you will find this side of your trusty Edgar Allan Poe collection.

Julia Madeleine was a finalist for a 2011 Derringer Award this past spring, and her second novel, NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM, is available now. She has very bravely agreed to join me for an interview, despite my well-known penchant for putting authors through the ringer. Or at least asking them a few questions.

You are the Canadian daughter of Irish immigrant parents, and the plot of NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM is driven by Irish expatriate gang member Rory Madden. How much of your real-life upbringing is reflected in your work?

As a kid I heard (and overheard) a great deal about the Troubles in Belfast from my parents, and Grandparents when they visited from Ireland. So that, and listening to my parents Irish lingo all my life, making my bad guy from over there was quite instinctive I think. I’d wanted to make the antagonist a foreigner and what better foreigner than one you’re familiar with. At least the Irish part. Unfortunately there were no actual gang members in my family or I’d have moved in with them and taken over their sofa while writing this manuscript.

Your first book, SCARLET ROSE, was published by Black Heart Books in 2008. How long have you known you wanted to write crime fiction, and what prompted you to finally try?

You know I never set out to try and write in that thriller/crime-fiction genre. In my teens and my early twenties I was into horror; Anne Rice, Stephen King, Koontz. I wrote a lot of supernatural type stories at the time. Then in college my tastes in fiction evolved. When I got the idea for Scarlet Rose, about fifteen years ago, I was more into reading literary fiction. Yet here I was creating these really dark characters and writing about murders. I just didn’t realize it was crime fiction until much later when someone actually pointed it out to me.

There are some outstanding female crime fiction writers, but as a woman writing in this field, you are definitely in the minority. Who are some of the writers you consider role models?

My writing role models are not so much in the crime fiction genre. I’m sure my greatest influences have been Mary Gaitskill, Heather O’Neill, Janet Fitch, Evelyn Lau, Joyce Carol Oates. Wow, those are all women. Ok, well I did read a lot of Poe and King growing up. So I’m sure they’ve been an influence on me as they have with a lot of writers.

What is your favorite part of the writing process? What is your least-favorite?

Creating the story, when ideas just flow with ease. That’s really exciting. My least favourite aspect of writing would be reading and re-reading the same passages over and over looking for type-os. It’s maddening. I have nightmares about misspelled words hiding in my sentences. I swear they crop overnight like weeds.

Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what would be a couple of typical songs you might have playing in the background while penning stories of murder and mayhem?

I listen to classical music when I write because it’s unobtrusive. I love the cello and in particular Yo-Yo Ma. He’s an amazing musician. I also love listening to Andrea Bocelli. It sets the perfect mood for me.

As a 2011 Derringer Award Finalist for excellence in short mystery fiction, you obviously write a mean short story. Which gives you greater satisfaction, writing novels or short stories?

Short stories are like instant gratification. I really enjoy writing flash fiction. It appeals to my short attention span. But I think writing novel length manuscripts are far more rewarding. I enjoy character development and it’s difficult to get deep into a character in a short piece the way you can with full length novels. Sometimes I like writing short stories as a distraction from working on my manuscript because, quite frankly, it’s a hell of a lot of work. Having said that, the manuscript I’m currently working on is all consuming and it’s got me really fired up so I’m trying hard not to take any time away from it to write short stories. But those flash pieces are like chocolate brownies when you’re on a diet; hard to resist.

What’s next in the pipeline for Julia Madeleine?

This would be the manuscript that’s got me all fired up like nothing else I’ve written. Recently I had this crazy dream—a nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night. My first thought was, wow that would make a great story! And then my next thought was no, it’s way too scary for me to write. Like Silence Of The Lambs scary. When I told my husband about the dream, he said it was such a great idea I’d be crazy not to write it. So with a little push from him, I’m now writing that story and it’s scaring the hell out of me. So much so that one afternoon I spotted the same kind of vehicle that the bad guy in my story drives around in, parked outside my work and I actually gasped. My husband laughs at me. But it’s cool when I tell people the premise and they get these physical reactions of revulsion, it’s like a compass that shows me I’m on the right track. I’m having a lot of fun with it.

Hypothetical situation #1: You are marooned on a desert island but before your ship sinks, you’re allowed to grab one book of your choosing. What book would that be?

A thesaurus. I couldn’t live without one.

Hypothetical situation #2: You are given a choice by the Gods of Publishing. Your books can either bring you tremendous monetary wealth or they can be universally acclaimed as outstanding by the critics. Which do you choose, and why?

I’d definitely choose wealth over fame. While receiving critical acclaim would of course be fantastic and I would certainly be honoured if my writing ever received awards, greatness in the publishing industry has never been my ambition. Farley Mowat, who’s an icon of Canadian literature, recently said in an interview that he’s given up writing to paint houses because there’s more money in it. He’s 89. And he said he figures he can make more money painting three houses a year than if he wrote three best sellers. Now, while I do find that statement astonishing given the success some authors are having with eBooks., it’s an interesting example of how being an award winning author (he’s received the Governor General’s Award and a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame), doesn’t necessarily equate with book sales. Maybe Farley Mowat would have had more monetary success writing crime fiction.

So, yeah, give me the money. Because when I’m 89 I plan on chilling on a cruise ship sucking back Margaritas while Speedo-wearing Pool Boy dances for me between foot massages. The only paint brush I’ll be picking up will be to polish my nails.

What are you reading right now? What’s next on your “To Be Read” list?

Currently I’m reading Diane Fanning’s true crime book Mommy’s Little Girl, about the Caylee Anthony case. I’ve also just started reading Frank Duffy’s Mountains Of Smoke and it’s awesome. And I’m just about to start reading Jenn Ashworth’s new book Cold Light. I read her debut A Kind Of Intimacy last year and loved it. I’d like to read more Andrew Vachss. I just recently discovered him and I really like his style. I’ve also got Final Vector on my to-read list.

Thanks for taking the time to visit A Thrill a Minute. Any last words of wisdom you’d like to share with my ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ ~~dozens~~ handful of readers?

Thanks for having me, Allan. I’d like everyone to know what a great writer and a really cool guy you are.

I'd like to point out, I didn't ~~ask~~ beg Julia for that compliment at the end of the interview and I don't have any evidence of some deep, dark secret from her past that I threatened to go public with. She's just that nice. Or that warped, I'll leave it up to you to decide.

I'm in the middle of reading NO ONE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM right now, and I will be posting a review when I've finished, but it's fair to say that Julia Madeleine has crafted a pulse-pounding book, with multi-layered characters and non-stop suspense. It's well worth your time and money.

Shame on you, Saint Anselm College

2011-05-29T19:40:00.000-04:00

My oldest child will be a college graduate soon.

Notice anything a little off about the above statement, aside from your very astute observation that I couldn't possibly be old enough to have fathered a college graduate?

Let me help you out. Most, if not all, colleges and universities hold their commencements prior to June. Saint Anselm College, the school my daughter has attended for the last four years, held their commencement exercises on May 21.

Why has my daughter not graduated yet? She fell three credits shy of the 120 required for graduation. That's one class, to you and me. One class over the course of four years.

Stefanie has already enrolled in a night class at St. A's to complete that requirement and will be an official college graduate in less than five weeks.

So, why the title of this post, you ask?

My daughter Stefanie was not permitted to attend the commencement exercises, unless she wanted to go as an observer. She was not permitted to walk across the stage and have her hard work over the last four years acknowledged; she was not permitted to wear a cap and gown; she was not permitted to share a very special moment with her friends and classmates. Nothing.

I know what you're thinking. "Well, she didn't complete the requirements. Why should she receive acknowledgement for something she hasn't accomplished yet?"

Here's why.

My child got pregnant during her junior year in high school. I know, her fault. Agreed. You learn from it and move on. She had the baby during her senior year, earned grades placing her on the honor roll the semester she delivered her baby, missed just two weeks of school after having the baby, returned to high school and graduated on time, with her class.

She started as a Freshman at St. Anselm College in the fall of 2007, living at home, raising a baby. While other students were deciding what color to paint their dorm rooms, Stefanie was changing diapers.

While other students were going out partying on Friday night, "unwinding" after their tough week of watching soap operas and hanging out and every so often going to class, Stefanie was staying up all night with a sick baby, taking her temperature or rubbing a tiny runny nose or rocking her to sleep.

While other students hung out in their dorm room or strolled across the campus to the coffee shop or went to concerts, Stefanie went to class and then rushed straight to work or straight home to care for her child, studying whenever she could, during naps or playtime.

In my mind it's an amazingly impressive accomplishment that this young single mother came as close as she did to graduating on time, with her class, given all that was on her plate, especially since she was taking a very difficult science major.

Saint Anselm College had every right to exclude my child from the graduation. After all, they set the requirements and she didn't quite meet them. But they missed a real opportunity to celebrate a student who has overcome tremendous odds to achieve success in a non-traditional way.

They didn't have to hand her a diploma during commencement; that would have been completely understandable. After all, she hasn't earned it. Yet. But to refuse her the chance to celebrate with her class when she has overcome so much in the last four years I believe to be small-minded and petty in the extreme.

Over the last couple of months Stefanie received countless "graduation" things in the mail, all of which were thrown in the trash because they didn't apply to her. Cap and gown measurements and order forms, commencement invitation forms, all kinds of things were sent to her in preparation for a graduation that she was not permitted to take part.

The fact that these things showed up in the mail at all was a stark testament to a college administration that didn't care enough about one of their students to simply take her name off the mailing list.

But my child never complained once; she did what she always does. She kept her head up and continued marching forward, thereby making herself the best kind of role model for her child, who is now four years old and smart as a whip.

Interestingly, on the Saint Anselm College website, they claim one of the foundations of campus life to be "The Benedictine Catholic tradition of nurturing human understanding through liberal education..." You'll have to pardon me if I question whether anyone in the school's administration really understands those words.

So there you have it. Shame on you, Saint Anselm College, for applying the rules so rigidly and indiscriminately that you failed to recognize grit and spirit and hard work when it was right there in front of your closed and uncaring eyes.

And by the way, all those cards and letters you keep sending me, asking for donations so you can continue your "mission" of educating the minds of young adults? You can forget about getting anything more from me. I would drive down the road throwing hundred dollar bills out my open window before I would give you another red cent.

Ever.

It's the end of the world as we know it

2011-05-21T00:05:00.000-04:00

It's not like we haven't gone through this before, right? If you've been alive any amount of time at all, surely you can recall passing signs plastered on lampposts, etc, warning you that you'd better get your shit together, because the end of the world was nigh, which, near as I can tell, means RIGHT FREAKING NOW!

So Harold Camping is just another in a long line of folks throwing a date for the End of the World out there, just to see if it sticks. Of course, the world is not going to end, just like it didn't the other four times he predicted it. I feel sort of bad for the guy. It obviously means a lot to him, and at age 89, you have to figure he's running out of chances.

But here's the thing: There is nothing new about people warning everyone else the world is about to end. Sure, in this age of instant communication, those doomsday pronouncers might be able to make a bigger splash a lot quicker than they could before, but it's been going on just about forever.

For example, around the year 90 AD Saint Clement 1 predicted the world would end basically at any moment. He was wrong, obviously, but his miscue didn't stop him from achieving sainthood, so what the hell did he care?

In the year 365, some guy named Hilary of Poitiers, no relation to Sidney Poitier as far as we know, got a wild hair and decided the world would end sometime in that year. Sorry, Hilary. You'd think the guy would have kept a low profile with a name as girlie as Hilary, but some people have no shame.

Both Sextus Julius Africanus and Hippolytus predicted the world would end in the year 500, presumably because of the roundness of the number. There was no Internet, no television and no Angry Birds, so these people had little else to do than sit around trying to outdo one another in their apocalyptic predictions, apparently.

An eclipse was spotted in the year 968 and interpreted by German Emperor Otto II as presaging the end of the world. There must have been other eclipses - I'm only 51 and I've lived through lots of eclipses - but for some reason this one freaked out Otto enough to lose all sense of perspective. See my above theory regarding the Internet, TV and Angry Birds.

In the year 992, reports out of Germany that three suns and three moons were fighting above the earth led many to believe the end of times was upon them. Obviously, someone was smoking something mighty powerful in Germany between 968 and 992.

In 1179, John of Toledo analyzed the planetary alignments and determined the end was to come in 1186. I've never been to Toledo, but I'm guessing this must have seemed an eternity to poor John.

Pope Innocent III added 666 years to the date of the founding of Islam, leading him to the conclusion the world would end in 1284, and leading everyone else to the conclusion that he should maybe have picked a different name.

Melchior Hoffman predicted Jesus would return a millenium and a half after his execution, which of course would be in the year 1533. No explanation why he would pick a millenium and a half, other than it was during his lifetime. Unfortunately for Melchior, lots of people took exception to his prediction and he was placed under arrest, where he died in a German jail. There's that German connection again.

In Russia, a group called the "Old Believers" were convinced the world would end in 1669. 20,000 of them burned themselves to death between 1669 and 1690 to protect themselves from the antichrist. The rest should have died of embarrassment - if I had made it through 1669 okay, I would have been celebrating, not setting myself on fire.

William Miller, founder of the Millerite movement, initially predicted Jesus' return on March 21, 1843. When William was left hanging, he did some quick recalculating and determined the real date of the return would be October 22, 1844. He was once again disappointed, as were all the people who had sold all their property and quit their jobs in preparation for the second coming.

Mother Shipton, an 18th century mystic, unleashed on the world the following poetical gem: "The world to an end shall come, in eighteen hundred and eighty-one." She would have made a lousy rapper, and was apparently no better as a mystic.

Jehovah's Witnesses named 1914 as the start of Armageddon. When the year came and went with no discernible changes, they decided 1914 was the year Jesus began his rule invisibly. Which, if you're a believer, is already the case, isn't it?

In 1919, meteorologist Albert Porta predicted that six planets would align in such a way as to make a magnetic current which would force the sun to explode, engulfing the earth in flames on December 17. I'm guessing Albert was a lot of fun at parties. Also, he probably did his Christmas shopping late that year.

This is by no means a complete list of all the end times predicitions we've had to suffer through; adding all of Harold Camping's alone to this list would take a while. And I don't mean to poke fun at anyone's beliefs; if you're bound and determined that six o'clock tonight will mark the beginning of the end, have at it.

Just don't come back to me next year with a new, updated prediction.

Sometimes, you CAN judge a book by its cover

2011-05-08T20:26:00.001-04:00

Interesting post by Joelle Charbonneau at Do Some Damage today. In it, she wonders about the effectiveness of cover art for e-books. What's the point, she wonders?

With physical books, the covers provide a very specific purpose - to draw the reader in, to make her curious about the book, to get her to open it up and skim through the pages, with the ultimate goal, of course, being to interest her enough to make a sale.

But with ebooks, there are no readers wandering through the bookstore, pulling your book out and examining the cover. There's no physical book at all!

It's a really good question, and one I wondered about myself for quite a while. My answer is a long one, though, so I thought instead of writing an endless comment at Do Some Damage, I would write a post on the subject myself.

You may or may not know the history of my debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR. I originally signed with the publisher, Medallion Press, for a mass-market paperback edition of the book. A few months after signing the contract, however, and almost a year before the book's release, Medallion bowed to the new realities of the publishing world and eliminated mass-market paperbacks entirely, choosing instead to publish ebook editions of those books slated for MMPB.

This gives me an interesting perspective, because although FINAL VECTOR was released this past February as an ebook, the cover art was designed to be placed atop a paperback book.

And it's a damned good cover, I think. I've gotten literally dozens of compliments on it, and although I had nothing to do with it beyond providing some ideas, I believe it represents the book well.

That's the point. Although you will not find a single copy of FINAL VECTOR in your local bookstore, the cover still matters, for a couple of very important reasons:

1) First impressions still matter, whether the book is inked onto dead trees or transmitted through the Interwebs to your handy dandy reading device. Whether the reader finds out about FINAL VECTOR through the "Readers who bought (X) also bought" feature at Amazon, or through a review they read, or a blog post, or whatever, they will still form a powerful first impression when they see the cover art.

A cover that appears sloppily designed or unimaginative or generic will likely not invite the reader to check out the book further, and will leave certain negative impressions foremost in their minds, both about the book and the author.

On the other hand, cover art that is interesting or entertaining or different may just convince the reader to pursue the book further, maybe check out an excerpt, which is exactly what I'm going for as an author, particularly an author most people have probably not heard of.

2) Ideally, the cover should give a potential reader some idea of what she's getting herself into when she downloads the ebook.

The design for my upcoming release from StoneHouse Ink, THE LONELY MILE, captures the feeling of the book perfectly, and in several different ways. In the book, a divorced father faces what might just be every dad's worst nightmare: His own teenage daughter is kidnapped by a sociopathic killer, and he's responsible.

The cover is meant to evoke a feeling of brooding, of darkness, of a man facing a gathering storm alone. Check it out, and tell me if you aren't left with that exact impression.

Same thing for the cover of my September horror novella release from Delirium Books, DARKNESS FALLS. The plot revolves around a big old farmhouse whose owner went insane twenty years ago and savagely murdered the main character's entire family while he was at school. My protagonist's name is Tyler Beckman, but the star of the novella is really the house - it stands at the heart of the entire story and drives the plot.

So when the folks at Delirium asked for my input on the cover art, I immediately thought of a creaky farmhouse, dark and disturbing, with ghostly-looking windows and an overgrown yard. My goal was to draw the potential reader's attention and at the same time try to pass along a little taste of what the book is all about.

So that's my answer, Joelle: Yes, the cover of an ebook is absolutely as critical to the book's success as the cover of a mass-market paperback, trade paperback, or hardcover offering. You can write prose like a master, but if the outside of your book turns people off to the point they're not willing to try it, no one will ever know.

This Guy Knows Better Than You...He's More "Serious," Too

2011-04-19T20:39:00.000-04:00

I'm concerned about Bill Henderson.

Who is Bill Henderson, you ask? I don't know. I've never heard of him until today. But when you occupy a perch as lofty as Bill Henderson's, looking down on the rest of us inferior beings, it's a long way to fall, so I hope he doesn't get hurt if he slips.

Bill Henderson wrote a piece in the April 11 edition of Publisher's Weekly, where he advanced an alternative viewpoint to the generally positive reaction electronic reading devices have received as they have grown in popularity. You can read Mr. Henderson's entire piece here, if you're interested.

As an author whose first book is available solely in electronic format, and whose second book will also be available solely in ebook form, at least for a while, you would probably be unsurprised to discover I have a different viewpoint than Bill Henderson. But to each his own, right? There's plenty of room in the world for all manner of opposing viewpoints, right?

Well, apparently not to Bill Henderson. In the style typical of a person who considers himself superior to you and me, he makes arguments based on that perceived superiority. First, he quotes a book claiming that after years of digital addiction, we are becoming a society of "digital scatterbrains...even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb."

I have a couple of observations regarding this argument, and I realize we're already into the sixth paragraph of this blog post, so I hope you're still with me. But Bill Henderson offers no proof in support of the above argument. It appears in a 2010 book by Nicholas Carr, and if Mr. Carr provides tangible proof of this charge in his book, it wasn't transferred to Bill Henderson's PW piece. It's nothing more than the opinion of some guy that appeared in a (presumably) non-fiction book.

But here's the thing: Even if you grant Henderson's premise, I can, and will, make the argument that the proliferation of digital books and ereaders may actually reverse that trend. How? If the current generation of children and young adults has spent their lifetimes with their noses stuck inside computers and digital games, etc., as most would agree is the case, wouldn't it stand to reason that books available on digital devices might have a greater appeal to that segment of the population?

And if those books have a greater appeal, doesn't it make sense that at least some of these "at-risk" people (remember, this is Bill Henderson's premise, not mine) would benefit from exposure to books available electronically, discovering reading and thus teaching their "scattered" brains to absorb more than three or four paragraphs at a time?

Henderson's second argument, in my opinion, is the one that cements him as a guy with a serious superiority complex. Just so you don't think I'm exaggerating, here is the argument, in his own words. "...what serious writer would create exclusively for an ereader?"

Translation: "I'm a 'serious' writer and I hate ereaders, so the rest of you mere mortals should hate them, too. Trust me; I know what's best for you."

The notion that you're not a "real" writer if your words do not appear in ink on dead trees is pretty old-school for a guy who seems to view himself as an advanced thinker. And I have news for you, Mr. Henderson. I'm pretty serious about my work, too. Of course, (hold your nose while you read this part, Mr. Henderson) I write thrillers and horror - you know, the sort of lowbrow drivel you wouldn't waste your time reading - so I'm obviously not a "real" writer, anyway.

In Henderson's final argument, he takes on the notion that we are somehow saving trees by using ereaders as opposed to ink and paper. It's an interesting argument, and he quite correctly notes that any eco-benefits ereaders provide by saving trees might well be more than offset by the energy and materials required to manufacture and power those devices.

But again, we disagree on the interpretation of this argument. Henderson claims it takes 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water, to "refine the minerals and produce the battery and printed writing" in a typical ereader. But here's what it takes to produce a book: "recycled paper, a dash of minerals, and two gallons of water."

I'll have to take his word for it, because Mr. Henderson offers no proof of any of these numbers. But, again, even if you accept them as being correct, there is more than one way of looking at it. I have roughly forty books on my Kindle, which means that, using Henderson's own numbers, I have actually saved one gallon of the earth's precious water with my Kindle.

And nowhere does he offer the definition of a "dash" of minerals, so I'm unable to make a reasonable comparison there. But the point is that you don't put just one book on your ereader, you put many. Dozens, hundreds even, so comparing the energy it takes to manufacture one ereader with the energy it takes to manufacture one book is a false and misleading argument.

It's clear Bill Henderson loves books, and I applaud him for that. I love books, too, I've been reading them my entire life and will continue reading them until the day I die. But is it really necessary to pit reader against reader? Can't you maybe admit, Mr. Bill Henderson, that your way isn't the only way? Can't you come down off your high horse and admit that?

Can't we readers all just get along?

You Know You're Getting Old When...

2011-04-16T20:59:00.000-04:00

My middle child turns twenty tomorrow, leading me to a couple of inescapable conclusions:

1) I'm old, and

2) I'm old.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I think it might have been WC Fields who said of aging, "It beats the alternative." I wholeheartedly agree, although at the moment I'm still reasonably healthy and have most of my marbles. If either of those things changes, maybe my viewpoint on the subject will change as well.

But this whole "getting older" stuff did start me thinking about how much things have changed in my lifetime. So here, without further ado, and because if I wait any longer I might forget what I'm writing about, is my list of Ways to Tell if you're Getting Old:

You know you're getting old when car commercials refer to the "command center" and you remember it as the "dashboard."

Of course, it didn't magically become the "command center." After "dashboard," some marketing genius undoubtedly came up with the brilliant notion that car companies could get away with charging more for a vehicle with an "instrument panel." In short order, "instrument panel" became "instrument cluster," which somewhere along the line morphed into "command center."

You'll notice that with all these changes, cars didn't get any cheaper.

You know you're getting old when you can vividly recall taking sides in the heated VHS/Betamax debate.

It seems almost quaint now, doesn't it? VHS or Betamax? I wonder if, three decades from now, people will be just as amused by our current Kindle/Nook flame wars.

You know you're getting old when you can remember dialing your phone by actually, you know, dialing your phone.

When I was a kid, we had one telephone in our house. It was big and black and it sat on the end of our kitchen counter, and you dialed it by sticking your finger in that plastic rotary thing (the dial) at the digit you wanted, and cranking it clockwise as far as it would go, then letting go. The plastic dial would spin around, and when it stopped, you would do the same thing again for the second digit in the phone number. And you would keep doing it until the telephone number had been completed.

God help you if the number was busy, because then you had to start the whole thing over again. Automatic redial? Forget it. Call waiting? Please. That would have been magic.

You know you're getting old when you remember "rap" as what your teacher did to your knuckles with a ruler when you weren't paying attention in class.

I don't know if education was any better when I went to school. Everyone seems to think it was, but I'm not so sure that's true. One thing I can tell you, though, is that it was a hell of a lot more painful.

You know you're getting old when you can remember filling your gas tank without maxing out your credit card.

Unfortunately, it might not be long before we're remembering fondly the days of $4.00 a gallon gas.

You know you're getting old when you remember getting your first color television and being absolutely certain TV could never get any better than this.

I grew up outside Boston, and the night we got our first color TV, we ate dinner in the living room watching it. We could receive four channels pretty well: ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS. If you didn't mind putting up with a little snow (most of the time on the inside of the TV), we could also watch Channel 9 out of Manchester, New Hampshire. And that was it.

Cable was a car in San Francisco, and TiVo was decades away from being born. Hell, the guy who invented TiVo was probably decades away from being born. High Definition TV was just a gleam in some geek's eye, as was 3-D TV.

I'll say this, though. Watching Hogan's Heroes in color was like opening my eyes to a whole new world.

There are plenty of other ways to tell you're getting old, but it's almost nine o'clock, which makes it way past my bed time. I have to leave myself a little extra sleep time for all those nocturnal trips to the bathroom. I'm not getting any younger, you know.

Interview With Bestselling Thriller Author Vincent Zandri

2011-04-12T17:46:00.001-04:00

When it came time for me to begin looking for potential authors to blurb my first book, FINAL VECTOR, one of the first people I asked was a guy I had been following on Facebook for a while. His name was Vincent Zandri, and while I had never met him, I saw him as sort of a kindred spirit. He was a fellow thriller writer and a guy struggling to make an name for himself in an incredibly cutthroat industry.

To my surprise, not only did he agree to check out my book, he provided me with an author blurb that, quite literally, made my jaw drop the first time I read it. If you're curious, part of it is on the home page of my website.

We've become friends in the time since, and Vincent Zandri's career has taken off like a shot with his taut, gripping bestseller, THE INNOCENT. Vin is the prototypical overnight success who has been working at his craft for decades, and that success couldn't have come to a harder working or more deserving guy.

He agreed to take a few minutes to talk writing with me, and here is the result:

- You had a whirlwind ride through the world of “traditional” publishing back in the 1990’s, a ride that ended so unhappily you gave up writing fiction altogether for years. What in the world made you decide to come back and try it again?

Well I never gave up writing fiction. I gave up crying about my predicament and got back to work. I wrote something like five books during that time including Moonlight Falls, The Remains, and parts of others. Some short stories too that did get published. I never stopped trying to get my work back out there, but so long as I was perceived as an author who didn’t sell, I was essentially black-listed from New York, after having been paid a mid-six figure advance from a Random House imprint for my first two books. Now my books, or my E-Books anyway, outsell Stieg Larson, John Grisham, Harlan Coben, and many others. You could say I’m the “Kindle champ” these days, but then you would sound just as stupid as I sound saying it.

- As I write this, your thriller, THE INNOCENT, is ranked #3 at Amazon among ALL Kindle books. THE INNOCENT was released last fall by StoneGate Ink but really began picking up steam, sales-wise, in late-winter. What was your first indication that the book was beginning to take off?

My publisher started to call me, just to say hello, and ask me if I needed any money. Ha! Actually, like everyone else, I just kept looking at my sales numbers on Amazon. But a curious thing happened to me last month. I was in the Austrian Alps where I met with healer who told me within a period of three days to two weeks, I would begin to achieve something regarding my profession that would make me very proud. Three days later I was in Rome, Italy, and my numbers started skyrocketing and not coming back down. Two weeks later I landed in the Amazon Top Ten and have stayed there ever since.

- Recently Young Adult author Amanda Hocking received a $2 million advance for a four book series with St. Martin’s Press. What would it take to convince you to reenter the world of “traditional” publishing with a “Big 6” publisher? Would anything convince you to go back?

Well, my deals with StoneGate and StoneHouse Ink are traditional now, in that they are agented deals with excellent terms and payment schedules. I’ve never been happier with a house than I am now. However, I’m a big believer in not putting all your eggs in one basket. Which is why I foresee my relationship with StoneGate and StoneHouse only growing while I entertain both traditional NYC deals (as sought out by my agent Chp MacGregor) and perhaps even a self-published book or two. The there’s foreign rights, movies, etc.

- What’s next in the pipeline for Vincent Zandri?

I’m finishing up the second in the Moonlight series, Moonlight Rises, and my new novel in a new series starring the brassy but beautiful construction business owner-slash-amateur sleuth, Ava “Spike” Harrison. It’s called, Concrete Pearl! I’m doing some travelling and photojournalism in June (we hope), the ITW conference in NYC in July, and in the Fall, the Boise Book Expo. In October I leave for Florence, Italy for a couple of months where I’ll be working on another Moonlight, and perhaps another stand alone for StoneHouse to follow The Remains.

- What writer or writers do you consider role models?

Hemingway, Mailer, Parker, Charlie Huston, Jim Harrison, Dave Zeltersman, Aaron Patterson, Al Leverone, Heath Lowrance…Girly writers…Ha!

- Hypothetical question #1: You’re going to be stranded on a desert island but are allowed to bring one book. What book do you bring?

The Bible with Charlie Huston’s “Caught Stealing” stuffed inside.

- Hypothetical question #2: You are given a choice by the Gods of Publishing. Your books can either bring you tremendous monetary wealth or they can be universally acclaimed as outstanding work by the critics. Which do you choose, and why?

I refuse to play this game with you Al…My wish is to be praised by the highbrows and read by the lowbrows.

- What are you reading right now? What’s next on your “to-be-read” list?

I’m reading A Wilderness of Mirrors by Max Frisch. After that I’ll (sadly) be finishing up the third and final in the Charlie Huston Hank Thompson series.

- You write hard-boiled crime fiction. Who are some of your favorite authors writing in the genre?

Look three or four questions upwards….

- Thanks for taking the time to visit A Thrill a Minute. Any last words of wisdom you’d like to share with my ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ ~~dozens~~ handful of readers?

Never check your baggage. Always bring carry-ons. You can always do your laundry when you get there.

Review - THE BASTARD HAND, by Heath Lowrance

2011-04-06T20:45:00.000-04:00

Charlie Wesley is a drifter with a violent past, a man who converses more with his brother now that the man is dead than he ever did while he was breathing. He's traveling aimlessly, with a vague notion of heading south to Florida, when against all odds he somehow survives a brutal mugging in Memphis, Tennessee.

Shortly afterward Charlie finds a discarded bible in a laundromat with a strange hole running through the middle of the book. With nothing better to do, he begins reading, leading to a seemingly random encounter with one of the strangest preachers he has ever met, a man with the unlikely name of Reverend Phinneas Childe.

The two strike up an uneasy friendship and travel together to the tiny, bucolic town of Cuba Landing, Mississippi, where Childe has been hired to replace the previous pastor of the Cuba Landing Freewill Baptist Church, a man who disappeared nearly one year ago under mysterious circumstances.

Charlie begins to believe Reverend Childe has a plan for Cuba Landing that involves much more than spreading God's word, and the more layers he peels back from the surface of life in the tiny town, the uglier things appear. An apocalyptic storm is about to be unleashed on this out-of-the-way village in rural Mississippi; one which Charlie - not to mention Reverend Childe and everyone else in town - will be lucky to survive.

Heath Lowrance is a debut author but he writes like a true craftsman. THE BASTARD HAND is classic noir with a twist. It features dirty, gritty dialogue spoken by dirty, gritty characters and in classic noir fashion you might have trouble determining exactly who the "good guy" is, or if there even is one. Purity of motive is hard to come by in Cuba Landing.

What's the twist? Religion is featured heavily; faith is used like a battering ram by a cynical preacher; a man who is a master manipulator. Over the course of nearly three hundred pages, Lowrance explores themes of good and evil, right and wrong, and whether it is possible for a sliding scale to apply.

There's plenty of action - bullets fly, knives are brandished, sex is had, people are crossed and double-crossed, and the climactic scene is one you will never forget.

I have to be honest - I've struck up a friendship with Heath Lowrance over the last several months, despite the fact we've never met in person. So I was prepared to enjoy THE BASTARD HAND. But I was blown away, both by the quality of the writing - his prose goes down easy like the finest Tennessee whiskey - and the intricate plot and lifelike characters.

This book is the rare novel that will captivate any noir fan while forcing the reader to consider life in ways he or she may never have done before. If you're a noir fan, get used to the name Heath Lowrance. You'll be hearing it for a long time.

In the (Stone)House

2011-04-04T15:35:00.000-04:00

I'm excited beyond belief to announce that I have signed with StoneHouse Ink for release of my next thriller, THE LONELY MILE. StoneHouse is relatively new and smaller than my first publisher, Medallion Press, but these guys are on the move and extremely savvy about the future of ebook publishing. All you need to do to understand what I'm talking about is to take a look at Amazon's ebook Bestseller lists. As I write this, StoneHouse's Vincent Zandri stands at #4 in all Kindle ebooks with his gripping thriller, THE INNOCENT. If you want to get a little more specific, check out Amazon's Hard-Boiled Mystery category, in which StoneHouse authors hold down four of the top eight spots: Number One is Zandri's THE INNOCENT, Number Five and Six are two more Vincent Zandri novels, THE REMAINS and GODCHILD, and Number Eight is Aaron Patterson's SWEET DREAMS. Results like these illustrate why I was so anxious to join the StoneHouse family. In today's rapidly changing publishing environment, as a veritable tsunami of ebooks are being released onto the market by publishing houses as well as self-published authors, in my opinion it becomes critical for the author to align himself with folks who know how to achieve results. StoneHouse is a leader in thinking outside the box, from reasonably-priced Kindle editions, leading to higher sales numbers and interest in an author's other work, to unique promotional methods, like packaging works from pairs of authors, allowing fans of one author to be introduced to the work of the other. I'm eternally grateful to Medallion Press and the outstanding professionals there for believing in FINAL VECTOR and for giving me the opportunity to become a working professional novelist. I believe in the book and am certain it will continue to find its place in the universe of exciting thrillers. I'm very gratified by the fantastic reviews the book has received, and look forward to many more. That said, I can't tell you how excited I am about THE LONELY MILE. I don't have a release date yet - the ink from my signature is barely dry on the contract - but I know it won't be long before this pulse-pounding thriller hits the digital shelves. And I'm already working on my third book, hopefully also to be a StoneHouse release. I have to thank Vincent Zandri for his encouragement and his vocal enthusiasm for the StoneHouse family. It was primarily that enthusiasm which convinced me StoneHouse was the way to go. In addition to being one helluva writer, Vin is a master promoter - the man is utterly tireless - and provided me with one of the most exciting blurbs for my first book. Curious? You can check it out on the home page of my website here. More to come, but for now it's safe to say I am excited and satisfied with the day's events.

Two Sides of the Coin

2011-03-26T21:17:00.000-04:00

Talk about your yin and your yang. The very same week Barry Eisler - the prototypical legacy publishing sensation - announces he is passing up a half-million dollar advance from St. Martin's in order to self-publish his next thriller electronically, Amanda Hocking - the protoypical self-publishing sensation - announces she is passing up self-publishing in order to accept a two million dollar advance from (who else?) St. Martin's for her upcoming four-book series.

Now, setting aside for a moment the observation that things can't be too horrible for legacy publishers, or at least for St. Martin's, if they're waving around amounts of cash that most of us can only fantasize about (Unlike at Dorchester, where they apparently don't have two nickels to rub together), it amazes me how much the writing and reading world seems to have rallied around one or the other of these two highly successful authors.

If you believe in legacy publishing, in the value of gatekeepers, in the old system, you need only point to Ms Hocking to prove your assertion. Here's a newcomer who has made roughly 17.24 gazillion dollars over the last year by foregoing the traditional route and what does she do? She jumps at her first chance to climb aboard the SS Tradition!

If you believe legacy publishing is a sinking ship, doomed to failure just as surely as the Titanic was doomed to slip under the waves of the North Atlantic after DiCaprio and Winslet cavorted abovedecks, you need only point to Mr. Eisler to prove your assertion. A longtime, highly successful member of the legacy publishing old guard and what does he do? He abandons the old guard to climb aboard...well...I'm about out of nautical metaphors, but you get the point.

The Interwebs have been in an uproar over this development all week, with authors and readers alike choosing sides like teenage girls ready to rumble over Team Edward vs Team Jacob. But here's what I wonder: Why all the conflict, especially among writers?

I suppose I can understand the traditionally published professionals feeling threatened, with people they see as not having paid their dues raking in amounts of money that would make Bernie Madoff blush. And I suppose I can understand the self-publishing proponents feeling hurt that their biggest star is abandoning them to sign with the enemy. But shouldn't the goal be opportunity for authors? And isn't that what we have right now?

I feel for Amanda Hocking, despite the wads of cash being thrown at her over the last year, because she doesn't seem the least bit interested in being anyone's banner-carrier. She strikes me as a nice young woman who just wants to write. And now she has the opportunity to do exactly that.

It's been suggested she signed with St. Martin's to gain some sort of validation, a charge she denies, and I believe her. But even if that's what she did, who cares? As someone who has tried for years to break into traditional publishing, I can tell you it's not easy to let go of the notion that you can have the biggest impact - and can only be seen as a true professional - by signing on the dotted line with one of the Big Six publishers.

Whereas Barry Eisler relishes conflict - he makes no bones about his political beliefs and doesn't care if he loses readers because of it - Amanda Hocking, from what I can tell by reading her public statements, would just as soon avoid it, unfortunately for her, since she is the face of self-publishing, for better or for worse, at least for now

So, who was right and who was wrong? Why can't we conclude they are both right? Both individuals did what they feel was best for them at the respective stages of each of their careers. Why can't we just leave it at that?

Review - EVERY SHALLOW CUT, By Tom Piccirilli

2011-03-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

The nameless first-person narrator in EVERY SHALLOW CUT has lost everything. He's a has-been writer who never was, carrying around his last uncashed royalty check of $12.37 like a talisman. His wife has left him, his home has been foreclosed, his books aren't selling, his pride is gone.

When a group of punks mug him on the street, the narrator snaps, taking down all three young men and stealing their money. With nothing holding him in his ex-wife's home state of Colorado, he starts a cross-country trek back to his birthplace of New York with just the stolen cash, a gun and his dog, Churchill, hoping to reconnect with someone, anyone - his brother, his first love, his long-ago best friend, his agent. The question is, will he find what he's looking for before his breakdown is complete?

Tom Piccirilli is a master of noir. The desperation and hopelessness he writes about don't just live on the page, they are living, breathing monsters that bludgeon you about the head and shoulders, forcing you to pay attention, demanding you JUST FREAKING LISTEN.

EVERY SHALLOW CUT is a noir masterpiece. He calls it a "noirella." I call it an exposed nerve, a red and raw wound that will punch you in the head and keep smacking you until you look straight into the eyes of your own fears and insecurities. It's the best thing I've read this year.

Five Things I'd Like To Tell My Coffee Server

2011-03-18T14:36:00.000-04:00

I'm a coffee lover. Maybe even a coffee-holic. I admit it unabashedly, knowing that depending upon what study you choose to believe, drinking coffee is either good for you, provided you don't overdo it (I do), marginally bad for you, as long as you drink it in moderation (I don't), or worse for you than smoking crack while juggling steak knives in the middle of an LSD trip.

In any event, I'm not about to stop drinking coffee, which is why this web piece, titled "13 Things Baristas Won't Tell You," caught my eye. Now I have to be honest, where I get my coffee, the folks behind the counter probably don't know what baristas are, which is okay because neither do most of the people in front of the counter, including me. I drink old-fashioned black coffee, so what the hell do I need with a barista?

Anyway, the source for the information contained in the above piece is listed as "Baristas from Starbucks and independent cafes and coffee carts..." I have no problem with Starbucks, theoretically speaking, aside from the fact that most of the people who frequent the chain strike me as coffee snobs, looking down their noses at those of us who go to Dunkin' Donuts.

I'm not quite sure why that is, although I suppose when you pay the prices they charge at Starbucks, you should at least buy the right to feel superior to someone. Personally, I would rather pour used motor oil down my throat than drink the overpriced, bitter, overcooked stuff they serve there, but everyone's taste is different, and in any event, my purpose in writing this post is not to rag on any other coffee lovers. I prefer to be inclusive.

Reading the 13 Things My Barista Won't Tell Me convinced me that a rebuttal was in order, although I do agree with some of the points they made. Here, then, is my list of 5 Things I'd Like To Tell My Coffee Server:

1) I understand you have seven more hours in your shift before you can sprint to the parking lot and hurry away, but I actually have to get to work.

Putting the attention to my order somewhere below examining your fingernails and adjusting your underwear on your priority list isn't just annoying, it's downright rude. Also, shuffling around like you're walking the green mile to the electric chair isn't helping me make it to work on time, either.

2) I realize the person in front of me in line was a rude asshole, but I don't know him/her, I'm not in line with him/her, and treating me like a rude asshole as a result of his/her actions doesn't help anything.

Lots of people are rude. It's a fact of life. They are self-absorbed and seem to feel you are unworthy of their respect because you don't work a job they feel is important enough. None of that is my fault, and it chaps my ass when I'm polite and respectful and you treat me like I'm the gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

3) I am more impressed by your ability to get my order right than your perceived ability to understand the entire order without writing it down.

I drink black coffee. It's hard to conceive of any order simpler than, "I'd like a large black coffee, please." Yet I can't tell you how many times I've walked into work with my coffee and opened it up, only to discover I will be drinking a large REGULAR coffee. Please, for the love of God, pay attention, and if that's asking too much, just WRITE DOWN MY ORDER!

4) Before you shuffle off like you're walking the green mile to the electric chair to begin filling my order, it would be nice if I was finished ordering.

I love enthusiastic service, but when you turn around and walk away after I say, "I'd like a large black coffee, please," assuming that I would ONLY like a black coffee, it is not just annoying and rude but slows down the entire process for the people in line behind me.

5) Rolling your eyes like I've just told you that you're grounded for the next month when I say I'd like something else after you shuffled away like you're walking the green mile to the electric chair when I ask for a large black coffee, please, does not constitute any kind of customer service.

That would seem to be self-evident, but apparently needs to be said.

There you have it; my response to the "13 Things Baristas Won't Tell You." I'm not saying that every time I get coffee it borders on an international incident, but every one of the things listed above has happened either to me or someone in line around me at one time or another.

Coffee deserves better. It's a an exciting, invigorating brew made from running hot water over ground beans, for crying out loud! Please, let's all come together and give coffee, as well as coffee lovers, the respect and attention they deserve.

Thank you.

Darkness Will Fall This September

2011-03-03T21:24:00.000-05:00

Tom Piccirilli. Jeff Strand. Brian Keene. J.F. Gonzalez. Greg Gifune. Harry Shannon.

What do these outstanding horror authors have in common? They've all had work published by Delirium Books, one of the premier publishers in the horror collector's market. And, as of this coming September, so will I, when my novella, Darkness Falls, will be offered in a 150 copy limited edition hardcover release as part of Delirium's outstanding collectible novella series.

In Darkness Falls, former bestselling author Tyler Beckman returns to the tiny New Hampshire town he fled nearly twenty years ago after the brutal murder of his parents and sister by a scythe-wielding maniac. He landed in New York, writing a half-dozen bestselling gothic horror novels, earning riches and fame before losing it all in a blizzard of drugs, alcohol and women.

Now, in a desperate last-ditch effort to regain what he has lost, Tyler rents the home of his family's imprisoned killer, determined to confront demons best left buried. Immediately his writing flourishes, and in a frenzy of activity, Tyler begins pounding out the novel that will put him back atop the literary world.

But a malevolent force is at work in Darkness Falls, one which is timeless and evil and unstoppable. And it has Tyler Beckman in its sights.

September is the release date for Darkness Falls, and if you're not able to snag one of the 150 limited edition hardcovers, it will also be released in all ebook formats.

My Famous New Friend

2011-02-19T19:20:00.000-05:00

If you're a genre reader like me, you undoubtedly recognize the name Lawrence Block. He's been making a living as a crime writer since the mid-1960's - since the 1950's if you take into account books he wrote under pen names - and has created the memorable characters, Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr and the amiable, introspective contract assassin Keller.

Yeah, that Lawrence Block. The legendary one, the guy the Mystery Writers of America selected as a Grand Master in recognition of his achievements in the field all the way back in 1994. The guy who, even a half-decade after publishing his first novel, will have new material hitting the bookshelves this year.

Lawrence Block friend-requested me a couple of days ago on Facebook.

I've been pretty aggressively expanding my social networking over the last year or so, hoping to use the tools of the electronic age to help publicize my debut thriller, Final Vector, and I have to say the experiment has been wildly successful, giving me the opportunity to network with fellow authors as well as potential readers.

I now consider people friends despite the fact I've never actually met them. I've renewed long-dormant relationships with people who in an earlier age would simply have faded out of my life. I've developed contacts with people I have then worked with in various aspects of promoting my work.

So the fact that another author would friend-request me is not all that surprising. It happens pretty frequently and I do the same thing quite a bit myself. But Lawrence Block? The guy is, literally, a legend in the crime fiction world.

Here's the background. Last week Blogcritics ran an interview with me which was picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which I was effusive in my praise of, you guessed it, Lawrence Block. You may not have noticed, but I'm a pretty big fan.

Well, apparently Lawrence Block reads either the Blogcritics web page or the Seattle newspaper, because late in the afternoon on Thursday I signed into Facebook and discovered a friend request waiting for me. From Lawrence Block. In it, he thanked me for the complimentary words I had for him in the interview.

I think that bears repeating. Lawrence Block thanked me for the kind words. To put that in context, I like to think of it like this: The guy who has written 61 novels (as far as I can tell) thanked the guy who has written one novel for some nice things he said.

That just blows me away. I understand he is just a person like you or me, but how easy would it be for someone as accomplished as he is to read the words of praise and nod sagely at another peasant recognizing the king's greatness? Instead, he took the time to seek me out, friend-request me, and add a personal note to the request.

My only regret is that there was no way of saving that note. Once I accepted the friend request, it disappeared. However, I sent Mr. Block a message on Facebook telling him what a huge fan I am - basically drooling like a lovesick teenager, sort of like I am now - and he was kind enough to answer my message with one of his own, which will remain in my Facebook messages forever, or until I accidentally destroy my account through my technological ignorance.

I'm not going to get into what was discussed, I'll only say this: I now know Keller's next target of assassination.

Just kidding, but I'm sure I'll know soon, now that Lawrence Block and I are, you know, practically best friends.

The Savior

2011-02-15T17:19:00.000-05:00

The amazing Patti Abbott announced a flash fiction contest on her website a week or so ago and the moment I saw it I knew I had to enter. The guidelines? An eight hundred or so word story whose only requirement is that it must contain the phrase, "I really don't mind the scars."

The contest deadline is February 28, but since this is a day off for my FINAL VECTOR blog tour and the story is done, I figured I'd go ahead and post it tonight. So here ya go:

The Savior

I'm not a monster.

Sure, the newspapers paint me as one; so do the TV reporters. Those arrogant fucks from Nightline made me out to be the worst thing to hit the world since frigging Jack the Ripper. But they don't understand. I do what I do to save the girls, not to victimize them. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. I know I'm doing the right thing. So I keep doing it.

My latest project is a beauty, too. She's down on Washington Street, dressed in about six ounces of strategically positioned Spandex, stretched over her best body parts like Saran Wrap. Or spraypaint. She struts her stuff for the usual display of desperate losers cruising Washington while I watch from the shadows provided by the entrance to one of those welfare check-cashing places that seem to populate every corner of neighborhoods like this.

A steady drizzle blurs the scene, wrapping it in a translucent gauze but doing nothing to slow the parade. Middle-aged businessmen in family cruisers, old geezers in Buicks, young guys out for some strange; they're all there.

And my girl's working it for all she's worth.

Does it piss me off? You're goddamn right it does. She doesn't belong out here with the diseased, the addicts, the homeless. She's better than that; I can tell. Which is exactly why I'm here, uniformed ironed crisply, pounding the pavement on my night off.

Every so often a dirtbag wanders past my hiding place and jumps, startled by my presence, curious why I'm just standing here doing nothing. But their interest in my business wanes quickly when they get a good look at my blues and I flash my trusty flat-eyed cop stare.

That's one of the many reasons I love being a cop.

Another is that it gives me the freedom to save my girls, which, after all, is why I'm here. I decide it's time to stop observing and start saving. I step out of the shadows and approach the hooker at a brisk pace while her attention is diverted by a minivan full of teenagers hooting and hollering, whipping out my shield when she turns around and placing her under arrest for criminal solicitation.

She sputters and complains that I have no probable cause to make an arrest and of course she's right, but what the fuck do I care? It's not like I'm taking her to jail, anyway. The other pros scatter at my sudden appearance and the pimps melt into the background and the johns disappear like magic and suddenly it's just me and my girl.

Up close, she's even more striking than I had imagined - silky blonde hair, large, surprisingly clear blue eyes, delicate facial bone structure. She's exquisite. Her only visible flaw is a pair of thin ragged blood-red scars, one running diagonally across her forehead, the other winding its way down her right cheek, both undoubtedly the result of punishment from her pimp for some transgression.

But I don't really mind the scars, they stand in stark contrast to her natural beauty, bringing it out with their ugliness and emphasizing it.

I drag her around the corner and down the sidewalk and toss her into the specially customized back seat of my car. By the time she realizes she's not in a real police cruiser it's much too late for her to do anything about it. We're at my home within thirty minutes and I'm able to introduce my latest find to her new digs.

They're pretty comfortable, too, once you get past the iron bars and the grates on the windows, set high up on the concrete walls of my underground bunker. The space is divided into three separate units, giving me the luxury of saving three girls at a time.

Right now, though, my new friend - Crystal, she says is her name, which I know is one of those bogus hooker names but, again, what the fuck do I care? - is the only occupant. I find I'm going through the girls faster and faster; why that is, I'm not really sure. But it doesn't matter, there is an endless supply of girls to be saved.

At the moment Crystal is half angry and half afraid, not fully grasping the particulars of her new reality. I'll let her calm down and come back later. By then I'm sure she will be only too happy to show proper appreciation for being saved from a lifetime of prostitution.

I'll allow her to demonstrate that appreciation for a few days and then I'll use her up and dump her in the woods out back with the rest of the girls I've saved.

Then, in a few days, I'll go out and save another one.

FINAL VECTOR purchase links

2011-02-12T10:08:00.001-05:00

They say life is all about the journey rather than the destination, don't they? I mean, that was a song lyric, right? So it's gotta be true.

If that's the case, it's been one hell of a memorable journey trying to reach this destination: publication of my first novel. But we're here now, sort of, and it's a feeling of excitement and satisfaction tinged with nervousness like I've never experienced before.

Why did I say, "we're here now, sort of?"

I'm glad you asked. FINAL VECTOR is out. It's been released. It's available at a number of retailers, including Amazon, Mobipocket and Ebooks.com.

It's also NOT available yet at some other retailers, such as Barnes and Noble and Borders. The distributor for Medallion Press, IPG, says that FINAL VECTOR will begin being available at these places soon, but exactly what - or when - that means, I'm not sure.

Also, if you go to Amazon and search "Final Vector," as I've done so many times I'm wearing the finish off those keys on my laptop, your result will include a bunch of stuff, none of which includes my book. I have an email into Amazon's tech folks asking about the problem, but I'm told it could take up to three days to get an answer.

So the upshot of all of this is that yes, FINAL VECTOR is released and available, and yes, I would love it if you'd give it a try, but if you own a Kindle and want to download it, you need to know the specific purchase link, for now at least. Again, this is the link which will bring you to Amazon's FINAL VECTOR page. Searching it on the site will get you nothing except frustration.

So, really, while we've arrived at our destination, the journey continues. Sort of.

This has been quite an adventure. I can't wait to do it again.

The Peasants are Revolting

2011-02-05T20:26:00.000-05:00

Like all revolutions, the one currently shaking publishing to its core started innocently enough, with some changes that initially seemed harmless to the status quo and a few true believers carrying signs and shouting slogans.

E-books. Publishers scoffed at the notion that any but the most dedicated techno-geeks would shell out their hard-earned cash for an electronic tablet dedicated to nothing but words.

But people started buying them. Lots of them. And they began filling their hard drives up with books, plenty of them from big-time authors, but also a lot from authors they may not have been as familiar with. Folks who in the olden days would have been known as "mid-listers."

And then a mid-lister named Joe Konrath became the poster child for this revolution, which suddenly began gathering momentum like a locomotive careening down the side of a mountain. He released a bunch of backlist titles himself electronically, and then he released a brand-new novel electronically without a publisher, and he had the nerve to promise readers of his blog he would keep them informed of the results.

And the results were astonishing. The poster child began making money. Lots of it. More than he had ever made with his traditional mid-list publishing deals. And he huffed and puffed and boasted and proselytized and before long other authors began wondering if maybe they shouldn't follow suit.

And the revolution was on.

Two days ago The Authors Guild published a piece on their blog illustrating how the 75/25 royalty split (75% to the publisher, 25% to the author) of net proceeds in the traditional contract offered by most major New York publishing houses represents nothing more than a significant pay cut to the creator of the work - the author.

If you'd like to see the entire piece and learn how the numbers were generated, you can check it out here, but examples were given and numbers were crunched and one thing became clear - authors are taking a beating with the 75/25 split.

Now, on his blog just this morning, novelist Terrill Lee Lankford announced he had reached a difficult decision - he was ending discussions with a publishing house over the terms for his latest book and would publish it himself electronically. Why? The 75/25 split.

Despite the offer of an advance Lankford termed "very good money," he reasoned that "by the time I finished the book in question the cash would be gone. And by the time that book 'earned out' at a rate of 3-1 in the publisher's favor in e-book sales, the publisher would have seen a small fortune without noticeable expense. And we would be saddled with a deal that would probably haunt my family long after I was dead and gone."

The upshot, of course, is that another mid-lister has decided to follow Joe Konrath into the wilderness of electronic self-publishing. But here's the thing - for a wilderness, it's getting pretty damn crowded out there.

Blog Tour Date Tomorrow

2011-02-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

I'd like to thank the good folks at Between the Pages for allowing me to interview my main character from FINAL VECTOR, Nick Jensen, today. Here's hoping he survives the standoff againt the terrorists; he seems like one hell of a nice guy.

It's back onto the blog tour bus now for the trek to The Story Behind the Book, where I will be guest blogging tomorrow. I hear the chicken wire is in place, just in case - like in The Blues Brothers - the natives get restless and start throwing stuff. I'd love to see you there.

Delayed Gratification

2011-02-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

You know how in my last post I compared releasing your first novel to losing your virginity? How both were things you could only do once? Turns out I was wrong about that. Turns out you actually can release your debut novel more than once; or at least you can have more than one release date.

I woke up this morning excited about the February 1 release of FINAL VECTOR, certain I was on the verge of selling millions of copies of my debut thriller. Or at least dozens. Or maybe a few. One, definitely. I checked Amazon and discovered . . . drumroll, please . . . wait for it . . . nothing.

It turns out even my conservative estimate of one potential sale was wildly optimistic. There were no sales, because the book was not on the site! So I waited a while and I checked again. Still nothing. I checked Barnes and Noble. Nothing. Went back to Amazon and, well, you get the idea.

After a few emails and a couple of lengthy phone calls with the folks at Medallion Press, my publisher, it turns out the release of FINAL VECTOR has been delayed for a few days due to problems with the ebook file conversion at the distributor.

I know what you're thinking: what the hell does that mean, and why didn't I find out sooner?

Answers: I'm not quite sure, and I'm not quite sure.

I received a series of effusive and, I believe, sincere apologies from the folks at Medallion for not keeping me in the loop better (which I accepted), as well as explanations about overworked file conversion houses who prioritize their work based upon client and publisher size and pull (which I sort of understand).

At any rate, the upshot of all this is that the book will become available for purchase at various outlets - Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc - at different times over the next several days. So, while Medallion's official release date for FINAL VECTOR is now February 11, it is entirely possible, even likely, that you will be able to get the book before then, depending upon the retail outlet.

Confused yet?

Don't worry about it; so am I. But trust me when I tell you I will be shouting from the highest rooftop, or at least from this blog, the moment I learn my book becomes available at each of the various bookselling sites.

In the meantime, my blog tour in support of the book that kind of, sort of, almost exists continues tomorrow with a guest post and book giveaway at Between the Pages. I know, there's nothing to give away! But there will be, recent events notwithstanding, and I promise I will get the free copy to the winner the instant it rolls off the presses, or the Innerwebs, or, you know, whatever the hell an electronic book rolls off.

Seriously, thanks so much to everyone who has expressed an interest in FINAL VECTOR. I truly appreciate your patience and your support. Nick Jensen will face off against those terrorists any day now.

Releasing Your Debut Novel is like Losing Your Virginity

2011-01-30T23:28:00.000-05:00

After what seems like an eternity, my debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR, launches in just over twenty-four hours. I signed the contract with Medallion Press in December, 2009, so this day has taken a while to get here. At times it felt like it never would.

I was thinking about it earlier tonight and it occurred to me that for an author, the release your very first novel resembles nothing quite as much as losing your virginity. Think about it:

- In both cases, you have absolutely no idea what you're getting into when you start.

- In both cases, your mood is ninety percent breathless anticipation and ten percent absolute gut-wrenching terror, especially as the big moment gets closer and closer.

- In both cases, you are plagued with self-doubt, with the exact same thought running through your head: "What if my reviews suck?"

- In both cases, as soon as it's over, your immediate goal is to do it again, despite the fact it can only be your first time once.

- In both cases, it's a moment you will remember the rest of your life.

Of course, there are differences, no matter how similar the two events are. For example:

- I didn't write any of my book in the back seat of my mom's car.

- I was alone for most of the writing of my book, unlike when I lost my virginity. As far as you know.

Still, despite these minor differences, I believe my point is a good one. FINAL VECTOR will be available beginning at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all major online booksellers beginning Tuesday, February 1. I would love it if you check it out.

Dear Blog

2011-01-22T22:22:00.000-05:00

Dear Blog,

This isn't an easy letter to write. We've been together exclusively since July, 2008, just the two of us, you and me against the world, joined at the keyboard, facing down every challenge thrown at us.

And I've enjoyed every minute of it, Blog, I really have. I think it's fair to say I've . . . loved it. That's what makes what I am about to type so difficult. I have something to confess. I think I have to get back out there in the game, Blog. I think I have to . . . post on other blogs.

There. I said it. Wow. I feel a lot better, don't you?

You don't? Why not? You don't understand? What do you mean you don't understand?

Here's the thing, Blog. I've written a book; you know that, right? Of course you do. FINAL VECTOR. Well, there is this thing called, um, a blog tour that I will be doing when my book comes out, and that means I will be making guest posts on other blogs, blogs from all over the country, maybe even the world, and it will be really good exposure, and -

- What? What did you say, Blog? A tramp? I am not a tramp. I'm doing this for us, don't you see? I will be getting much-needed exposure for us, so that my book will sell.

And besides, it's just a blog tour. It's no big deal. It will be like The Bachelor, only without the chicks and the sex. And the hot tubs. I'm pretty sure there will be no hot tubs.

Don't be so upset, Blog, it's not forever. It's only two months, and besides, it's not like we won't be seeing each other at all. I will be posting my tour stops here as I go, so really, we will be seeing more of each other now than we have in the past!

So how about it, Blog? Maybe we can even get a few authors to provide guest posts here every now and then, how does that sound? Can you live with that?

Excellent, Blog, you're the best! And when this blog tour is all over it will still be you and me, just like always, I promise!

What's that? A blood test? No, I won't get a blood test afterward. Jeez, Blog, don't be such a drama queen for chrissakes. And don't look at me with those disapproving fonts. You're making me feel dirty.

Knights of the Thriller Roundtable

2011-01-15T14:51:00.000-05:00

Back in December I participated in my first International Thriller Writers weekly Thriller Roundtable, in which authors discuss a predetermined topic and what role that topic does - or in some cases does not - play in their work.

It was a lot of fun and I am fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in another roundtable discussion this coming week, from Monday, January 17th through Friday the 21st. This week's topic is, "Do you plot, plan or outline? Or, do you just go where your characters lead you?"

If you know me, you probably realize planning and outlining aren't necessarily my strong suits, except when it comes to controlling airplanes. I have a knack for mis-reading my work schedule that would be hilarious if it weren't so freaking annoying. This would probably lead you to believe I just sit down and start pounding away at the keyboard when I'm writing a book.

You might be surprised.

But I'm not giving away any trade secrets here. If you want to find out for sure whether I'm a pre-planner or whether I sit back and follow meekly along wherever my characters lead me, you will have to check out this week's Thriller Roundtable starting on Monday. And don't worry, there will be eleven other authors contributing to the roundtable, including award-winning, bestselling folks like Weston Ochse and LJ Sellers. You know, people who actually know what they're talking about.

Check it out if you're so inclined, and if you do, say hi or ask a question; get involved! I'd love to see you there.

Deathwatch

2011-01-04T20:32:00.000-05:00

Is there anything more difficult to watch than the struggles of a dying entity? Is there anyone who truly believes the Borders chain of bookstores is anything other than a "dead man walking?"

On December 31, Publishers Weekly reported that the Borders Group, which saw third quarter sales drop an astounding 12.6% (By comparison, Barnes and Noble sales rose 9.7% for the nine week period ending December 31), began suspending payments to "some publishers." Which publishers were affected was not specified, but in response, PW reported that at least one of the "big six" New York publishing houses retaliated by suspending book shipments to Borders.

It gets worse. This morning, Publishers Weekly reported that, on the eve of "complex negotiations with vendors and lenders," Borders Executive Vice President and General Counsel Thomas Carney has resigned along with Chief Information Officer Scott Laverty. Apparently these two saw the handwriting on the wall and made for the lifeboats before the SS Borders slips below the surface of the sea of debt.

According to a Borders spokesperson, senior corporate officials (minus Carney and Laverty, of course) are even now in New York, "in discussions regarding the refinancing of existing senior credit facilities." In case you're like me and don't speak legalese, PW goes on to explain that the discussion involves a "new refinancing plan that includes new money from a new bank."

Is there anyone anywhere who believe Borders, at least in its current form, is anything other than a goner? Is there anyone anywhere who believes a bookseller which suspends payments on its inventory can survive? Is there anyone anywhere who believes Borders will be the last bookselling chain to fail?

Independent booksellers, which by definition don't have access to the kinds of resources the huge chains do, have been struggling - and failing - for years now, victims of a lethal combination: a weak economy and the rise of electronic books. It was only a matter of time before one of the Big Guys fell by the wayside, too.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the lightning-fast changes taking place in this industry. But anyone who likes to curl up at night with a good book can't help but feel at least a little sense of loss. Borders may not go down without a fight, but they're going down, and when they do, they won't be back.

One Last Gasp of Christmas Cheer...Sort of

2010-12-28T20:04:00.000-05:00

Just in case you haven't had quite enough Christmas cheer, haven't taken your tree down or dumped it in the woods yet, haven't removed those garish lights hanging all over the shrubs in your front yard, and haven't sung (or hummed, if you can't quite remember the words, especially after that third or fourth eggnog) your final Christmas carol until next December, I cordially invite you to visit the blog from the good folks at Do Some Damage for a little Christmas noir flash story from yours truly.

Do Some Damage is a blog hosted by some of the hottest, up-and-coming members of the crime fiction community - Bryon Quertermous, Joelle Charbonneau, Steve Weddle, Jay Stringer, John McFetridge, Dave White, Russell D. McLean and Scott D. Parker, to be precise - and someone among them came up with the bright idea to host a Christmas noir flash fiction challenge.

The idea was for writers to come up with a noir flash story, no more than 1000 words long, somehow involving Christmas. The stories would be featured, a couple a day, at Do Some Damage, starting the week before Christmas and running through New Year's Day. The thing has been so successful, they're getting record numbers of hits every day as folks check out the unbelievable variety of holiday noir.

What's the point? Thanks for asking. I submitted a story after learning of the challenge, and mine is up at their site now. "Christmas Carole" tells the tale of a pair of brothers, one of whom is facing a weighty problem as Christmas approaches, and the unique way the other finds to deal with it.

Check it out if you have a few minutes. They say Christmas comes just once a year, but in this case, it's not really true.

Do You Like Short Fiction? How About a Free Book of it?

2010-12-17T21:11:00.000-05:00

This past summer I downloaded Dave Zeltserman's incredible short story collection, 21 TALES, to my Kindle and devoured it like Charlie Sheen at happy hour. If you're not familiar with his work, you should check out one of his books; this guy can really write.

While reading the stories in his collection I remember thinking a couple of things:

1) This guy can really write, and

2) Why don't I do this?

Now, Dave Zeltserman is a pretty accomplished author. He has written some critically acclaimed stuff and although my first novel hasn't even been released yet, it occurred to me that releasing my own short story collection might serve a couple of purposes. It could introduce people who may not be familiar with me, and may not want to part with eight bucks for my novel, to my work. If they then decide they like that work, maybe they will go on to try FINAL VECTOR.

I have also had a decent amount of success with my short fiction and it makes a certain sense, at least to me, to release the short story collection, titled POSTCARDS FROM THE APOCALYPSE, on the eve of my debut novel's release.

So I'm excited to announce that anyone who has signed up for my email newsletter by midnight on Christmas Eve will be eligible for the drawing to win one of five copies of the upcoming POSTCARDS FROM THE APOCALYPSE. To sign up, simply go to http://www.allanleverone.com/ and click on the "Contact" button on the left sidebar, then enter your email info - it is secure and will NEVER be shared with anyone else for any reason.

Among the seventeen stories inside POSTCARDS are "Regrets, I've Had a Few" and "Independence Day," both finalists for a 2009 Derringer Award for Best Short Story, "Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills," a Derringer Award finalist in 2010 for Best Novelette, and "Dance Hall Drug," a nominee for a 2011 Pushcart Prize.

There is a mixed bag of material in the book, some noir, some mystery fiction and some horror/dark fiction, but as I mention in the foreword, pretty much everything you read involves someone doing something bad to someone else and maybe - or maybe not - getting what's coming to them in the end.

POSTCARDS FROM THE APOCALYPSE will be available shortly after Christmas, but I'd love to see you win a free copy!

Oh Look, It's a Soapbox!

2010-12-11T20:35:00.000-05:00

The International Thriller Writers is a very cool organization, always on the lookout for ways to promote not just the thriller genre as a whole, but also the work of its practitioners. One of the newest ways they have found to do that is called the "Thriller Roundtable," a blog-based discussion forum giving readers and writers an opportunity to interact on nearly a real-time basis.

The topics - and the authors discussing those topics - change weekly, and since the launch of Thriller Roundtable have included favorites like Jonathan Maberry, Andrew Gross, Robert Gregory Browne, Reed Farrel Coleman, Boyd Morrison and many others, including a bonus discussion last week involving thriller legends Lee Child, Gayle Lynds, Joseph Finder and MJ Rose.

Some of the topics which have already been covered and which are archived here, if you're interested, include "Why do you write/read thrillers?," "Who is the best antagonist of all time (other than Hannibal Lecter)?," and one of particular interest to me, "What's the one piece of advice you'd give to the next generation of thriller authors?"

The reason I mention all of this, aside from the fact that if you're a fan of the thriller genre - whether as a reader or a writer - it's a fantastic opportunity to see inside the minds of some of the premier practitioners of the craft, is that the folks at the ITW have very generously given me a chance to participate in next week's Thriller Roundtable as one of the featured authors.

I'm incredibly excited to take advantage of this lapse in judgment...I mean, uh, opportunity...yeah, that's it, opportunity...provided by the ITW. Next week's topic is "What's one myth about being an author you'd like to debunk?" and along with my semi-coherent thoughts on the subject you can also probably get some real insight from my fellow panelists Susanna Kearsley, Julie Korzenko, C.E. Lawrence, Bonnie Hearn Hill and Jeremy Robinson.

The Roundtable discussion kicks off this coming Monday, December 13 and runs through Friday the 17th. Sick of Christmas shopping? Haven't started yet but looking for one more way to procrastinate? Check out this week's Thriller Roundtable; I'd love to see you there.

Awards? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Awards

2010-12-06T20:27:00.000-05:00

If you're a genre writer and you want your work to be eligible for certain awards - the Edgars, for example - you need to be a member of the Mystery Writers of America. The MWA's list of eligibility requirements is fairly extensive and includes earnings thresholds that must be met to be considered a professional author, as well as requirements publishers must meet for their authors to qualify.

Fair enough; after all, it's their organization, they have the right to run it however they want.

I'll be honest - I'd love for FINAL VECTOR to be eligible for a Best First Novel Edgar. And yes, before you say it, I am well aware it would be the ultimate longshot, but you can't win if you don't play, right?

The problem is I can't play.

I meet the earning requirement by virtue of the advance for my debut novel and my publisher, Medallion Press, is a qualifying publisher. But I am still not eligible to join the MWA as an active member, because of a rule that states, "The initial print run for a book-length work of fiction or non-fiction must be at least 500 copies."

Sounds pretty reachable, right?

And, in fact, if FINAL VECTOR was being released as a mass-market paperback, which was the original plan, it would not be an issue. But in this rapidly changing publishing landscape, many of the smaller/Indie publishers are abandoning the unprofitable mass-market paperback format for the lower-overhead electronic format. Which is exactly what Medallion has done, meaning there will be NO print run.

I wrote an email to the MWA asking for a clarification and was told I could apply for an affiliate membership, making me eligible to receive "about 95 percent of...member benefits." Unfortunately the major benefit I want is award eligibility, which doesn't apply for affiliate members.

What's funny about the entire thing is that in the lengthy list of eligibility requirements at the MWA site is the following: "If your book...is available only in an electronic format...but can meet certain criteria, you may qualify." What those criteria are is not stated, but whatever they are, I guess I don't meet them.

I don't mean to complain, and I fully acknowledge the MWA's right to operate their organization in any manner they choose, but to have a "sliding scale" of eligibility requirements, especailly one that is not quantified or explained, seems to me to be more than a little unfair.

The International Thriller Writers, another professional writers organization and one to which I already belong, has the right idea. They maintain their list of eligible publishers, and if you sign with one of them to release a book you are deemed eligible, whether your book will be available in hardcover, paperback or ebook.

Simple. And fair.

You Might Think I'm Crazy

2010-11-27T00:32:00.000-05:00

It never ceases to amaze me just how closely related music is to writing. A memorable song tells a story just as much as any book does, and in a fraction of the time. A memorable song can melt years away, decades even, placing the listener in a weird sort of time warp that might last no more than three or four or five minutes.

They say the sense of smell is more memorable than any of the others, and that may be true - anyone who has ever gotten a whiff of that distinctive new-car smell will instantly recognize it even if they go years between actually sitting in new cars.

But for my money, music is equally transformative, at least if you are a music-lover. I heard a song on my way to work tonight that I had literally not listened to or even thought about in probably close to thirty-five years (Yes, I know, I'm getting freaking old, but that's not what this post is about, is it, wise-ass?), and the minute it came out of the speakers in my truck I was transported to my late teens.

The song? "It's All I Can Do," from The Cars second album, Candy-O, and if you're under forty you probably don't much remember The Cars, and if you're under twenty-five or thirty, you might not have ever heard of them. But for me, The Cars are one of those bands/artists that are memorable more because of what they represented than for the music they played.

They were huge when I was in my late teens and early twenties, partly because they originated in Boston, near where I grew up, but mostly because for a period of five to seven years you couldn't tune a radio to a rock station and go more than a few minutes without hearing a Cars song. I loved everything about The Cars, from their distinctive song beats to Ric Ocasek's distinctive voice to the fact that my dad just couldn't understand how the hell that crap was supposed to be considered music.

When I was a kid worked a lot outside, earning money by mowing lawns in my early teens and working as a groundskeeper at an estate when I got a little older. I had a small black hard-plastic transistor radio that I liked to listen to when I was working and the minute "It's All I Can Do" started playing in my truck I thought of that little radio and the smell of fresh-cut grass and the feel of the cool, damp earth on my fingers as I weeded flowerbeds. It was awesome.

Yeah, I know. Weird. I can admit that. But that didn't make it any less real, or any less enjoyable. For three minutes and forty-four seconds it was kind of cool being nineteen again.

This Guy's Pen is Deadlier Than a Sword

2010-11-22T17:12:00.000-05:00

I had never heard of Irish author Darren Shan until a couple of days ago, but one of the beauties of blogs is that you can be exposed to people and ideas you may not have a chance to otherwise.

Over on the Mulholland Books blog this past Friday, Mr.Shan proposed an idea - whimsically I presume, but who can really say for sure? - that was so cool I wish I had thought of it. As a New York Times bestselling author, he spends some of his time doing book tours in support of his work and in the middle of his current tour he had an intriguing epiphany: "How deliciously, dementedly easy it would be to combine my day job with that of a serial killer!"

Think about it, he says. On a book tour the author rarely stays in the same location more than a day or two, spends his time alone following any signings or other promotional obligations he may have, and has plenty of time on his hands when those obligations have been met. "Weapons would never be a problem, not in the land of the Free. Hell, if the worst came to the worst, every writer travels with one or two sharp pens..."

Then he moves on to the next location to repeat the cycle, all in accommodations paid for by his publisher, leaving the scene of the hypothetical crime behind, moving on to new hunting grounds. "A new town. A new hotel. More fans. More signings. More opportunities in the dark."

Is that a dark fantasy? Sure. Twisted? Yeah, probably. But you have to admit it makes a macabre kind of sense, if your tendency is to probe the dark places that most people prefer to ignore whule they whistle past the graveyard, pretending those rustling noises approaching from behind are nothing more than leaves blowing in the breeze.

Oh, and the best part of the whole thing? Darren Shan writes children's books. I'm not quite sure why I find that so perfect, so freaking funny, but there it is. Undoubtedly Mr. Shan is engaging and interesting and the most well-adjusted guy around, but a serial-killing author who gives in to his homicidal urges on his book tours? That's beautiful...

My, How Time Flies

2010-11-16T18:29:00.001-05:00

It's hard for me to imagine that only two-and-a-half months remain before the release of FINAL VECTOR. It feels like just a few days ago I was staring in wide-eyed wonder, like a kid on Christmas morning or a dog watching TV, at the contract for publication of my very first novel, which I signed so fast I almost forgot how to spell my name.

That was almost a year ago now, and the closer it gets to the release date the more it seems there is to do. Life is becoming incredibly busy, but it's a good kind of busy, the kind I have dreamed about my whole life and would not trade for almost anything, the only possible exceptions being my family's health and an anonymous donation of, say, ten million dollars to the Leverone bank account from, oh, anyone.

One thing I have tried my best to maintain is time to work on my latest manuscript, and for the most part, I have been fairly successful. It is challenging, though, to balance new work with everything I am trying to do to give FINAL VECTOR its best possible chance to establish an audience.

The ball has really gotten rolling as the first two author blurbs have come in, one from Sophie Littlefield and one from Vincent Zandri. Both of these accomplished thriller writers volunteered their valuable time to read and blurb advance copies of my book, and both were extremely complimentary, a fact for which I am unbelievably grateful. I don't mean to brag, but I just can't help myself - here they are:

"Allan Leverone raises the stakes with every turn of the page in this can't-put-down tale of ruthless terrorists and cold-blooded betrayal." - Sophie Littlefield

"Written with edge-of-your-seat suspense and precise detail that can only come from a writer who did his research on the job, FINAL VECTOR kept me, a white-knuckle flier, in awe from the very first sentence. The successor to Michael Crichton has landed. And his name is Allan Leverone." - Vincent Zandri

I really didn't intend to gloat, but these two aren't your garden-variety thriller authors. Sophie Littlefield's debut, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, was nominated for just about every "Best First Novel" award going, and ended up winning the Anthony Award. And Vincent Zandri is hot as a pistol right now, having achieved Amazon Bestseller status on each of his last two offerings, THE REMAINS and THE INNOCENT.

Anyway, the point of this post wasn't to brag on myself, as much fun as that is. The point was to illustrate how busy things are getting, and the book doesn't even come out until February!

In addition to working on getting author blurbs, I have been researching review sites and sending my book out to those as well. Medallion's marketing folks have an impressive list of review sites they use, but I figure every bit of exposure I can garner is worthwhile, so any extra review sites I stumble upon are well worth the effort, at least to me.

Also in the works is a book trailer from COS Productions and a blog tour coordinated by Pump Up Your Book Promotions in February and March in support of the release. Add to that my duties as Membership Coordinator for the International Thriller Writers Debut Authors Committee, and my continuing efforts to place one or more of my other manuscripts as well as working on short stories and new novels, and you can see that free time is minimal. In fact, I think it's fair to say there isn't any.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot my "second" job, as an air traffic controller working traffic into and out of Boston's Logan International Airport. That one actually pays all of the bills, at least for now, so it seems only fair to give it some props as well.

So basically, free time is a thing of the past, as is any second of the day when I am not either thinking of ways to promote FINAL VECTOR or plotting out and executing new material.

But don't feel sorry for me. After years of working and writing and hoping to get someone's - anyone's - attention for my work, I am loving life. More to follow, but for now, it's time to get back to murder and mayhem and betrayal...

My Ship Has Finally Come In

2010-11-09T17:23:00.000-05:00

I've always known I was headed for something special, that at some point in my life, money was going to flow my way; great gobs of money, more money than I would ever know how to spend. Naturally, I figured I would have to work for it. You know, build a better mousetrap and all that.

Turns out I had it all wrong. You see, I received an email this morning that's going to change my life. Basically, I've been getting played for a sap by those conniving bastards at the World Bank in Washington, DC.

I've only been to Washington a few times in my life, the last time being at least six or seven years ago, and certainly didn't do any banking while I was there. To the best of my knowledge I've never even had a single dealing with the World Bank, unless of course they have a branch office here in Londonderry, New Hampshire with a completely different name.

I know, it's complicated. Maybe the best way to describe the great fortune I'm about to come into is to let the email I received speak for itself. Here are the relevent snippets, with my commentary [in brackets]:

Hello [My name was cleverly omitted, undoubtedly to keep me from being implicated in the event the email fell into the wrong hands],

I write to confess what you are presently going through with my Boss [I already have a boss; one is enough. Unless she is referring to The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, I am mystified as to who this might be]. I was a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). I resigned my official duty when I discovered the activities of my colleagues...I suspected some kind of fowl play [I hate fowl play, don't you?].

I discovered that my Boss [presumably not Springsteen; as far as I know he has never been employed by the FBI] was conniving with some top officials in the World Bank [in Washington, not Londonderry, NH] to divert funds approved to settle international contractors and inheritance [Now we're getting somewhere. International contractors and inheritance. That sounds like something that might apply to an air traffic controller and author in New Hampshire]. The World Bank are...deliberately delaying your payment [Sounds feasible; they are a bank, after all].

Well I just hope you believe me, because if you don't, your fund is gone [Dammit! Just when I was so close!]. They have decided to divert your attention [That's not too hard to do; just ask my wife].

The reason why I am giving you this information is because of the fact that I was aware of it and my doctrine does not permit me to withhold such information [It's too bad more people don't have that doctrine]. Please do not give this information to my boss [Not freaking likely, I don't even know Bruce Springsteen, although I have been to one of his concerts] as it may lead to them influencing a total blockage to your payment [Did you hear that? A total blockage to my payment! This is outrageous!].

Upon your response to this message, I shall give you all you need to contact the affiliate Payment Office in UK or US [I'm going to take a wild stab here and say my protector will require...oh, I don't know...maybe my bank account number?].

Yours truly,
Ms. Tracy Sanson,
FBI, WB. WDC, USA

Well, there you have it. All I have to do is contact this former FBI agent and presumably supply her with my bank account number so she can wire my payment to me before those bastards at the World Bank influence a total blockage on it. I'll be on Easy Street!

Anyway, I think it's pretty clear what needs to be done here. I'm off to email Ms Sanson and get the ball rolling on my payment.

I sure hope it arrives in time for Christmas.

Fine Fifteen Authors - Stephen King

2010-11-06T19:53:00.000-04:00

Is there a writer of fiction anywhere over the last quarter-century who can honestly say he has not been influenced by this modern master? And I'm not talking about horror writers; Stephen King has long since passed the point where only horror aficionadoes paid attention to his work.

The first Stephen King book I ever read was CARRIE. I didn't like it that much. It was kind of short and I expected it to be scarier than it was; maybe I expected more because of all the hype and there was no way the book could ever have measured up.

But one thing that impressed me, even back then, was how this brand-new author, this overnight sensation, was able to place the reader in the shoes of the young girl at the heart of the story; to make you feel the crushing loneliness of the teen with no friends, the victim who gets pushed and pushed until she snaps and, with the aid of supernatural powers she does not even understand, performs a monstrous act of revenge on her torturers.

After CARRIE I read, in short order, 'SALEM'S LOT, THE SHINING, and THE STAND, enjoying each book more than the last, eagerly awaiting each of King's releases. At times, especially with 'SALEM'S LOT, I was literally afraid to turn out the lights in my room when I put the book down for the night, but that's not what I liked best about Stephen King's work.

The best thing about his work, and I believe the reason a horror writer was able to rise above a genre typically sneered at by "serious" writers and sell gazillions of books in a career spanning nearly forty years and still going strong, is his ability to craft worlds we could all see ourselves living in.

Whether it is a world dominated by vampires (and not the cuddly, sparkly kind), as in 'SALEM'S LOT, or, more than three decades later, a world where an invisible dome mysteriously slams down from the sky and cuts a Maine town off from the rest of the world, the settings are exquisitely crafted and conflicts are realistic and the dialogue rings true. The reader has absolutely no problem suspending disbelief and setting him-or-herself smack-dab into the middle of the action.

And as an inspiration for fledgling authors, you could do a lot worse than emulating Stephen King. His non-fiction book, ON WRITING, is an indispensible addition to the library of anyone who wants to write stories for other people's consumption. The book's title makes it sound dry and boring, but it's not. It's a fascinating look inside the life and mind of a guy who has achieved iconic status among modern authors as well as a nuts-and-bolts guide to crafting fiction.

I find it interesting to see how many authors list Stephen King as an influence. Romance writers, thriller writers, you name it; his name comes up as often as any writer's and more than most in terms of influence, and that's just as it should be.

Fine Fifteen Authors - Edgar Allan Poe

2010-11-01T20:42:00.000-04:00

This one is no surprise, I suppose, and a natural for someone who loves dark fiction as much as I do. Poe is one of only two authors on my Fine Fifteen list of those who most influenced me to have been born in the 1800's, and the only one to do all of his writing more than 150 years ago.

None of that matters, though, if you appreciate the darker side of human nature as well as the ability to tell a compelling tale. Most of Poe's published work consists of poems and short stories or novellas; he published only one complete novel, THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET in 1838.

Poetry is not really my thing, but some of Poe's shorter works are classics. "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Tell-Tale Heart," among many others, thrilled and chilled me as a kid as much as anything I've ever read.

Plus, his relatively short life and the strange, still-not-completely-understood circumstances of his death at the age of 40 are the sorts of things to intrigue anyone. It has become fairly universally accepted that Poe died of the effects of alcoholism, but it's likely no one will ever know for sure, since his death certificate, as well as all his medical records, have been lost.

In his time, Edgar Allan Poe was known as a literary critic and edited a number of different literary magazines. He was fired from one for being drunk at work, but later reinstated. He married his thirteen year old cousin when he was 26, then later watched her die at an early age.

The guy definitely had some issues. But he was a master at writing the sort of fiction I love, and so he takes a place among my Fine Fifteen Authors.

Fine Fifteen Authors - Arthur Conan Doyle

2010-10-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

My grandfather lived with us when I was growing up. He died when I was eight years old and one of his things that I inherited was a book - a mammoth red hardcover tome called THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

I have no idea whether the book actually contained everything ever written by Doyle. Probably not, although it certainly seemed big enough. I still have the book, and if I ever get motivated enough to check, I'll get back to you and let you know.

One thing the book did contain, though, was a bunch of short stories and longer works about a deductive genius in turn-of-the-century Great Britain who used his powerful reasoning skills to solve seemingly impossible mysteries.

Sherlock Holmes was the crimefighter's name, as you undoubtedly already knew, and those adventures were just as instrumental in developing my literary tastes as the Hardy Boys. Even though the Holmes stories could not in any way be considered "Young Adult" reading, I dived into them with a vengeance.

I must have read and re-read Holmes's adventures a dozen times each, likely spending more time immersed in that gigantic red book over the course of a few years than my grandfather spent in a lifetime. It was also my introduction to noir, to a world where the protagonist of the story, the "good guy," wasn't necessarily always squeaky-clean.

I'm not sure anyone else would agree with me that these turn-of-the-century stories qualify as noir, but how else would you describe adventures where the protagonist spends his time, when not immersed in a mystery, under the recreational effects of morphine or cocaine? In my sheltered young world, Holmes's extracurricular activities were as shocking as they were fascinating.

I haven't read any of those stories in years, decades actually, and I suspect that some of Holmes's deductions that so amazed me when I was ten years old may not seem so brilliant now. Some of them may not make all that much sense whatsoever.

But my fascination with Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation introduced me to a world of crime and mystery I still love to read - and write - about today. And that's good enough for me.

Fine Fifteen Authors - Franklin W. Dixon

2010-10-25T18:47:00.000-04:00

A lot of the stuff that you get on Facebook is worthless, but I was recently tagged by an author friend with an interesting note. "Fifteen Authors," it was called, and the point of the exercise was to list, right off the top of your head, "the fifteen authors (poets included) who have influenced you and that will always stick with you."

The rules were that I was supposed to list these fifteen authors in no more than fifteen minutes, but since I rarely have fifteen minutes at a time to devote to anything besides work or writing, I went at it over the course of a couple of days.

I posted my results on Facebook, but it occurred to me that it might be kind of cool to devote a few paragraphs to each of my "Fine Fifteen" over the next few weeks.

The first author to appear on my list is someone who doesn't really exist at all. Or, to be more precise, the name is a pseudonym representing a passel of authors who have contributed work to this ongoing series of books. The name is Franklin W. Dixon.

Franklin W. Dixon's name first appeared on a book cover in 1927, on a mystery book titled THE TOWER TREASURE. But this wasn't any mystery book. It was a mystery aimed at young readers, a category that would later become known as the "Young Adult" market. The protagonists in THE TOWER TREASURE were two brothers - the Hardy Boys - and they would go on to be featured in about a gazillion books over the better part of the next century.

Three Hardy Boys books were published in 1927, followed by three more in 1928 and two in 1929, then one more or less every year through 1979. The 1980's were a busy decade for the Hardy Boys, solving thirty-eight cases written by a number of different "Franklin W. Dixons."

The 1990's and early 2000's were the same story, with the Hardy Boys featured in dozens of adventures, the last of which, MOTOCROSS MADNESS, came out in 2005. The series apparently changed names at that time, becoming known as "Undercover Brothers."

"Franklin W. Dixon" leads off my Fine Fifteen list of authors for one very simple reason. He (they?) introduced me to the joy of reading at a young age. I discovered the Hardy Boys and was transported into a world where young boys could follow clues, outwit bad guys, have adventures and solve crimes.

The Hardy Boys didn't care how many friends I had, didn't care that I was short and skinny and too good at school for my own good, at least when it came to getting bullied in the playground. They welcomed me into their mysteries and even though they encountered danger at every turn, they never failed to get the drop on the bad guys in the end.

By the early 1970's I had outgrown the Hardy Boys and moved onto other literary fare, and although I'm quite certain I didn't read every Franklin W. Dixon novel from THE TOWER TREASURE through THE MASKED MONKEY, I made a damned good dent in them.

My mother thought I was crazy, probably for lots of reasons, but most especially because I would read three or four Hardy Boys books at a time, keeping a separate one, open to the appropriate page, in a bunch of different rooms. If I was eating breakfast in the kitchen, I would pick up my kitchen Hardy Boys book and read while I ate. Parents watching something boring on TV, like the news? No problem. I would simply pick up my living room Hardy Boys book and within seconds be hot on the trail of a diamond smuggler or counterfeiter.

I'm sure I would eventually have discovered books and the joy of the written word at some point, even if I had never heard of the Hardy Boys; I can't imagine not doing so. But he, along with another name you probably know, and who I'll get into at another time, turned me on to a lifetime's worth of pleasure, and so Franklin W. Dixon leads off my list of Fine Fifteen authors.

Well, Knock Me Down With a Feather

2010-10-16T06:07:00.000-04:00

Boy, you just never know. I found out last week that my dark, dark, dark short story, "Dance Hall Drug," is being nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize by the editor of Dark Valentine, Katherine Tomlinson.

This is extremely gratifying, as you might imagine, but also more than a little surprising, for a couple of different reasons.

First of all, and I've mentioned this before, "Dance Hall Drug" had been languishing on my hard drive for months, rejected by a number of magazines, presumably due to its content/subject matter/general pitch-black tone. There is sex and drugs and murder and betrayal and revenge and madness, all packed into less than four thousand words of fiction.

I had more or less given up on the idea of ever seeing the story in print until last spring, when I heard about this new online dark fiction site called Dark Valentine. I researched the site and decided it might offer the perfect venue for such a disturbing story, so I submitted it, prepared as ever to receive another rejection. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised when Ms Tomlinson contacted me to say she wanted to run "Dance Hall Drug," calling it "a nasty piece of work."

I'm pretty sure I've never received higher praise for one of my short stories, considering nasty is exactly what I was going for.

The second reason I was so surprised to hear about the Pushcart nomination is the nature of the award itself. The Pushcart Prize bills itself as "the most honored literary project in America," and has recognized the work of such literary giants as Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver and John Irving, among many others.

In other words, it's the sort of fancy-schmancy award that genre writers like me never sniff. In fact, I can picture some Pushcart judge sitting down with a snifter of brandy in his Manhattan townhouse, opening "Dance Hall Drug," beginning to read, and either dropping dead of a heart attack or getting about two-thirds of the way through the story and crumpling it up into a ball and tossing it into his roaring fire.

But you never know, as I believe I may have mentioned earlier.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that I don't care if I win a Pushcart Prize, despite the fact that until last week I had never expected in a million years to ever be up for one. I'd love to win it.

But there's a lot of truth to the cliched expression, "it's an honor just to be nominated." As I said in an email to Ms Tomlinson after she notified me of the nomination, as an author, my goal is to evoke emotion in the reader. It might be shock or horror or empathy or excitement, but if you read my work and you feel something, then I feel something, too: I feel I've done my job.

Obviously, "Dance Hall Drug" struck a chord with her (and hopefully with other readers as well), and for that I am humbled and grateful. Thanks very much to Katherine Tomlinson for taking a chance on this disturbing story and for believing in it enough to nominate it for a 2011 Pushcart Prize.

I Think I Have Writer's Cramp

2010-10-10T13:57:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned in the past how things seem to go in cycles as far as writing is concerned, at least for me. I'll go along and have several short stories appear in print more or less at the same time, and then a few months go by with nothing.

Part of that is probably due to my own disorganization. I tend to write my short fiction in bunches, composing several stories over the course of a few weeks and then doing nothing with them for a while, leaving them to season on my hard drive. Then, in a burst of enthusiastic energy - also known by its official medical terminology, manic-depression - I will submit a bunch of stories to various publications at roughly the same time over the course of a few days.

Of course, each publication has their own timetable for responding to submissions. Some are relatively quick to get back to the author, either with an acceptance or rejection, while others, maybe because of the volume of submissions they receive, maybe because they hold stories in limbo while trying to decide whether to use them, take much longer.

But inevitably, when you send stories out in clumps, you tend to see them get published in clumps. This summer has been one of those clumps for me.

It started with my novelette, "Uncle Brick and the Little Devilz," which appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of the venerable online mag, Mysterical-E. This was the followup to my Derringer finalist story from the previous summer, "Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills." Then "The Waiting" appeared in the Sumer 2010 issue of the brand-new, super-cool print magazine Needle: A Magazine of Noir, followed smartly by "Dance Hall Drug," maybe my darkest and most disturbing story ever, which showed up in the brand-new, super-cool online 'zine, Dark Valentine.

This past week, the print magazine Twisted Dreams, not brand-new but definitely super-cool, published their October 2010 issue featuring my story, "Under an October Moon," and just yesterday my dark revenge story titled "Dead and Buried" popped up at the ambitious and always-entertaining online site called A Twist of Noir.

Whew. I'm tired just thinking about it. But I'm also pumped, because the thought of my work being exposed to the readers of all these different online and print publications is both exhilerating and extremely gratifying. After all, the point of submitting your work to publications is to see it in print. Otherwise, you might as well just keep a journal.

Some of this material is available for free, the rest at a very reasonable cost. You probably spent more for that Mocha Grande Cappucino thingy you ordered at Starbucks on your way to work this morning.

But just in case you don't have the extra cash to buy Needle: A Magazine of Noir or Twisted Dreams, don't you worry about it. All you have to do is click on over to my website, www.allanleverone.com, and then navigate to the "Contact" link on the left side of the home page, then sign up for my email newsletter by October 18. Do that and you will be eligible to win a free copy of the latest issue of each of those magazines, and you can read "The Waiting" and "Under an October Moon" to your heart's content.

Think about it: Free Stuff. And you might just find either or both of those magazines to be such outstanding reading you'll want to get the next issue, and the next. Before you know it, you'll toss your TV, trash your iPod, call in sick at work, and curl up in bed, reading.

Just don't blame me if you get fired.

Step Into My Office

2010-10-07T19:06:00.000-04:00

One of the blogs I enjoy following is the always interesting "Murderati." The blog's contributors include some of the best and fastest-rising authors in the mystery/thriller genres, including (but not limited to) Tess Gerritsen, Ken Bruen, JT Ellison, Robert Gregory Browne and Allison Brennan, among many others. The material they cover runs the gamut from plotting and characterization to marketing to the occasional timely rant concerning the publishing business or just about anything else.

A month or so ago, some of the authors contributed posts and photos of their workspaces, the areas where these evil geniuses dream up and execute (pun definitely intended) their fictional mayhem. They ranged from entire separate rooms dedicated to the craft of writing, to portions of rooms filled with papers and computers covering what, presumably, was a desk buried somewhere beneath.

The posts were a fascinating look at the physical manifestations of the creative process and pretty much included the semi-sloppy messiness that always seems to accompany creative output. At least that's what I tell myself when my messes get out of control.

Anyway, the posts got me thinking about my own office. It's a little smaller than most of the ones featured by these best-selling authors most of the time, although occasionally it's quite a bit bigger. You see, my office is wherever I happen to sit down and open up my laptop.

Most of my best work is done on my bed.

Feel free to interpret that any way you want, but what I really mean is when I'm working on a novel or a short story it is often while sitting on the bed-covers, pillow propped behind my back, leaning against the bed's headboard. There are several reasons for this, but mostly it's because I need to have silence - or as close as possible to it - when I'm writing, and with a three year old running around our house, sometimes that's in short supply.

I've made my office in plenty of other places, though. When my granddaughter was an infant and my wife was still working, I wrote entire chapters of PASKAGANKEE (a supernatural suspense novel I still have high hopes for) with a sleeping baby perched on my left shoulder, rocking her back and forth while I typed one-handedly on my laptop as it sat perched on top of the stove. Most of the time while it was off. The stove, that is, not the laptop, although based on the lack of success I've had selling the manuscript, maybe the computer should have been off as well.

I have also written short stories and novel chapters sitting in my daughter's room on the floor, leaning against the wall in the space her futon used to take up until I rented a van and drove it to her college dorm. Once in a great while I write while sitting on the living room couch, although most of the time that only happens when nobody else is home.

Plenty of work gets done when I am on breaks at my day job as an air traffic controller. It's not always easy to switch gears from talking to airplanes, all of whom are trying to occupy the same space, to writing about chaos and murder and mayhem, although now that I think about it, it's often not all that hard, either. The point is, wherever I can find a free conference room or unused office on my breaks, I open up my laptop and it instantly becomes my office, at least until my break is over.

Oh, that reminds me. My break is over. Time to close up my office and get back to work.