Trailer Tuesday: J.I. Greco's Take the All Mart

Thought this was a lot of fun.

A New Review For Midnight Eyes

Midnight Eyes gets a fairly good review over at Good Book Alert. Seems like the reviewer's honest opinion, which is all you can ask for.

An excerpt:

Midnight Eyes explores these dark relatives of mainstream humanity in often disturbing detail. Accordingly, this novel is not for the faint of heart. Although the book doesn't revel in gore, a victim-mutilating serial killer is a key aspect of the book. More disturbing, and a testament to the author's characterization skills, is the mental insight and depth provided into serial killers (both the primary antagonist and already imprisoned killer near the start of the book). They are monsters, yes, but monsters with depth.

John D. MacDonald: The Red and Gold - Two Early Travis McGee Novels

I read many Travis McGee novels as they came out in the early eighties including The Green Ripper,  Cinnamon Skin and the final McGee, The Lonely Silver Rain.

During that same era, I also read early titles from the local library or snagged from used shops. The Deep Blue Good-Bye, Nightmare in Pink, A Purple Place for Dying and Pale Gray for Guilt were among those I enjoyed.

Lately I've been reading the titles, and colors, I missed. I recently finished The Quick Red Fox and A Deadly Shade of Gold. The fourth and fifth entries in the series, they seem to mark an evolutionary turning point.


Red is a slim entry that embroils McGee in the search for embarrassing photos of movie star Lysa Dean. It's a quest that takes him from Florida on a cross-continental journey where he has to employ usual amounts of brawn and intellect.


In typical MacDonald fashion, the tale is balanced with character and humanity. Lysa Dean's sends an assistant, Dana Holtzer, to help McGee.

Dana is employed in order to fund care for her sick husband, and the story is as much about her emergence as a person as it is about McGee's core quest. It is not the best McGee, but it represents a MacDonald flourish that always elevates his work above genre expectations.

The Golden Mean
The edition of Gold I picked up is an early paperback printing from Fawcett and dubs it "a double-length adventure..." It's a slam bang adventure and has many twists, but it also seems MacDonald was moving it up a rung up in scope and theme.

As with most McGees, things start in Florida with the return to Fort Lauderdale of McGee's old friend Sam Taggart. Sam's acquired a gold Aztec idol from nefarious antiquities dealers.

We learn at the outset Sam broke the heart of McGee's friend Nora with his departure a few year's earlier, so his return is an emotional event. Before the emotional damage can be tackled, however, Sam is murdered.

McGee agrees to investigate for Nora and delves into the idol's origins before heading to Mexico where Sam worked before his return to Florida.

While Hercule Poirot might have picked up clues in conversations and accidental eavesdropping, McGee always has a tougher time of it. He has to scale secluded estate walls, battle guards and face attack dogs before he can hover by an eave to overhear pertinent data.

Before Gold's finished McGee has faced loss, his own descent in the underworld and brutal violence, though the novel's also deftly plotted and winds its way to a tight, clever wrap up. In contrast to Red, it focuses more on the toll McGee's world exacts from him.

As he did with many earlier novel, MacDonald proves he's digging much deeper than a standard men's adventure title. The books have a few dated references and attitudes, but overall they significant entries in the McGee series and significant pieces for consideration in the evolution of the detective story.

Further reading

Murder by 4: The Quick Red Fox by John D. MacDonald

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Death Commits Bigamy - Forties Crime Fiction

There's a definite Mondrian feel to this cover for 1947's Death Commits Bigamy, an entry in the Johnny and Suzy Marshall series described by The Thrilling Detective as a suburban Nick and Nora Charles. I suspect this is a later edition in spite of the '47 copyright. As you can see by the scrawl, I got this one free at a library book sale. 

Further Reading

Alternate cover on Flickr

Trailer Tuesday: Harry Shannon's Daemon

Bibliohohlic's Bookshelf: Pennies On Her Eyes Sixties Horror

Mary Linn Roby penned a number of novels and short stories as well including some that were adapted for Rod Serling's Night Gallery in the seventies. This one's from 1969. Read an interview with her on Phil Jason's blog.

This is a book that's been with me a while. I'm not sure where I acquired it now. It bears the rubber stamp from a used book store I never visited. That's a sure sign of biblioholism. You often turn up with a book you can't quite remember acquiring.

Trailer Tuesday: The Silent Girl By Tess Gerritsen

I became a fan of the Tess Gerritsen thrillers with The Sinner and backtracked then moved forward from there to keep up with the adventures of Rizzoli and Isles before the TNT series rolled around.

Here's the trailer for the all new novel from Tess Gerritsen. Looks exciting.

Sunday Author Interview: Aliya Anjum - Travel, History and Information You Might Not Know

Recently I did an interview with Robert Lory that seemed popular, so I thought I would do some more interviews, at least on an occasional basis.

I put the call out  on the Kindle Boards, Twitter and a couple of other places for authors with a couple of books.

One of the first writers to touch base with me was Aliya Anjum, author of several recently-released e-books.

It was a real pleasure to learn of Aliya's work.  I was once a religion reporter, so some of her topics took me back to some of my interviews from those days, meeting and chatting with people of many faiths and creeds.

If you read to the end you'll also discover what she has planned next makes her a particularly appropriate interview for my little web corner here on another literary front.


The synopsis on some of your books, and even some of the subtitles note that you are Pakistani, but tell us a little about yourself and your writing background. You write of history and Hollywood and many diverse topics. What prepared you for that.

First of all, thank you for this interview. Coming to your question, briefly, I am a Pakistani author and free lance journalist as well as part time MBA faculty at a business school. I hold a BBA/MBA from The Institute of Business Administration, Karachi and an MS from Philadelphia University, US. I have also worked at a French and a British Bank in Karachi, before going to grad school in US. After my return, I worked for the government of Pakistan and prior to that had a very short stint as a Live TV Show host for a current affairs program.

I have been an avid reader, all my life. After studying in US in the post 9/11 environment, my interest in geo-politics, globalization and history deepened. I started to read up on Islamic history and geo-politics, beginning from Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilisztions". As I read up on history, I got hooked. Even though my studies in US were in Fashion Apparel Management, however, I am not even remotely linked to it.

As for Hollywood, I think most Americans do not realize the global reach of Hollywood. Even prior to cable TV, which is available the world over now, Hollywood movies have been watched on TV and Cinema, everywhere. In many countries including Pakistan, unfortunately, pirated CDs hit the market, simultaneously with its US release. Hollywood is everywhere, in the cinemas, on TV, at CD shops and even on the internet now.

I will also tell you a surprising thing about Hollywood. Contrary to popular belief, Hollywood is US's biggest goodwill ambassador and the US is admired in many ways because of it.

Two weeks of solo travel in Greece: a Pakistani Girl's Diary is called on Amazon a “look at Greece through the eyes of a solo Muslim female traveler.” Tell us a little about the focus of the book.

This book is based on my trip to Greece in October-November 2010. Of late I have been traveling to historically blessed destinations. In 2009, I went to Spain and Turkey to see Muslim history (Spain was under Muslim rule from 751 to 1492. This was Spain's glorious age, in the European dark ages). Coming back to my travels, I visited Greece to see the scientific, philosophical and cultural foundation of the western world. Greece is blessed with natural beauty and a amazing people. My book reflects all of that. It also hints at globalization. The book however, has its feminine moments too, and thus it's a solo female traveler's account.

You have illustrations tied to the book. Tell us a little about some of the images and some of your photography.

I have three slide shows links from the site Tripadvisor wow with about 185 pictures, covering almost everything I mentioned in my book. So if you read my book, and see the pictures, you can visually follow the narrative. The pictures are taken from my Sony Cybershot camera, and I would leave it for my readers to decide upon the quality of the visuals. I am only an amatuer photographer, but I thoroughly enjoyed being click-happy in Greece, which was a sensory overload.

You have looked into Muslim history in a couple of your titles. In Muslim Inventions in the Islamic Golden Age 750-1500 AD you explore some discoveries and scientific information that’s been lost or misinterpreted over the years. Can you give us a little overview of what the book addresses.

This manuscript was awarded a Commendation Certificate by the National Book Foundation, Pakistan.

Islam is unfortunately greatly misunderstood in the US. Political Islam has overtaken and even maligned the scripture and Muslism. Islam is an Abrahamic religion and during the middle ages, the Islamic civilization, was a glorious civilization, which gave impetus to the European Renaissance. Muslims empires ruled over parts of Africa, Asia and even Europe, and the sciences and arts reached new heights in this era.

To elaborate, Bayt-ul-Himkah (House of Wisdom) was a scientific research institution in Baghdad, Iraq where Muslims collected the knowledge of all ancient cultures including Greek works. It was here that Arab Muslims and Jews worked together to greatly build upon existing sciences and created new sciences such as Algebra. Chemistry is also an Arab Muslim invention. Muslim and Jewish Arab surgeons and physicians such as Al-Zahrawi (Albucasis) and Moses Maimonides performed even cosmetic surgeries and treated complicated illnesses. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) created the first medical encyclopedia and his book the Canon, was standard medical text in European universities for 500 years. Muslims also mastered urban planning and wrote literary masterpieces such as the One thousand and one Nights, penned circa 800 AD. Islamic knowledge began to spread to Europe during the Crusades (1099-1192). Otherwise, after the ancient Greeks, the last of whom existed circa 150 AD, there was over a mellinium of the European dark ages.


The Islamic civilization is the bridge that connects ancient Greeks to Renaissance Europe. However, much of this has been lost to history due to colonialism. Interestingly, these facts are being re-discovered and brought to light in European universities and institutions. Science is the collective heritage of humanity.



And in Muhammad’s Wives you look at the 11 wives of Muhammad. That’s an area Westerners and possibly many others don’t know much about. Tell us a little about the book and the wives, and what the information reflects about contemporary life.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) in unfortunately also greatly misunderstood on account of Political Islam. He is often portrayed as a militant misogynist. The widespread poverty and economic backwardness of Muslim countries, also strengthens this negative image.

Muhammad's life is a road map for all Muslims and his role as a husband is thus very important. It would be surprising to note that the book would be equally educational for Muslims as it would be for non-Muslims to know many surprising facts about the wives. Take for example that Ayesha (the infamous child bride, which is something open to debate) is the greatest knowledge bearer of Islam. Her youth and intelligence, served Islam for 38 years after Muhammad passed away. This is iconoclastic for an Abrahamic Religion, when a woman was trusted as such. Then there is Hafsa, who was trusted with the safekeeping of the Quranic (scriptural) text. It was her text that was compiled in the current format of the Quran that you see today. Finally Muhammad, never indulged in physical or psychological abuse and he married widows and divorcees.

The book is a condensed 20 page e-book available for 99 cents, and I would urge people to read it.

What are you working on now? What’s next on the horizon.

All three of my e-books were launched in June 2011. I am currently involved in establishing myself as an author by marketing my books. Interviews such as this one, are a great help. I am at present, completely consumed in this effort, which is labyrinthine, due to the breadth and scope of Social Media. It is especially, hard for a foreign, non-fiction, indie author to create readership. Being so far away, I can't manage any coffesshop or bookshop appearances or a speaking session etc. And then my books are not in the hot selling romance genre either. The internet is my sole medium, but it is a powerful medium.

My next project is going to be a collection of horror short stories, which was actually the first book I penned down. It participated in the National Book Foundation's annual competition, where it was featured in the annual new book selection, a booklet aimed at publishers. It would be my fiction debut and I am looking forward to it.

Thank You!

Thanks to Aliya for dropping by. Check out her books by clicking the links above, or learn more here:

Aliya's titles on Smashwords
Aliya's blog

The Big Thrill Interview

If you missed it from my tweeting it, another new interview with me is out. This one is on The Big Thrill, website of the International Thriller Writers association.

It was conducted by Gary Kriss, a former newspaper man like me, and author of the upcoming novel The Zodiac Deception.
 

It was an interesting interview to do. Gary asked some great questions about books, thrillers and a lot more.
Check it out.

Damballa - All New African American '30s Pulp Hero

Saw this mentioned on another blog the other day, and noticed I had news about it in my in-box from Cornerstone Books and Airshop 27. They're billing Damballa as "pulpdom’s first ever 1930s African-American pulp hero as created by the acclaimed author, Charles Saunders."

Synopsis
From the heart of Africa to the streets of Harlem, a new hero is born sworn to support and protect Americans of all races and creeds; he is Damballa and he strikes from the shadows. When the reigning black heavy weight boxing champion of the world agrees to defend his crown against a German fighter representing Hitler’s Nazis regime, the ring becomes the stage for a greater political contest. The Nazis’ agenda is to humble the American champion and prove the superiority of their pure-blood Aryan heritage. To achieve this end, they employ an unscrupulous scientist capable of transforming their warrior into a superhuman killing machine.

Can the mysterious Damballa unravel their insidious plot before it is too late to save a brave and noble man?

Seems to blend a lot of pulp elements.

“Racism and sexism were a few of the ugly aspects of the pulps we’d all like to forget,” according to Editor Ron Fortier in the Cornerstone release. “Minority groups based on race, sex and religion were ostracized and either ignored completely or denigrated in their outlandish portrayals. Since its creation, Airship 27 Productions has made it a goal to address these wrongs and help correct them within the context of providing top-notch action fiction to our readers. Damballa is a major step in that direction and we are truly excited about its release.”

Interesting on many fronts. It's available for order here.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Drum Beat - Mariane Sixties Private Eye Fiction

I bought this at a store called the Pea Picker, though based on the rubber stamp inside the front cover, it passed through a shop called the Book-A-Teria as well.

It bears a 1968 copyright and stars globe-hopping private eye  Chester Drum in the last of his adventures by Stephen Marlowe, a pseudonym of Milton Lesser.

Drum appeared in a crossover with Richard Prather's Shell Scott once upon a time. It was called Double In Trouble.

Trailer Tuesday: Ryne Douglas Pearson's Confessions

I thought an occasional book trailer might be an interesting offering here. I know we did Joe Finder's new book last Monday, but Trailer Tuesday is alliterative. Here's the book trailer for Knowing screenwriter Ryne Douglas Pearson's "Confessions," a literary mystery thriller.

Booksprung Interview

I did a phone interview a while back with Chris Walters from Booksprung ebook news website. We talked about Midnight Eyes but also about adventures in e-book reading and much more.

He titled it How Sidney Williams escaped midlist oblivion.

Stop over and check it out if you get a chance. There are a few "you knows" since it was an actual, live, talking interview.

It was actually fun to do and to contemplate some of the queries about ebook reading and the new reading landscape.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: MacMorgan No. 1 - Key West Connection '80s ActionI

I picked this one up off a drug store rack. Kind of reminded me of the Travis McGee series. The Dusky MacMorgan series seems to have run for about seven installments, each with a similarly colorful and arresting cover.

Turns out Randy Striker is an early pseudonym of Randy Wayne White, author of the Doc Ford thrillers.

Buried Secrets Goes on Sale

I'm not usually an on-the-spot news reporter, but when I pick up something helpful, I try to pass it along.

Joseph Finder's second Nate Heller adventure, Buried Secrets, went on sale today.

This time around Nate's involved in the search for the kidnapped daughter of a hedge fund manager.

She's, in fact, been buried alive, and Nick's thrown into an investigation that sounds ripped from the headlines.

It promises to be a suspenseful, nail-biting thriller. Check out the trailer below.



Read more and pick up extras here

International Thriller Writer's Roundtable - The Elements of Thriller Stories

I'm participating in the Thriller Roundtable at the International Thriller Writer's Big Thrill website this week. Other participants include Thomas Kaufman, Reece Hirsch and CE Lawrence.

The question posed is interesting, dealing with the purest elements of story.

The late John Gardner suggested that all stories boil down to either, someone went on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Do you agree? At their very core, how do you view your thrillers?

So far, Ms. Lawrence and I have weighed in with opening shots. Drop by and see how it goes if you have a second. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Search For A Dead Nympho - Sixties Noir

Paul W. Fairman was the founding editor of If magazine but left after only four issues, if Wikipedia is to be believed, anyway. This is a noir novel copyrighted 1967, about 10 years before his death. (I believe it's bound to be the same Paul W. Fairman, anyway.)

 It's published by Lancer Books, obviously, if you glance down a bit. That's an early imprint from the late Walter Zacharius, who went on to found Kensington Books. It was under Kensington's Pinnacle imprint that my novels originally appeared. Six degrees, I guess. I don't know that I knew that when I bought this years back. 

Further reading
Dead City, an earlier tale from Mr. Fairman and basis for the film Target Earth, now at Project Gutenberg 

The Death of Sweet Mister - Disturbing Noir

When I taught a creative writing class a while back, I showed a number of magazines as examples of good reading. One was a double issue of Tin House, which offered stories of hope in one half and stories of dread when flipped over.

"I bet I know which side you liked best," someone chimed in.

It may have had something to do with the tone of some of the assigned reading.

I do tend to lean a little toward darker fiction, falling back on the Kafka admonition that we should read novels that stab us.

I think I'm still bleeding from Daniel Woodrell's  The Death of Sweet Mister, a rural noir excursion that pre-dates Winter's Bone. It rivals Jim Thompson or James M. Cain for dark brilliance, overlaid with a bit of Faulkner.

The Sweet Mister of the title is Morris Akins, known as Shuggie. He's the only son of Glenda, a sultry dark-haired beauty, who's wed to a violent petty criminal named Red.

Perceptive
Shuggie is a perceptive and resourceful 13-year-old, wise beyond his years but trapped by Red's brutality and Glenda's dependence on him.

He and his mother live in a house in a cemetery where Glenda and Shuggie serve essentially as grounds keepers while Red and a slightly more compassionate friend, Basil, spend most of their time devising small time schemes to garner money or drugs including prescription pain pills.

Shuggie's roped into several criminal efforts and complies passively, while shouldering more than a 13-year-old's share of responsibilities with Glenda.

Shuggie's dark, shattering character arc is the core of the novel and Woodrell unfolds it with occasional hints and a progression of illustrative events including one humiliating birthday experience for Glenda that rounds out a depiction of Red's character as well.

The title and subject matter suggest tragedy, but Woodrell twists the story in unexpected directions as Glenda begins an affair with a suave chef a a local spot who has aspirations toward returning to better restaurants.

When the book reaches its ending, all of the pieces fit perfectly, and all of the motivations are clear, prepared for and compelling.

It's indeed a novel that drives its cold blade deep, and it would definitely skew in the direction of dread.

What writer's should look for:
Woodrell's careful preparation for the ending through a mixture of character and events. This is a compelling read that employs the very best elements of genre fiction and character-driven literary fiction.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: New People TV-Tie-In Noveliazation

Long before Lost, ABC dropped another set of survivors onto an island. The series, from Aaron Spelling and Rod Serling, was called The New People. It would appear it ran 17 episodes in 1969 and had a hip and trendy style based on the tone of the back cover description.

I've read Damon Lindelof once said if he'd known about the show, he would have named Charlie Pace's band in "Lost" The New People instead of Driveshaft.

I learned about this series in one old TV book or another and picked up the novelization while browsing a used bookstore once upon a time. It's harder and harder to find lost gems like this just kicking around nowadays, though almost everything's available somewhere on the web, as evidenced by the TV promo below.

BBC World Service Val McDermid Program Airs

The BBC World Service interview with thriller-writer Val McDermid on her novel, A Place of Execution, is now available for online listening or download, and it features my question.

Happily my little query was worthwhile enough to prompt some interesting discussion.

I asked about the development of theme. I believe Ms. McDermid's answer is of interest to writers and perhaps readers as well.


How the posing of my question came about via Twitter is discussed in this blog post.

You can listen to the entire interview on the BBC website.