Hectic Week

Sorry no Forgotten Books post today. I just never got around to it. I've been writing a lot this week, plus there have been numerous details to deal with on the new house, which is getting closer and closer to being finished. Then there's the new series I'm in the process of creating with one of my editors (mostly his idea, but I'll be doing a lot of fleshing out on it). Earlier this week I had to go up to Denton, so of course I stopped at Recycled Books. Didn't find much this time, however, other than a few more William P. McGivern novels. I've been having more luck lately finding vintage paperbacks at Half Price Books, for some reason. So there's my week in a nutshell.

Tainted Archive Interview

Gary Dobbs, aka Western author Jack Martin, has a very nice article/interview with yours truly posted today over at the Tainted Archive blog. Thanks, Gary, for all your kind words.

Batman: Death Mask

I’m not much of a manga fan. I don’t like a lot of the artwork, and reading right to left always throws me. However, I’m willing to give one a try every now and then when it looks interesting, and as you can see from the cover, if you’re a Batman fan like me, this definitely looks interesting.

And as it turns out, BATMAN: DEATH MASK is a really good graphic novel. The story finds Bruce Wayne getting involved with a somewhat shady Japanese industrialist and winds up with Batman embroiled in an action-packed plot featuring murder victims who have their faces sliced off, a Japanese ceremonial mask with an ancient curse on it, a beautiful young woman who’s a dead ringer for one of Bruce Wayne’s old lovers, flashbacks to Bruce’s martial arts training in Japan before he becomes Batman, evil secrets from the past rising up to menace the present like something out of a Ross Macdonald novel, and a bunch of American gangsters. Whew. As you can tell, the pace in this story never slows down much. I even got used to reading backwards.

The story and art are by Yoshinori Natsume. Needless to say, I’d never read any of his work before. But I certainly would again, especially if it was another Batman graphic novel, because DEATH MASK is one of the best Batman yarns I’ve read in quite a while.

The Avenger Chronicles

My author copies of THE AVENGER CHRONICLES arrived today. This is a new collection from Moonstone Books featuring eighteen stories starring the pulp character whose relatively short-lived series (24 novels) was reprinted in its entirety in paperback by Warner Books during the Seventies. Those reprints were so successful that Warner published twelve new Avenger novels, all ghosted by Ron Goulart under the house-name Kenneth Robeson.

Goulart is back with a new story in THE AVENGER CHRONICLES. Other authors include Howard Hopkins (probably the world’s leading authority on the character), Bob Randisi, Gary Phillips, Will Murray, Paul Kupperberg, C.J. Henderson, Richard Dean Starr, Mark Justice, Joe Gentile, Mel Odom, Martin Powell, Win Scott Eckert, Tom DeFalco, Matthew Baugh, Clay and Susan Griffith, and Dan Wickline. You get not only a fine lineup of writers, but also some fine artwork, including two variant covers.

My story is called “Death in Clown Alley”, and I had a fine time writing it. Where else am I going to get to write about skeleton clowns raising havoc under the Big Top? One of the great joys of this business is that from time to time you get to write about characters whose exploits you enjoyed in your younger days. That happened to me with Mike Shayne, Longarm, Kolchak, and now The Avenger, all of whom entertained me long before I ever became a writer. I’m not old enough to remember The Avenger’s pulp run, but I bought and read all those paperback reprints in the Seventies. While The Avenger wasn’t my favorite pulp character (that honor goes to Doc Savage), I thoroughly enjoyed those original yarns, written by Paul Ernst under the Robeson house-name, and I appreciate the opportunity to add to his adventures.

Forgotten Books: Rogue Cop - William P. McGivern

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Earlier this week, someone on another blog reviewed the Forgotten Book I was going to post about today. But I liked it enough that I’m going to write this post anyway. As a wise woman once told me, you can’t say enough about a good book.

William P. McGivern is one of those authors whose work I’ve been aware of for decades without ever reading much of it. I read his World War II novel, SOLDIERS OF ’44, which is part war novel (which works pretty well) and part military/legal thriller (which didn’t work, as far as I’m concerned). A few years ago I read his private eye novel BLONDES DIE HARD, written under the pseudonym Bill Peters, which I liked. You can read my comments on it here.

Now I’ve read his novel ROGUE COP, and it’s easily the best McGivern I’ve read so far. Philadelphia police detective Mike Carmody is the rogue cop of the title, up to his neck in graft and corruption. His younger brother Eddie is also a cop, but of the honest variety, and when Eddie winds up with the local mob after him, Mike has to take sides and choose whether to protect himself or his brother.

There’s probably not a lot in this book that will surprise the veteran reader of hardboiled thrillers, but boy, the pace really rockets along. McGivern’s prose is just as smooth as it can be, and he does a great job of creating rounded, morally conflicted characters, chief among them Mike Carmody himself. There are plenty of tough action scenes, and a great line near the end. I’ll definitely be seeking out more McGivern novels, and if you haven’t read ROGUE COP, it gets a high recommendation from me.

Personal Best

I don’t know what it is about October. Last year, as some of you may remember, Livia and I spent the whole month in Rockport, on the Texas coast, and had a great time. Our toughest decisions were whether to eat at Charlotte Plummer’s or the Big Fisherman, or whether it was too windy to go fishing. I also set a personal record while we were there, writing more in that month than I ever had before in a month’s time. Well, this October, I spent at home, keeping up with kids, in-laws, and everything that’s going on with the new house . . . and I broke the record again, writing more than I ever have in a month. Must be something in the air this time of year besides the ragweed.

Change of Plans

Yesterday was a busy day, with the plumber, the electrician, and the foam insulation guys all working in the new house at the same time, plus new appliances being delivered. Livia and I were kept hopping, making decisions and running to Lowe’s and Home Depot to pick stuff up.

In the midst of all that, I was emailing back and forth with one of my editors concerning a new series I’m going to be writing. I was under the impression that the three books would be written next year, but as it turns out, the publisher needs the first two ASAP, with the third one to follow fairly quickly after that. I’m about a fourth of the way through another book, luckily for the same editor, so he asked me to put that one aside, write the first two books in the new series, and then finish the one I was working on now, followed by the third book in the new series and then the next book in yet another series. Me being me, I said sure, no problem.

And it really shouldn’t be. I have a pretty good outline on the current book, and I’m at a point in the story where it should be easy to suspend things and then pick it up again in a few months. All this really does is tighten up the lead time between manuscript delivery and publication date for several of these books, and that’s more of a problem on the publisher’s end than on mine. Still, there’s not much leeway for anybody involved in these projects, so we’re all going to have to be pretty efficient, starting with me. I think I’m up to it (he said hopefully).

Twitter

Proving once again that I'm on the cutting edge of this new-fangled Internet gizmo, I now have a Twitter account. Problem is, I'm not savvy enough to tell you how to go find my updates on their website. But if you know and have absolutely nothing better to do, you can check out these little posts to find out how my day is going. It'll be a thrill a minute, I'm sure.

Superman: The Third Kryptonian

I was a big Superman fan when I was a little kid, probably because some of the first comic books I ever read had Superman in them. Then, for a long time, I didn’t have much interest in the character. Now, though, I kind of like old Supes again.

The trade paperback THE THIRD KRYPTONIAN reprints a three-issue story arc and a couple of stand-alone stories from last year, and they’re pretty darned good. I’m not really up to speed on current continuity, so a few things took me by surprise (Clark and Lois have a foster son now? First I’ve heard of it!), but I didn’t have any trouble following the stories. I kind of like the kid, too. He’s a Kryptonian, from either the bottle city of Kandor or the Phantom Zone, I don’t remember which, but he’s not the Third Kryptonian of the title. That’s a whole other character who gets Superman involved in a fairly complicated yarn about deserters from the Kryptonian navy, space pirates, wholesale destruction of worlds, cosmic vengeance, and assorted good stuff like that. There’s plenty of action in this story arc. As if to balance that out, the two stand-alones are much quieter and reflective, and I liked them quite a bit, too.

I’m not surprised I enjoyed the stories, because the primary writer on them is Kurt Busiek, one of my favorite writers working in comics today. If you like comics and haven’t tried his work, you need to run out and find copies of MARVELS and the various ASTRO CITY books. Wonderful stuff, especially for long-time comics fans (*cough* geezers *cough*) like me.

The Trailsman: Seminole Showdown

This book should be out this week, if it's not already. I have a soft spot in my heart for it, because it's the last book that was written in my old studio. I had started another one before the fire and written about 200 pages of it, but I lost that and had to start over. (That book will be out this week, too, but it's one of those ghost jobs I can't talk about.) I remember that the first book I wrote in the studio was COSSACK THREE PONIES, but I have no idea how many there were between it and SEMINOLE SHOWDOWN. Quite a few, though. It was the best place I ever had to work. I'm hoping that my office in the new house will be even better.