Christmas Music I Like: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Gene Autry

When I was a kid, my parents had a record of Gene Autry singing this Christmas song, and I played it what seemed like a thousand times over the years. I can't hear it without thinking about Christmas in the house where I grew up. Call me sentimental, but it seems to me those are memories worth having. I don't think I've ever seen this performance of the song before, evidently from some live TV broadcast the same year I was born.

The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons - Lawrence Block

I've been reading Lawrence Block's Burglar books almost as long as I've been reading his Matt Scudder books, and that's quite a while. The latest novel featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr, THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS, will be out later this month—Christmas Day, in fact, but you can pre-order it now—and it's a fine addition to the series.

As this one begins, Bernie is hired to steal the original holographic manuscript of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", with its original title "A Life Lived Backward", from the museum where it's being kept in storage. Bernie's client isn't a Fitzgerald collector, however. He collects buttons, and anything connected to buttons, which later in the book leads to him hiring Bernie again, this time to steal a spoon bearing the likeness of Button Gwinnett, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

While this is going on, Bernie is also hanging around with his friend Carolyn, running his bookstore (which never does much business), ruminating about books and authors and Amazon, and helping one of his other friends (and sometimes nemesis), police detective Ray Kirschmann, with a case where an elderly woman appears to have died of natural causes, but under odd circumstances.

At times the book appears to amble around sort of aimlessly, but I knew better. Everything is there for a reason, and watching Block sort it all out is one of the joys of THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS, along with his seemingly effortless prose. All the asides about various books and authors and the publishing business are great fun, too. I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish this novel, which almost never happens these days.

Another thing I should point out is something that most of Block's readers probably won't ever notice. THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS contains a very important element that's virtually identical to something in Livia's latest novel, THE FATAL FUNNEL CAKE. I can't say any more without venturing far into the realm of spoilers. Now, I happen to know for a fact that it's physically impossible for either of them to have read the other's book before writing theirs. So this is one of those bizarre coincidences that happen from time to time, and as Ray Kirschmann says in the book, if coincidences didn't happen, we wouldn't have a word for them. However, I prefer to think that it's a prime example of how Great Minds Think Alike.

Those who have already done "best of the year" lists have jumped the gun, since THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS belongs on such lists. I had a great time reading it and think most of you probably would, too, so it gets a very high recommendation from me.

Christmas Music I Like: Snoopy's Christmas - The Royal Guardsmen

Since I'm not really much of a holiday guy, I thought maybe posting some Christmas music this month might help get me in the Christmas spirit. (Or as one little girl put it in one of the "Letters to Santa" that the local newspaper always publishes, "the Christmas Spit".) I don't know if I'll do this every day, just depends on how much time and energy I have, but we'll start off with a good one, "Snoopy's Christmas" by the Royal Guardsmen.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, December 1935

Now there's an electrifying cover by Walter Baumhofer. (You didn't think I'd actually say it, did you? I admit, I'm hanging my head in shame right now.) But what a line-up of authors: Frederick Nebel, Cornell Woolrich, Hugh B. Cave, J. Allan Dunn, Fred MacIsaac, and O.B. Myers. This may not be just your average, everyday issue, but assemblages of great authors like that happened pretty frequently in the pulps.

Writing Update

After hitting the million-word mark yesterday, I had a pretty good morning today (family get-together this afternoon) and finished the month with 416 pages, certainly a respectable total. There were a couple of really good weeks during November to go with a couple of weeks that weren't as productive. But I'm on schedule to get done what I need to get done, and maybe a little extra now and then. I remembered the other day that I have about 10,000 words of a thriller written. If I could carve out an extra few weeks sometime next year I could finish it. Plus I finally have the plot worked out for a Judge Earl Stark novella that's been percolating in my head for a while. I need those 30-hour days!

Now Available: Livin' on Jacks and Queens - Robert J. Randisi, ed.

Legendary western writer and noted anthologist Robert J. Randisi offers up a winning hand with fourteen never-before-published tales of the Old West, each revolving around the central theme of gambling. Among the stories you can expect to be dealt here are:

Jacks or Better by Johnny Boggs
A Cold Deck by Phil Dunlap
The Reckoning by Randy Lee Eickhoff
It Takes a Gambler by Jerry Guin
Odds on a Lawman by Christine Matthews
Pay the Ferryman by Matthew P. Mayo
White Face, Red Blood by Rod Miller
Hazard by Nik Morton
Acey Deucy by John Nesbitt
The Mark of an Imposter: An Evelyn Page/Calvin Carter Adventure by Scott Parker
Horseshoe and Pistols by Robert J. Randisi
Too Many Aces by Charlie Steel
Missouri Boat Race by Chuck Tyrell
The Legend of ‘Blind Ned’ Baldwin by Lori Van Pelt

(That's a fine line-up of authors. I'm looking forward to reading this one.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western, March 1946

This week's cover comes to us courtesy of Keith Chapman, and he sent me a scan of the table of contents page, too, since this issue isn't in the Fictionmags Index. It's almost an all-star issue with stories by William Heuman, Tom W. Blackburn (part of his Chris Defever series), L.P. Holmes, Wayne D. Overholser, Thomas Thompson, Tom Roan, and Gunnison Steele. The other authors, Kenneth Fowler, Joseph W. Quinn and Charles Irwin, also published a number of stories in the Western pulps during the Forties. 10 STORY WESTERN was a consistently good pulp, and this looks like an excellent issue.

Another Million Words

It's the day after Thanksgiving, but tonight I'm thankful that today I went over one million words for the year, for the ninth straight year. As I've mentioned before, I'd really like to reach that level again next year, because I think writing a million words a year for ten years in a row would be pretty cool. If I can do that, I'm seriously considering slowing down some in 2015. I've been really lucky to have the opportunities I've had and I've tried to take advantage of them, but I'm starting to get a little tired. I think the quality of the work is staying fairly high, though. At least I'm still learning new things all the time. That keeps it interesting.

Forgotten Books: Jew Gangster - Joe Kubert

Joe Kubert is one of the first comic book artists I remember becoming aware of because of his distinctive style. Even before I became a comics collector (Christmas Day, 1963, almost fifty years ago), I read assorted comics, including some issues of OUR ARMY AT WAR, so I must have seen his work early on. Within a few years I was a regular reader of his Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace stories, although it would be a while before I discovered his earlier superhero work. Kubert kept writing and drawing for many, many years and became one of the first creators to produce original graphic novels.

I'd never heard of this 2005 graphic novel until I came across a copy of it recently. JEW GANGSTER, written and drawn by Kubert, is exactly what it says: the story of a young man, Reuben "Ruby" Kaplan, growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression, who falls in with some of the local mobsters and is torn between ambition and greed on one hand and his family and his own moral code on the other.

It's an excellent, fast-paced, noirish story that ultimately doesn't render any judgments. Kubert's black-and-white art is as stylish and effective as ever, with plenty of powerful images including a series of drawings depicting life in Depression-era Brooklyn that serve as chapter breaks.

If you're interested in crime fiction or in some fine work by a comics legend (and I fall into both of those categories), you should definitely check out JEW GANGSTER. It's well worth reading.

Now Available: The Phantom Ranger and the Skateboard Gang - James & Livia Reasoner

Codi Jackson and her father have been forced to move again. Codi’s getting used to being the “new girl” in her fifth grade class—but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. Can’t life just be normal? With her mother out of the picture and her father working odd shifts as a police officer, friends are important—as long as they’re not the wrong kind.

When Codi and a classmate, Keith Wright, are assigned to work on a history project, Codi has to make some hard decisions about her popularity in her new school.

 
But everything changes when Codi picks up an old Texas Rangers badge that belonged to one of her ancestors and he appears right before her eyes! Her great-great-great-grandfather says he’s come to help her, but how? And how is she going to explain the ghost of her long-ago Gramps to her history project partner and her father?

(This is one of the few unpublished, completed novels we had left after the fire in '08, and now it's the launch book for Painted Pony Books, the new juvenile imprint put together by Livia and Cheryl Pierson. It's a middle-grade book, 27,000 words long, with some mystery, some paranormal stuff, and some Western influence. Even though it's aimed at kids, I think some of you might enjoy it as well. It's available in both e-book and trade paperback editions.)