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February 12, 2016

The Joy of the Heist by J.D. Rhoades

I’m pleased to welcome J.D. “Dusty” Rhoades to the site today. After a successful run of novels featuring hard as nails Gulf War veteran turned bail enforcer Jack Keller—series debut The Devil’s Right Hand was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel—as well as the standalone Breaking Cover (an intense thriller featuring a deep cover FBI agent), Dusty has decided to lighten up a little in his newest novel, Ice Chest (Polis Books), a comedic heist caper. In today’s guest post, Dusty explains what motivated him to switch things up a bit, and what challenges doing so presented.

JD Rhoades The Joy of the Heist

“So, Dusty,” you say, “here you are, a writer with a small but devoted following, known for writing what’s come to be called ‘redneck noir’—dark crime fiction set in the American South. Why on earth would you turn to writing something as different as your latest book, ICE CHEST–a comic heist novel?”

To this I would answer, “Excuse me, but who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

But seriously, folks, why would I undergo the perils of changing from gritty thrillers to zany caper novels? Because make no mistake, there is a certain amount of peril to switching up like that. Fans want something just like the thing that made them fall in love with your work in the first place. Publishers want something just like the thing that was successful last time, only different. It’s a little like a restaurant owner going to a table of regulars and saying, “I know you you’ve always enjoyed the steak here, but I’m going to bring you the tilapia. Trust me, you’ll love it.” Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

But it’s a little scary to make that change, especially when you’re doing something as subjective as humor. There are few things more awkward than telling a joke or making an observation you find hilarious, only to have your listener stare at you blankly and say, “I don’t get it.” Imagine doing an entire book you hope is humorous and having it fall flat. So why do it? →

February 09, 2016

Food and Fiction by Rob Hart

It’s my pleasure to welcome Rob Hart to the site today. Hart’s first novel, New Yorked, debuted last year and introduced readers to the world of Ashley (Ash) McKenna, a Staten Island born and bred New Yorker who finds himself drawn into the hunt for the killer of his longtime friend and unrequited love. City of Rose, the sequel to New Yorked, drops today, and Rob has been kind enough to stop by to talk about how food unwittingly became an underlying theme in his writing.

Rob Hart Food and Fiction

Someone else had to point it out—I didn’t even notice that my short stories were taking on a food theme. But there they were: a bagel-maker defending his turf, warring food trucks, gourmands duped into thinking they were dining on human charcuterie.

When a friend reached out and asked how long until I released a collection of food noir, I was putting a polish on a story about a bakery bouncer and working on my second book, which is set in a vegan strip club in Portland.

City of Rose lands this week, and while I was putting the book together, I didn’t really intend to dive into the Portland food scene. But I couldn’t help myself. Here’s the thing about Portland: Any place that serves alcohol has to serve food, by law. And in Portland, they take their food pretty seriously. I’ve been out there a few times, and I’ve always eaten well.

There are some fun storytelling possibilities there. Setting the book in a vegan strip club felt turned out to be a natural extension of the story. The chef is trying to crack the code on vegan cheesy nachos and vegan cupcakes. They never come out right, because they’re tough to replicate without staples like butter, eggs, and milk.

Kind of like the protagonist, Ash McKenna, who is trying very hard to be something he’s not. And he pays for it in the end. →

February 05, 2016

Bad Citizen Corporation by S.W. Lauden

“I’ve lived through every second of my life and I still don’t know how I got to exactly this moment.” — Greg Salem

Greg Salem can be forgiven for being a bit confused about the state of his life. After all, he’s traveled a bit of an unusual path. Currently an East Los Angeles police officer, once upon a time Greg was known as Fred Despair, punk legend/lead singer of the band Bad Citizen Corporation (BCC).

Though he’s pretty much kicked the excesses of his former punk lifestyle, Salem’s still a bit of a square peg in the round hole that is the police department. When he’s not on the job, Salem still appears occasionally with BCC for special one-off gigs, and also enjoys indulging his passion for surfing.

It’s an interesting balancing act, one that starts to unravel after Salem is involved in an on-the-job shooting. →

February 01, 2016

What Goes Around

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January 28, 2016

Art + Money = Crime by Susan Shea

Very happy to welcome to the site Susan Shea, whose latest book, Mixed Up With Murder, drops February 2nd. Mixed Up With Murder is third entry in the Dani O’Rourke mystery series, following Murder in the Abstract and The King’s Jar. Despite being the chief fundraiser at San Francisco’s prestigious Devor Museum of Art and Antiquities, a position one wouldn’t think could lend itself to too much “action,” as Susan explains in today’s post, the high-stakes, high-money world of art does indeed provide more than sufficient opportunity for Dani to get mixed up with crime…including murder.

Art + Money = Crime

If your preferred crime fiction is measured by the number of shots fired, people killed, cars demolished, and drug busts gone wrong, my books are going to be a harder sell. The Dani O’Rourke series, the third book of which comes out February 2, is not cozy by any means, but it’s not hard-boiled.

However, if measured by the amount of money at stake in the crimes I write about, move over Dirty Harry! I write about the contemporary art market, especially that part of it that trades in paintings and other work with auction values in the multi-millions. Think this isn’t worth some desperate criminal risks? Consider these sales, made in the past 10 years:

Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” $179 million
Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucien Freud” $140 million
Warhol’s “Silver Car Crash” $105 million
Cézanne’s “The Card Players” $250 million

These are only a few examples of A List works selling for close to or over $100 million recently. They’re not exceptions to the trend. In the past two decades, with a slight pause in 2008, even works by lesser and “unproven” (that means to the market, not to aesthetics) artists have been fetching extraordinary amounts of money, been traded like baseball cards as their prices ratcheted up to swooning heights with not much in the way of market fundamentals behind them. Not that anyone is quite sure how the market can properly value anything as subjective and prone to damage and fashion and rumor as paint on canvas.

So, as a crime writer, I follow the money, a tactic that gets Dani O’Rourke, a fundraiser for my fictional museum, into real trouble again and again. Who’s buying these art works? Why? Where are they going after they’ve been claimed? And what about art that simply vanishes off the walls? And the art that turns out to be fake? So much running room for a crime writer. →

January 20, 2016

The Sophomore Slog by S.W. Lauden

Very pleased to welcome S.W. Lauren to the blog today. His debut novel, Bad Citizen Corporation, dropped last November and was extremely well-received by both readers and reviewers alike. Today he’s here to talk about what it’s like for an author to tackle the second book in a series, especially the realization that the character you spent so many days, weeks and months creating is no longer exclusively yours anymore. →

January 12, 2016

The Night Charter by Sam Hawken

“I’ve done some things in my life that put me in front of some bad people. I always tried to do right, though. That’s all you can do.” — Camaro Espinoza

For ex-combat medic Camaro Espinoza, doing the right thing is more than a lofty concept—it’s the way she lives every day of her life, and the standard by which she evaluates every decision she makes.

To be clear, in Camaro’s mind doing the right thing and doing what’s legal are not necessarily the same, and as such Camaro has accordingly had her fair share of trouble over the years.

A particularly bad bit of it in New York City roughly a year ago ended with five men dead and Camaro relocating to a low-profile gig in Miami. Acting as captain and sole crew member of a fifty-foot Custom Carolina charter boat, Camaro takes groups out for catch-and-release deep-sea fishing excursions.

Things seem to be going fine for Camaro, until ex-con Parker Story shows up. Parker wants to book Camaro for a night charter for himself and a few friends. Only thing is, they aren’t looking to fish. They want Camaro to run them out to just off the Cuban coast to pick up a special passenger. Initially reluctant, Camaro finds it difficult to turn Parker away once she finds out he is a single father to a teenage daughter, and that his associates have made it clear things won’t go well for Parker, or his daughter, if he doesn’t make the charter happen. →

January 01, 2016

Riverside

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December 07, 2015

It’s So Miami by Sam Hawken

It’s always a pleasure to welcome Sam Hawken back to the blog. Over the years I’ve been honored to both read and review Sam’s novels, as well as to work with him on his Camaro Espinoza novellas. That’s why it’s a particular pleasure to welcome Sam today, as his newest novel, The Night Charter, which will be released tomorrow by Mulholland Books (ISBN-13: 978-0316299213), features Camaro making her full-length novel debut. Today Sam is here to talk about how a thirty-year-old TV show helped shape who and what the Camaro series is all about.

It’s So Miami

I watch a lot of Miami Vice. I’ve been watching it for thirty years, and I’ll probably watch it for thirty more, or for however long I have left. I’ve even been reviewing every episode, week by week, for over a year and am finally coming to the end of all five seasons. Everything about this show is embedded in my brain, from the storytelling to the politics, and has followed me through my writing career up until this day. So it makes sense that I would end up here, with the publication of The Night Charter, in the city of Miami.

This is the story of Camaro Espinoza, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran with the damaged history of someone who spent a thousand days in war zones, and an entire life dealing with the fractured pieces of her past. She’s a fighter, and though she no longer wears a uniform she has discovered the warrior’s path is one that has no end.

As The Night Charter begins, she works as the captain of a charter fishing boat, trying to forget that one year before she helped kill five bad men in New York City, and trying to reconcile the memory of all the people she’s killed over the course of her life. But circumstances change to the point that she had no choice to pick up a gun again. And maybe some part of her wanted to do it all along. →

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