The Great Elmore Leonard, RIP

I first started taking crime fiction seriously when I began reading the books of Elmore Leonard. A friend had brought a couple back from America in the early eighties and loaned them to me. I'd just begun to include American crime fiction as a staple part of my leisure reading, beginning with George Higgins and - another American import who wasn't published in the UK - K.C. Constantine and his Mario Balzic novels. Shortly afterwards came my introduction to Robert Parker's Spenser, which sent me back to the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald ... and on and on.

These were all great books to read - involving, swift-moving, funny, great dialogue ... but Elmore Leonard stood out even from this pack. His style involved you immediately in the action and in the thought processes of his main characters. Here are some first lines:

"The night Vincent was shot he saw it coming."—Glitz (1985)

"Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb."—Freaky Deaky (1988)

"The Blackbird told himself he was drinking too much because he lived in this hotel and the Silver Dollar was close by, right downstairs."—Killshot (1989)

"Dale Crowe Junior told Kathy Baker, his probation officer, he didn't see where he had done anything wrong."—Maximum Bob (1991)

Get well, Elmore

The Great Elmore Leonard is in hospital having suffered a stroke a week ago.

I'm sure all those who've read his books or seen films made from them (e.g  Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Hombre) wish him all the best.

Stephen Dobyns - unsung hero?

I've been meaning for a while to write about Stephen Dobyns' new book, The Burn Palace. He made his name originally with a series of books set in Saratoga and dealing with the horse-racing set in that part of the US, featuring his laid-back detective, Charlie Bradshaw. He later expanded his purview with The Church of Dead Girls and Boy in the Water. He is also a poet.

The Burn Palace is set in a fictional Rhode Island township, Brewster, and seems initially to be a crossover novel dealing with the supernatural and possibly vampirism or werewolf-ism (?) However, as the main protagonists set about their police investigation, it becomes clear that what appears to be supernatural is common-or-garden evil-doing, and that the usual suspects - the good and the great of the local community - are just in it for the money.

Site for New Releases

Publishing my books as I do, I'm always on the look-out for new places to market. I came across this site the other day, which looks very nice and has a page devoted to new releases. You might find something you like there!

e-Reader Recon

The site is run by Dennis Larsen and his own book, The Living Hunger, is available on this page.

Pricing ...

Okay, I've cut the prices of all my books to $0.99 cents (or equivalent in different currencies). This is an early Christmas present to any readers still hesitating whether to buy or not. Of course, this price only applies to Kindle downloads, or any other e-versions downloaded from Apple iBooks, Sony, Kobo or Barnes and Noble.

Hurry hurry hurry ...

The Burke Gang

Just had to post this ... a video interview of Alafair Burke and her dad, James Lee Burke, interviewed by sister/daughter Pamela. It's a bit ropy but it's sweet to see the Burke Gang together.

Ra-Ra Florida!

I'm just reading Carl Hiassen's latest book, Bad Monkey.
A full report later. It continues his tradition of showing the underbelly of life in the Sunshine State, though interestingly there's more focus on a romantic relationship this time, and less concern with describing the antics of comic heavies.

 Coincidentally, the field of crime writing in Florida is covered in Adam Gopnik's article in The New Yorker magazine this month. Every two years, when Hiassen releases a new book, we get a plethora of articles about his work, or the work of his colleagues. But I'm not complaining, because Lawrence Shames, James Hall, Tim Dorsey and Charles Willeford are among my favourite crime writers, so the more there is to read about them, the better.

Apart from Miami Blues, from Willeford's book, though I'm struggling to think of a good film made from one of these books. There was an awful film of Hiassen's Striptease, but surely someone could make a film of one of James Hall's Thorn books - they're exciting, deal with real relationships, have something to say about the rape of the environment and have a great leading role for a tough-looking but relatively placid actor. Someone like Mathew McConaghey, perhaps, or even Ryan Reynolds. They'd have to grow long hair, though.

I think there have been films from a couple of Elmore Leonard's books, but nothing substantial.

In other news, Actress is starting to sell some copies. The price is currently reduced to $0.99 till the end of the month, so this is the time to buy! Click here for the Amazon.com Kindle version.

PUBLICATION DAY!!

On Saturday 15th June I published my new book, Actress. It has nothing to do with crime fiction and actually seems quite hard to characterise and categorise. In Amazon's publishing key words I've used phrases like contemporary fiction, women's fiction, romance and even new adult, so hopefully some people will find it.

I'm now going to use a link to the book that apparently will take you to the book's Amazon site in whatever country you're in, so this will be interesting. If you do happen to read the book, please leave a review, because whether you've liked it or not, reviews help sell books.

OK, drum roll, here's the link ... Actress.

Searching ...

A quick thank you to anyone who's come here as part of my Facebook Search Engine Optimization experiment. The Facebook Like button is to the right.

You could always stick around and take a look at some of the posts below. They're mostly to do with crime novels, so if that's your bag, dive in.

Thanks again.

An interesting site

For those of you who like reading about how crime writers work (and I guess you wouldn't be reading this site if you weren't), then can I point you to an interesting blog by Scottish writer Tony Black. He's just published a collection of interviews with other crime writers, including Ian Rankin and William McIlvanney, and one of my favourites, Andrew Vachss, than whom they don't come any harder boiled.

You can see the blog here, from which you can buy the book.

Opening up to the market ...

Well, a post about me and not other writers today.

I've done well out of Amazon's Select programme for publishers, which allows you to nominate your books for 'free' download every 90 days. The free downloads attract a lot of people and the idea is that once the free days have finished, readers will continue to download that particular book or any others of yours that are available to buy. The catch is that your books have to be available exclusively on Amazon during that 90 day period in order to 'earn' those free days.

This has worked well for me and enabled me to build up a bit of a head of steam - I'm getting reviews and the recent re-launch of the books with added Search Engine Optimisation means that they're showing up higher in searches on Amazon, too.

But now it's time to move on. I have a new book coming out shortly - Actress - and I want to hit as many markets as possible. So I've added my books to the Smashwords site, which is a site that acts as a distributor of your book to locations like Barnes & Noble, Apple and Sony. I could do all that myself as an independent, but each site has their own requirements for formatting, so in the end it's easier to submit one edition to Smashwords and let them take care of the formatting and all the associated paperwork. They only pay every quarter, but as this is the same (or slightly better) than traditional publishers I don't feel I'm getting a rough deal. We've all been spoiled by Amazon's more-or-less instant reporting of sales on your dashboard, but they still only pay about six-to-eight weeks after your sale anyway, so it's not that different.

So if you don't like Amazon, or want to pay for a book via Paypal rather than credit card (which you can do from the Smashwords site itself) then hurry along to this page where you can buy the books now! In a few days' time they should be available on the iBooks Apple store and WH Smith store too.

Keith Dixon's Smashwords page.

Dan Brown's Inferno ... putting us all through Hell

I'm not going to write much about this because I don't want to give him the publicity he doesn't need (as if MY critique is going to have any impact!)

Put simply, this is a terrible book. The Da Vinci Code was badly-written but at least the plot was propulsive. The Lost Symbol was in the same vein and made you want to know what happened in the end. Inferno is just ... boring. I've been reading it for a week now and I'm only half-way through. There's no compulsion to finish it at all. I will, just to find out how it ends. But the 'big reveal' that Brown specialises in is already becoming clear, so there's no expectancy there. The main assassin is dead (like the albino monk in TDVC, but not as hardy). And to be honest I JUST DON'T CARE.