Posts Tagged ‘The Consummata’

Best Postponed Book Of The Year!

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

QUARRY’S EX is showing up on some Best Books of 2010 lists, like this one on Craig Clarke’s excellent Somebody Dies website.

Not bad for a book that wasn’t published (it will be out in October 2011 from Hard Case Crime via Titan).

The Round Robin we did for the Top Suspense blog continues on. You can start reading it here.

I will admit I hate these Round Robins, but I wanted to help promote what I think is going to be an important site in the e-book revolution.

My pal (and great writer) Ed Gorman knows how much I like actor Wayne Rogers of my favorite P.I. show, CITY OF ANGELS (huge influence on Nate Heller), and Ed was nice enough to provide a link to a very good New York Times autobiographical sketch by Rogers, who is a hugely successful businessman. It’s an “as told to” piece, which must be why my fave series is referred to as CITY OF THE ANGELS.

I am working on two projects this week – THE CONSUMMATA for Hard Case Crime, the sequel to Mickey Spillane’s THE DELTA FACTOR. I am working from about 110 double-spaced pages of Mickey’s, a very good and substantial manuscript. Then mid-week, if the weather allows, George Hagenauer – my longtime friend and research associate – will join me for a plotting/researching session on the next Heller, which I hope to call ASK NOT. We have been swimming (make that drowning) in research for over a year, and we think we have come up with a fresh angle on this old case. It’s my hope not to do just another re-hash on this never-ending mystery, and – thanks in no small part to George – I think we’re on to something.

Orders continue to come in on the various options to acquire the new live CRUSIN’ CD, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Happened.” So far most are taking the “Kisses of Death” option. Quantities are, as they say, limited, so don’t wait much longer.

CRUSIN’ had a bad weekend. We were contracted to play at Riverside Casino, loaded up, showed up…only to be told we’d been cancelled – in fact, the entire Sunday afternoon series of bands had been cancelled (during “football season”)…two months ago! All the bands were called, we were assured…only we hadn’t been. The Riverside folks made it clear we’d be back in 2011, but we do want to apologize to anyone who made the trip and saw nothing but an empty stage.

M.A.C.

You Only Blog Twice

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

This week’s Quarry cover is QUARRY’S DEAL. Another great Terry Beatty cover. Ordering info here.

Quarry's DealNate has been in Japan for several days now, and he’s doing a blog (daily, so far). He is posting beautiful pictures and great, often very funny commentary. He is a very talented young man and his father (me) is proud of him. So you get two blog entries this week; this one from me, and this one from Nate.

Because Nate is in Japan, I’m working a few days early on this update, to give him plenty of room to get it put together and posted. So it’s October 30 in Muscatine, Iowa, a beautiful fall day with lots of color in the trees and chill in the breeze. Tonight is the “official” local Halloween night, and I’ve carved the pumpkin (I’m damn good at it – ask Nate) [Nate:It’s true!] and Barb is putting a bunch of scary stuff on the porch…ours is one of the houses the neighbor kids flock to, although some of our goodies are getting long in the tooth (we had to throw away a talking skeleton head after years of noble service).

We’ve been watching horror movies, and Barb – who for decades didn’t like them – is now a fan and catching up. We watched the very funny RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD from the late, great Dan O’Bannon. Our favorite Halloween movie, though, is TRICK ‘R’ TREAT, and if you haven’t seen that wonderfully dark, funny anthology movie, put it on Netflix for next Halloween season. It looks great on Blu-Ray. (So does RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, which features my old pal Linnea Quigley, with whom I almost did a comic book project some years back).

This weekend I am zeroing in on the conclusion of RETURN TO PERDITION, and next week (now, as you read this) I’ll be writing the next DICK TRACY introduction. Nice to have a connection to TRACY again. Next up is THE CONSUMMATA, the DELTA FACTOR sequel by Mickey Spillane that I am completing for Hard Case Crime.

Next year is going to be a big M.A.C. year. Barb and I have ANTIQUES KNOCK-OFF (by “Barbara Allan”) coming out in March, and that same month from the same publisher (Kensington), Matt Clemens and I have NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU out. In May the third of the Mike Hammers appears – KISS HER GOODBYE (do not miss this one) – and in August BYE BYE, BABY, the first Nate Heller novel in ten years. Some time next year, QUARRY’S EX will come out, as well. And from DC/Vertigo, RETURN TO PERDITION.

This will no doubt initiate a bunch of “when do you sleep” questions (and putdowns), but the fact is BYE BYE, BABY has been done for well over a year, and three of the titles are collaborations. RETURN TO PERDITION is something I’ve been working on for a year and a half. QUARRY’S EX, of course, was supposed to come out this year and was postponed. What I fear is that some or maybe all of these titles will get lost in the shuffle because there are so many of them. And that drives me crazy, because each of these books is really strong. I get beaten up and sometimes ignored because I am seen as “prolific.”

But I have no intention of slowing down. At 62, I am not fooling around – I have stories to tell. I even have band jobs to play. Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of my first professional sale of a novel – BAIT MONEY to Curtis Books. The following two years will mark the 40th anniversary of me as a published professional (BAIT MONEY came out in December 1972 but was a January 1973 book).

So if any of you connected to writer’s organizations (the MWA has had enough yearly dues out of me to afford to make a statue of me for their lobby, if they had a lobby) or mystery conventions or mystery magazines (attention: Kate Stine) are interested, 2011 is a perfectly good time to start the career tributes and to book me as a guest and to just generally make a fuss. I’m available. I’ll even bring my rock band along.

For a price.

Here’s a fun fan review of my Batman graphic novel SCAR OF THE BAT. Nice to see something from a few years back get noticed now.

M.A.C.

Got Live…Do You Want It?

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

The Crusin’ gig at Wilton Founder’s Day (Friday night Aug. 27) went well – we had a nice big Friday night crowd (though not rivaling the Saturday night mob hometown boys the XL’S drew). The night was cool and pleasant, but humid, with lyric sheets and guitar/keyboard cases getting soaked; and playing on a long/narrow flatbed truck was daunting – we were lined up like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and I couldn’t even see guitarist Jim Van Winkle down there somewhere past bassist Chuck Bunn and drummer Steve Kundel.

We needed a professional sound company for the gig, which the fee didn’t really cover, but my pal Mark Johnson of Rock Island’s Brass Sail Recording (he did the sound and co-wrote the music for Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life) cut us an amazing deal. In addition, Mark made a sound-board recording, and the result was positive enough that I’m thinking about putting together a live CD. This would primarily be a promotional tool for getting Midwest bookings, but I may offer it here on the site, as well.

I am in frequent touch with Charles Ardai, who is being courted by a number of publishers in the search for a new home for Hard Case Crime (and QUARRY’S EX). I can’t be specific, but I will say I’m optimistic. And one of my first projects for a new Hard Case may be finishing THE CONSUMMATA, Mickey Spillane’s sequel to THE DELTA FACTOR with modernday pirate, Morgan the Raider. Speaking of Hard Case, here’s a fun write-up on Hard Case Crime.

And check out this a nice little review of ROAD TO PERDITION (the graphic novel).

BombshellNate and I are discussing starting up an e-book company to get my backlist back in print. We may do Heller, although I probably will make at least some effort to get the series back into traditional print first. I fear e-book publishing may doom titles to never seeing “real” book format again.

With BYE BYE, BABY coming out next July – Nate Heller solving Marilyn’s murder – I am considering putting out an e-book of BOMBSHELL, the Marilyn book Barb and I wrote (we may use the popular “Barbara Allan” byline). I’ll probably include some bonus features – possibly the original short story that the novel was expanded from and a Marilyn “vampire” story, both written solo by Barb. Maybe I’ll include the Heller novella, KISSES OF DEATH. We’ll see.

Opinions welcome….

M.A.C.