If you’re like me (Sam the Eagle voice: “And you MUST be”) you have a noirish soul. Like any kind of a soul, this occasionally needs tending to, looking after, I mean. Feeding, like a racehorse from Hell or a bonsai tree somebody gave you once but nobody really...
This book is the second with the same editor. The first, Full Fathom Five, was non-fiction, Paraiso is fiction. I found that the same editor was much more invasive and persnickety with fiction, even down to punctuation. I happen to love ellipses (…) and he hates...
This is not my list of best all-time crime books, or a list of my favorites, but instead this is a list of those books that, for whatever reason, ended up scaring the bejeebies out of me. 1. I THE JURY by Mickey Spillane (1947) – I picked this up in a used...
5 books that changed my life - made me want to be a writer. These are novels that suck you in and cast a spell, make you lose track of time. Total immersion experiences. Reading each of these was such a powerful experience that I said to myself, "Cool, I want to...
I don't believe in writer's block, but I do believe in writer's malaise. Sometimes I just can't get my ass in gear. When that happens I find that certain movies get the creative juices flowing and I can always rely on these five to get me sprinting to the...
As a kid, I have to admit that I was never much of a reader. I didn’t like to read, preferring to watch movies instead. Maybe it was because I was an only child and watching movies with my parents was a way for us to bond somehow. Fortunately for me, my dad had...
