Book Review All Due Respect

ALL DUE RESPECT
Edited by Chris Rhatigan


I approach anthologies the way I approach the tables at a potluck dinner, wary but hopeful. I know that there will always be someone who brings a retro-ironic Jello salad made with lime gelatine and cottage cheese. (And I didn't like it when my grandmother made it.)
If I'm lucky, there will also be a bowl of my favorite white trash indulgence, Five-Cup Salad. (1 cup mandarin orange slices. 1 cut pineapple chunks. 1 cup minature marshmallows. 1 cup grated coconut. 1 cup sour cream. It's insanely good and full of vitamin C!)
And if I'm really lucky there will be a dish on the table that I've never tasted, a combination of flavors and textures hitherto unknown to me but delicious from the first bite.)
All Due Respect, the new anthology from Christopher Rhatigan's Full Dark City Press, is a groaning board of treats, from the wonderfully named "The Great Whydini" by David Cranmer to "A Drink Named Fred" by Tom Hoisington. (Seriously, who's not going to read those two stories first?) Everything is good here, not a green bean casserole in the lot.
This is an unthemed anthology but the common thread is crime--all kinds of crime and the criminals who commit them, some of them planners and some of them opportunists as in Patricia Abbott's 70s story "Wheels on the Bus."
Some of the stories are about the knife-edge between life and death, like Matthew C. Funk's "His Girl," and Erin Cole's visceral "7 Seconds," one of two stories that seem to have been written in the wake of Sandy Hook. (The other is "Ratchet" by Stephen D. Rogers, a story that just drips menace laced with surprise.)
There are first lines that grab you, like "By the time I got there, they'd already taken three of his fingers" ("Habeus Corpus" by Benedict J. Jones) and "Gilberto's mama was a whore--white chick with more tattoos than teeth, even before skin ink became fashionable." (Gary Clifton, "The Last Ambassador t6o Pushmata." The stories are stuffed full of lines you want to write down so you'll remember, or lines you wish you could forget because they're so good you wish you'd thought of them.
Some of the stories have twist endings, some are on a straight line to a bad place from the first paragraph. And the aforementioned stories by Cranmer and Hoisington? They do not disappoint. In fact, nothing here really disappoints except the lack of women writers. Out of 29 stories, only three were written by women. Ladies--I want to see a better showing next time!
At 175 pages, this anthology is just the right length to while away a Saturday morning if you have the time to gobble it up whole.

Interview with Heath Lowrance

I'm a fan of Heath Lowrance (in a non-stalker kind of way). I like the way he writes--clean, hard-hitting prose that paints a picture but without laying it on so thick with a palette knife that you have to scrape away a few layers before you get to the good stuff.

I like the way he thinks--I follow him on Twitter and on FB andPinterest where among other images,  he posts cool "noir" photos.

If you check out his Amazon author page, you'll see ten books listed, and I suspect that's not everything.

His most recent releases are the movel City of Heretics, a crime novel set in Memphis, and the novella "Bluff City Brawler," which is part of the "Fight Card' series. Earlier in the summer his short story "My Life With the Butcher Girl" appeared in Pulp Ink 2, an anthology edited by Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan.

I am delighted that Heath found the time to stop by Kattomic Energy on his blog tour.

Let's talk about the new book.

How different was it writing a novel than writing a short story? Was it difficult to work on a broader  canvas or did it seem natural?

Writing City of Heretics in particular was very much like the experience of writing a short story, except, you know, more of it. I tried to approach it the same way I'd approach a short story-- that is, cutting to the chase, leaving out everything extemporaneous, and just moving from scene-to-scene. I wanted it to feel like a long short story, so that even though the plot is a bit complex, it never feels weighed down. That was the idea, anyway.

You’ve said you prefer character-driven stories to plot-driven stories. In the case of the book, what came first? The idea or the image of your protagonist?

In this particular case, the character of Crowe came first. I had in mind an older man, coming out of a bad time and about to enter into an even worse time. I knew he was carrying around some anger, letting it simmer in his guts, and I knew he planned on doing something he could never take back. The novel came out of working out what exactly Crowe was angry about. 

The gritty backdrop of the story seems real enough you could navigate the streets by your landmarks. Have you lived in Memphis? Why did you set your story in Memphis?

I lived in Memphis for about five years, back in the late '90's. Something about that city, it just sparked for me. It was seedy and run-down, very modern in all the worst ways-- and at the same time, its history was apparent on every corner. It had stories to tell everywhere you looked and it felt like a living, breathing thing to me. It was an old, sick Southern lady and if you looked really hard you could see vestiges of the beauty it used to be. Memphis made me melancholy, and I thought it was the perfect setting for a novel. Or multiple novels

Do you “cast” your stories when you write them? And if someone made a movie out of COH, who would you like to play Crowe?

I've found myself casting imaginary movies after the fact, but not usually while writing. For instance, I got into a discussion about who would play the roles of Charlie and the Reverend if The Bastard Hand ever became a movie, and I still think Casey Affleck and Daniel Day-Lewis would be great. As for Crowe, I haven't given it any real thought yet, but I'll go again with Daniel Day-Lewis, I think.

  
Let's talk marketing:

You have an impressive  number of reviews posted on your books. How important do you think reviews are in selling books?

If all the talk about algorithms and the rating system and all that confusing stuff about Amazon is true, then reviews are HUGELY important. I have to admit, I can hardly get my head around the fine points of the way Amazon works. But every review, every click of the “like” button, helps. And I’ve noticed that the more reviews I get, the more copies move. It’s bizarre and inexplicable to me.

 For Cityof Heretics, you're doing a blog tour, promotion on your site and social media. What else?  Any readings? Events like Bouchercon? Book store appearances?

I’d love to make it to Bouchercon or Noircon, but it ain’t in the cards. Mostly what I’m doing to promote City of Heretics and Bluff City Brawler (my new Fight Card novella) is the blog tour. This is the first time I’ve ever attempted anything like this on this big a scale, so it’s daunting enough, I think.

All Due Respect...Check it out

I am the Queen of Craig's List. Since 2007 when I realized the impending Writer's Guild strike was going to impact my income, I've been cruising the writing/editing listings on a daily (sometimes more frequent) basis. (Last year half my income came from jobs sourced on CL. Which amazes me.) Even when I don't have time to keep up with all the blogs I monitor, I'm on CL day in and day out. It's a lot like panning for gold. You have to sift through a lot of dross but sometimes you hit paydirt.

Yesterday there was a call for submissions from All Due Respect, where David Cranmer's story, "The Great Whydini" is up. All Due Respect (ADR) is looking for "old-fashioned pulp crime fiction" and their submission guidelines say it best: We are interested in crime fiction. That means fiction about crime. Not solving crime. Not bemoaning crime. Fiction about people who are criminals and maybe a little bit about why they are criminals, so long as you don't go Dr. Phil on it.

In this case, crime doesn't pay. They apologize for that. But ADR looks like a handsome showcase for a good story about bad people.