Shakespeare Week

It's #ShakespeareWeek and Goodreads is celebrating in a creative way. They've asked various authors to imagine a deleted scene from a play. They start off with Christopher Moore's deleted scene from Julius Caesar and it's just as hilarious as you would expect. Read it here and get in on all the fun.

Youtube finds: Night Heat

I love Youtube. Every once in a while when I'm looking for something to watch while I'm eating lunch or dinner, I'll head over there and see what I can find. Rummaging around on Youtube is like going through the stuff in your parents' attic; you never know what you're going to find. I can't remember what I was looking for when I stumbled across episodes of Night Heat.

Night Heat was a Canadian cop show that originally aired between 1985 and 1989. In the LA market, it played late night, and from the first episode I watched, I was hooked. It was a contemporary of Miami Vice (1994-1990) but the two shows could not have been more different in look and feel. Where Miami Vice was all neon noir and hip sountracks and pastel clothes, Night Heat was gritty and down to earth, the cases more personal, more intimate.

Interview with Gerard Brennan

 Gerard Brennan's latest novel is Undercover, a Belfast cop thriller. His short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies; including three volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime and Belfast Noir. He co-edited Requiems for the Departed, a collection of crime fiction based on Irish myths which won the 2011 Spinetingler Award for best anthology. His novella, The Point, was published by Pulp Press in October 2011 and won the 2012 Spinetingler Award for best novella. His novels, Wee Rockets and Fireproof, were published as ebooks by Blasted Heath in 2012. He graduated from the MA in creative writing at Queen's University Belfast in 2012 and is currently working on a PhD.

What was the first short story you ever published (and when)? Were you paid for it?

I wrote a story called ‘Pool Sharks’ after I spent a weekend in Wexford. We were lucky enough to score a lock-in at the local pub and things got a bit messy. I became obsessed by the fact that we could have gotten away with murder that night. Then the hamster wheel started spinning and the story was born. This was back in 2007, when I’d started to get serious about writing. The story got accepted into a horror/crime anthology titled ‘Badass Horror’. And yes, I got paid! I still get paid for it from time to time, in fact. The publisher, Tim Lieder, is passionate about compensating his writers. Fair play to him.

Did you find it hard to transition from short stories to longer works?

Not really. I just needed to catch an idea that wanted to be a novel. Then I sat down and put the hours in.

Review of Gerard Brennan's FIREPROOF

Mike Rocks has a bad attitude. Sent to hell for murdering a man, he doesn’t seem to be taking his fate all that seriously. Despite having his own personal demon tasked with tormenting him for all eternity, Mike is not impressed. And that presents a problem for Lucifer. Big Red really can’t have it getting around hell that Mike is impervious to the pain of damnation so he offers him a job. He wants Mike to “take a crack” at developing a new religion—Satanism, of course. Mike jumps at the chance and no sooner has he signed the phonebook-thick contract than he finds himself back in West Belfast, with a handsome new face (he thinks he looks Italian) and a thirst for vengeance as strong as his thirst for a pint. He quenches both at his former local, and that’s when things start to go sideways.

Back in hell for a tune-up with Lucifer, Mike finds himself on a short leash with an imp on his shoulder kibitzing on his every move as he puts the devil’s plan into operation, starting with a sales pitch to a group of not-too-bright teenagers. What follows is a dark (very dark) comedy of crime and punishment with trenchant observations on pop culture and religious dogma gracefully woven into the fabric of the story.

A review of Monica Hesse's mystery GIRL IN THE BLUE COAT

Girl in the Blue Coat was just published last week and already it's started collecting some buzz. that's not surprising. It's a book with a genuinely twisty plot, memorable characters, and a well-researched and immersive sense of time (1943) and place (Amsterdam).

This novel begins like a classic "locked room" mystery, although the mystery isn't how someone was killed in a locked room but how someone escaped from a locked room and for what reason? Monica Hesse's novel is set in 1943 Amsterdam, a place controlled by the Nazis whose will is enforced by the "Green Police" who can stop anyone, anywhere, for any reason.

As the story opens, Hanneke Bakker is riding her bicycle on her delivery rounds when she's stopped by a handsome young Green Policeman. Flirting with him, she manages to fluster him enough that he shoos her away, telling her he doesn't have time for silly little girls like her. But she's not a silly girl; she's a black market operator who sees what she's doing as an act of defiance against the occupation, no matter how small.

Another Boxed Set full of Best-Selling Authors

Before my book Bride of the MIdnight King was picked to be in a boxed set (For The Love of the Vampire), I didn't really know that boxed sets were a "thing." I noticed them every once in a while on Book Bub ads, but had no idea they were usually such great deals. They're like sampler chocolate boxes where you can try out a lot of new writers for not a lot of money--usually either free or 99 cents.

 In the past month I've seen a lot of boxed sets featuring some of my favorite writers--Christine Pope, Stacy Clafin, Rebecca Hamilton--going by.  And here's a boxed set that's just gone up, featuring 29 best-selling authors (some of them INTERNATIONAL best sellers.)  Edge is only 99 cents on all platforms including Amazon. You better believe I've already snagged my set!

Reflections--what the camera sees

I have terrible eyesight. So when I snapped this picture of the pond near my house, I didn't notice the reflections of the trees in the water. If I enlarge this photo on my phone, the texture and play of color is really something and I find myself wishing I could take Annie Leibovitz' MASTER CLASS on photography. There's so much I don't know technically, but I sold my SLR camera when I left L.A. and now I just snap pix with my camera phone.

I love taking pictures with my camera phone. An Instagram account is in my near future, mainly because I love looking at other people's photos too. (And yes, I'm on Pinterest, where one of my boards is called REFLECTIONS.)