First Offenders

Don't You Forget About Me

Patti Abbott asked me last week to participate in her Friday Forgotten Book Club and I've been debating for a week which book I was going to write about, but ultimately I kept going back to one book.

The Standoff by Chuck Hogan was originally published in 1995 but I only discovered it about a year and a half ago. I'd read Hogan's Prince of Thieves (also incredibly excellent) and I wanted to read his other work. The Standoff was his first novel and there was apparently a lot of hoopla over the book when it was originally published. But then, like so many other first novels published to great accolades, it seemed to have gotten lost in the mix as I've never run into another single person who has read this book.

The book centers around John Banish, an alcoholic hostage negotiator, and Glenn Ables, a white supremacist, who is holed up with his family in a mountaintop enclave, defying an eviction notice. The entire story contains overtones of Ruby Ridge and Waco and the tension mounts with each page - will Banish be able to get these people to come down without bloodshed? A multitude of finely-tuned subplots gives the novel a depth that I rarely find in today's thrillers and Banish is one of the most heroic characters I've come across in a long, long time. Anybody attempting to write a thriller should be forced to read this book because this is truly what a thriller should be.

Go find The Standoff.
Jeff

I Don't Even Know What Hype Means

I rarely pick up books that have received an enormous amount of hype. In the past, when I have read books that have gotten an inordinate amount of praise prior to publication, they've failed to live up to the supposed hype. It's not even necessarily the book's fault. The book itself might be just fine, but when it's proclaimed to be The Greatest Thing Ever Written or A Must Read For Everyone or The Finest Piece of Literature Ever Written, it becomes difficult to live up to that kind of billing. I'm not looking to name names here, but there have been several books over the last few years in several different genres that came with gigantic accolades that just didn't get it done for me. And I really believe that has more to do with the over the top praise heaped upon the books rather than a failure with the books.

This week I read Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 and unless you've been living in a hole somewhere, you've probably heard about it. First time author receives a big fat publishing contract, movie rights are sold, bookstores go crazy for the book and critics can't say enough good things about it. I was certain that this one had disappointment written all over it.

Wrong. Way wrong. Amazing book. Knocked me out. For all the reasons that people are saying - great story, great characters, great suspense, great writing. I won't rehash everything I loved about the book because I think most everything has been mentioned by other folks in the blogoshpere, but I think the hype is much deserved and my expectations were actually exceeded.

Tell us about the last book that lived up to the enormous hype for you. (And seriously - I'm not looking to bash books that didn't live up to expectations - so let's stay away from those.)
Jeff

Name that book

Any of you who hang around here frequently might remember my struggle with a book synopsis a few weeks back. It paid off. I have a new, two-book deal with my wonderful editor Kristen Weber at NAL for a new mystery series.

Annie will be back in November in SHOT GIRL — and you can pre-order it already on Amazon! But after four books with Annie, it was time for a change.

So the new series will be set in Las Vegas and feature a tattoo shop owner.

Before all of you start wondering, I will say definitively: I do not have a tattoo. And the research I’ve done doesn’t exactly endear me to the idea. I also do not live in Las Vegas and was there once upon a time before the child. But the fun thing about writing about a place I don’t live in is that I can actually go there! For tax-deductible research! I’m glad I didn’t set the books in Hoboken.

Of course the biggest problem is that I have no title.  Some writers like Louise Ure come up with fabulous titles and then write the book.  Me, I just write the book and hope I can come up with something that’s not stupid.

So today’s assignment, if you care to participate, is to come up with a title for my new book. The premise is a young woman goes missing after last being seen at the Vegas tattoo shop to get a devotion tattoo — a heart with her fiance’s name.  I know that’s not much to go on, but you’re a clever bunch. And I’m sure you’ll give me some that will make me laugh.

Seriously, however, if someone gives me one that I can submit to my editor and everyone at NAL thinks it’s THE ONE, you’ll get a surprise prize.

Karen

Gaylin Goes Hawaiian

Alison isn't here to dazzle us with her word-smithing today, as she and her family are making like tourists on the island of Kauai. She's probably making new friends at luaus, doing some swimming, catching some rays, enjoying some fine food, having a few drinks and getting some much needed rest.

She sent us some video from the party she went to last night. Enjoy.

You Ate WHAT?!

Lori here~

We helped out at our friends ranch this weekend with cattle branding (I should say Mr. LGA helped throw down the calves, I took pictures and held up the fence in the corrals). It was cold, windy, with snow flurries earlier in the morning and lots of mud because of all the snow and rain in the last two weeks. The noise of bawling calves inside the corrals, and the mama cows outside the corrals calling for their babies was absolutely deafening. The air was thick with smoke from the brand singeing the hide and from de-horning.

It was an absolute blast.

Part of branding is castrating the male calves. A few are chosen to grow to maturity to become bulls for breeding purposes. Most aren't. Hence the need for a sharp knife. Hence the delicacy known as: Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Yes. The testicles are cut off, cut up and deep fried. No, they don't taste like chicken, but finger steaks. Okay, tenderloin finger steaks. Mmm.

Before you say, gross! I'll throw out my two cents and admit folks in other parts of the country eat things I cannot fathom without my gag reflex kicking in. Eel? Turtle? Oysters? Sushi? Eww. But I am totally down with other food oddities I've tried elsewhere over the years: fried Twinkies, fried dill pickles, and jerky made out of various animals.

Here's your chance to brag on a "regional" food you like, love or loathe.

Whatever, World

I'm in a bad mood. I have a head cold. My daughter has a cold. It's humid. The Padres have lost 16 of their last 20 games. And USA Today gave Speed Racer only one and a half stars.

Whatever, world. You win.

So I only have two things for you today.

This funny story out of Riverdale, UT, which contains the following:

The police chief who shot himself in the ankle was waving a loaded pistol and being careless, according to two students who were attending his class to qualify for a concealed-weapons permit. "We were told the gun is the chief's personal sidearm, but it looked to me like he didn't know anything about the gun," Lewis Walker said.

Bart Ulm, another student seeking certification to carry a concealed weapon, said he was surprised Chief Dave Hansen was using a loaded gun to show how it worked.

"Right then, I was very leery, because there's no need to have live ammo in a gun in the class. But I figured he's the chief, so he must know what he's doing," Ulm told the Standard-Examiner of Ogden.

Hansen held the Glock 40 under a table to disassemble it when a bullet fired, Walker said.

The chief cried, "I'm hit," and fell over. Students who were screaming "Officer down!" were urged to call 911.

There are so many funny things about that that it almost puts me in a good mood.

The other thing I have for you today...I actually don't have for you. That jackass Our good friend Jim Born is encouraging folks to share their bad Amazon reviews today over at Naked Authors. I have done so and encourage you to do the same.
Jeff

The Great Psychobilly Blog Road Trip of 2008: Day 3, Part 1

I'm still reeling from last night's HELLS KITCHEN, so Anthony Neil Smith has hijacked the blog today on his road trip across cyberspace to promote his new book YELLOW MEDICINE.  (Secretly, I think Neil wants to BE Gordon Ramsay.)  — Karen

Last Stop: Greg Bardsley's Chimichangas At Sunset

 

Let's just pretend our "First" Offenders here, instead of being scattered across the country in every different direction, all live together in debauchery (kind of like Animal House ) in a crusty old farmhouse in, oh, Spearfish, South Dakota.  Why?  Because Spearfish is a great fucking name for a town, that's why.

 

And we pull up in the Hummer-sine to find Jeff Shelby, author of the Noah Braddock surf-tec novels Killer Swell and Wicked Break, standing outside with his golf clubs (which we laugh at because we already ditched ours), wearing one of those print-screened T-shirts with a photo in the middle of a heart.  Whose photo? Jim Born. 

 

But hey, we kid Jeff.  He's a trooper, an actual good golfer, and he really makes you feel the sand in your swimtrunks as you read his work.  We're eagerly looking forward to what's next from the boy.

 

By the time Karen and Lori swagger out (do I have to say it? Okay: blind stinking drunk), carrying bags of desserts they picked up from watching Top Chef, we've been waiting half-an-hour, listening to some noisy assualt coming from a busted speaker in a second story window (is that...no, it can't be...Kiss?).  Then Alison saves the day by bringing along the new Felice Brothers CD.  Well, I guess we can push off the psychobilly for one more leg.

 

We're talking a Motley Cure here, right?  Lori G. Armstrong, a true pulpster banging out dirty romance/erotica and dirty crime fiction simultaenously (look up Hallowed Ground and Shallow Grave. Plus, she'll be jumping to a new, bigger, shinier publisher soon). Groovy stuff, am I right?  And Lori is just as much a troublemaker as that resume suggests.

 

Karen Olson, author of the Annie Seymour series about a reporter who keeps finding dead people.  Mighty suspicious if you ask me.  But it's rougher than you think and damned funny, too.  Try the Freed Memorial Award winning Sacred Cows and more recent Dead of the Day.  In Karen's Shot Girl, she'll be tackling some kinkier stuff with a male stripper named Jack Hammer. Bookwise, of course.

 

Alison Gaylin, although we haven't met (until the Blog Trip arrived today...virtually), I'll say has great taste in music, as I saw from her recent post about the aforementioned Felice Brothers and the fact that she seemed to know that Split Lip Rayfield is a band and not that guy dozing outside the bar.  She's the Edgar-nominated author of Trashed, about a rootin' tootin' sleaze-tabloid reporter looking for dirt.  God bless you, Alison.  Don't we all feel a little like Simone Glass sometimes?  Keep an eye out for the next one, Heartless, this fall.

 

All that comararderie!  Like a little tight knit band or something, like The Beatles or The Monkees or The Police.   Kind of like our little band of Crimedogs over at Plots with Guns. Nice to know there's others out there just like you who appreciate cheap beer, twangy music, and ridiculously dirty crime fiction. Speaking of which, don't forget: Psychobilly Monday, May 12th, a chance to make my awful little novel Yellow Medicine a blip on Barnes & Noble's radar screen. Come on, we've come this far already, haven't we?  No, seriously, I've forgotten how far we've come.  My head is killing me...

 

Onward we go, some folks sitting in the back enjoying the disco party atmosphere of the Hummer-sine, some poking their heads out the sunroof, and others making sure the tunes keep rocking while the speedometer tips right up there at 95 as we head towards the next destination--Kent Gowran's Blood Sweat and Murder Blog, beaming out of Chicago.

 

Driving Time: Three Sunrises

Tune for the leg: "Frankie's Gun" by The Felice Brothers

Do-over, anyone?

By Alison

My favorite TV show is The Simpsons. But sometimes when I watch it, I get a little pang of regret, because it makes me think of the one thing in my life I really wish I could do over.

I was 23, maybe 24. I'd just started working as a reporter for The Star, and my college friend Cindy was working for a producer who shared office space with a brand new show called The Simpsons. I was a fan of it already -- it had started as a cartoon on the Tracey Ullman show and I loved it from the get-go. And before that I loved Matt Groening's cartoons in the L.A. Weekly.

Cindy knew this, and she also knew I'd written a play in college (Sam Shepard rip-off, written in one stimulent fueled night. Bryon Q. knows about it because he wrote one too.) which had won an award. She'd become friendly with one of the producers who wasn't Matt Groening and showed her the play and the producer shockingly really liked it and told her to tell me to write a sample episode because they were looking for writers and... man did I blow it.

I don't know, I think I was freaking out over some boyfriend whose name I don't even remember and I never did it. Thinking about that even today makes me want to bang my head against the wall -- not because I believe I would have gotten the job. But because I didn't even try.

They say everything happens for a reason, which I mostly feel is a load of crap. But in convoluted terms, my blowing off the chance to try out for The Simpsons allowed me to meet my husband, who was an old friend of one of my fellow Star reporters. It also made me accept when I got into graduate school, which made me move to New York, which made me hook up with the friend who got me into the fiction writing workshop led by the wonderful woman who told me that the short story I was working on would make a good mystery novel. So blowing off the Simpsons made me much of who I am today.

But all that could have happened anyway, if I had tried out for the job and not gotten it.  Like I said, it's the not trying part that all these years later makes me say, D'oh.

Is there anything in your life you wish you could do over?

Who You Gonna Call? Ghostbusters!

Lori here~

And you are SO welcome for me getting that little ditty stuck in your head.

I've been thinking a lot about ghosts lately. I just finished a book (DARK NEEDS AT NIGHT'S EDGE- Kresley Cole) where the heroine was a ghost and only the tortured hero could see her...yeah, I know, it sounds like every ghost book ever written. But it was different. It was really great in that the supernatural wasn't explained away - i.e., like the "ghost" was stuck in a coma (IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE -Worst. Book. EVER.) Or everything happened in a dream. Or true love returned her to her corporeal state.

I'll admit I read paranormal more than any other genre these days. Maybe it's because that's the only genre I don't seem to be writing in. Maybe it's because I still have that child-like fascination vampires and werewolves and shifters and witches and demons coexisting with mere mortals.

The other reason I've been thinking about ghosts is because my oldest daughter started a new job in a place downtown that is supposedly haunted. In times past, the building was both a brothel and a morgue--no wonder the damn place is haunted. What I think is interesting, is that the manager and her coworkers don't deny it's haunted, nor do they make a huge deal about it. It just...is.

Now I'd heard stories about this building, about that whole block actually. A friend of mine used to own a bookstore across the street, and the stories she told about being alone in the basement--the menacing voice, the sense of evil unrest, and the reality of objects getting moved-- still gives me shivers, because she is not a woman who'd lie about something like that just to spin a good campfire tale. There never was a question of disbelief on my part. A couple months back when FOFO Toni McGee Causey wrote on Murderati about her experiences with a ghost, when Toni was a young, first time mother, I couldn't understand how she wouldn't have freaked out more about a ghost obsessed with her new baby. So here I am, discussing with my 18 yr. old, how cool it would be if she got to see either of the ghosts. And since she still is my child and I'll always want to protect her, I demanded to know what she'd do if it happened.

I've had brushes with the supernatural, but I've never seen a ghost. I absolutely believe they exist. If folks can believe in a higher power, then why is it so hard to imagine a different plane of reality?

Share a ghost story, your disbelief of ghosts, or the best book you've ever read with a ghost as one or more of the main characters. The best books I've read dealing with ghosts? HAUNTED by Kelley Armstrong, and CHRISTINE by Stephen King.

I Refuse To Hold My Pinkie In The Air While Drinking

I have to take my daughter to a birthday tea party this morning. I am, uh, not really looking forward to this. It's not what I signed up for. I don't do tea parties.

Please share with us something that YOU do not wish to do today.
Jeff