Temblor

The book I re-read on the way out to L.A. was Harlan Ellison's Slippage, a 1996 collection of stories (including "Mephisto in Onyx," which was yesterday's "Opening Shots" selection). The first few lines of the introduction:

Where to open the fissure: the earthquake or the heart attack?

The earthquake. It is officially listed as a 6.8-magnitude temblor by the U.S. Geological Survey's geophysicists at the Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado.

The Northridge, California "thruster." It hit at precisely, exactly, 4:31 a.m. on Monday the 17th of January 1994.

I read those lines early, early Sunday morning. I'd picked Slippage because a.) I'd just moved my science fiction bookcase down to the soon-to-be office, and it caught my eye, and b.) I had fond memories of reading it while flying to Las Vegas for our honeymoon back in 1997, and c.) I consider Ellison a California writer, and I try to read California writers while in California.

Today, at about 11:42 a.m., I was sitting in an X-Men idea meeting at the Marvel West offices. I heard a noise. Not a rumbling; not rattling. I'm sitting here, racking my brain trying to find a comparison, but I don't think I've ever heard anything like it. It just sounded... wrong.

And then the room started to shake.

Not vibrate... shake. Back and forth, like we were on an amusement ride. And we continued to shake for what felt like three minutes, but turned out to be only 30 seconds or so. And then it died down.

And then it hit me: I'd just felt a geniune California earthquake.

I wonder where Harlan Ellison was this time around...

Opening Shots: Mefisto In Onyx

Once. I only went to bed with her once. Friends for eleven years--before and since--but it was just one of those things, just one of those crazy flings: the two of us alone on a New Year's Eve, watching rented Marx Brothers videos so we wouldn't have to go out with a bunch of idiots and make noise and pretend we were having a good time when all we'd be doing was getting drunk, whooping like morons, vomiting on slow-moving strangers, and spending more money than we had to waste.

Mefisto In Onyx
by Harlan Ellison
(Mark V. Ziesing, 1994)

The Boy of Summers

Cable #6 is out in a few weeks (August 6), and it's an over-sized issue focusing on Cyclops in the wake of his decision to let Cable take the baby and run. Want to know more/see a few sample pages, by both series regular Ariel Olivetti and guest artist Michael Lacombe? Check out this Q&A over at Marvel.com.

Philly, Houston, Clinton

There's a cool profile of me up at Philadelphia Weekly's website, written by Steven Wells. It makes me seem slightly crazy, which is nice. (I also appreciate that the photo makes me look slightly muscular, instead of mostly fat, as I am in real life.) I had a lot of fun talking to Wells--our interview wasn't a straightforward Q, A, Q, A, repeat until interviewer is bored/has enough to make his deadline-style interview. Our conversation meandered around various topics in a fun, organic way, which is how the most interesting stuff came up.

I've just finalized plans for the last few stops in the Severance Package tour, which has been creeping around the U.S. here and there since May...

On August 9th I'll be flying to Houston and stopping by Bedrock City Comics, signing and hanging out from 1 to 3 p.m. This is entirely thanks to the tireless pimpage of McKenna Jordan and David Thompson of Murder By the Book, and I'm extremely grateful. Then at 4:30 I'll be signing and hanging out at Murder By the Book, which is the highlight of every tour. And not just for the Shiner Bock!

On August 22nd I'll be driving up to Clinton, NJ to join Jason Pinter and Dave White for "Triple Threat Thriller Night" at the Clinton Book Shop. You could also call it the "Tall White Guys from the Tri-State Area Thriller Night," or "Watch the Guys From PA and NY Make Fun of Dave White in His Home State Night."

Angel of the Mourning

Cool project announced at San Diego Comic Con yesterday: Ed Brubaker's Angel of Death, which will be live-action web series kicking off in summer 2009. Zoe Bell (of Death Proof fame) stars as a female assassin who has a head injury, then turns the tables on her various employers. Best of all, it'll be available free, online, in 8 to 10 minute (and presumably gore-soaked) bursts. Can. Not. Wait.

Fists Will Fly

This Wednesday Immortal Iron Fist #17 hits comic shops, and it's my debut on the series, along with artist Travel Foreman. You'll find some preview pages right here at Marvel Noise, along with a really kind preview/review from David Price. Jumping on board this one is a dream come true, especially for a kid who used to dress up like Caine from Kung Fu and try to kick the crap out of his younger brother on a regular basis.

And speaking of superhero types: Canada's Globe and Mail ran a nice short piece about Murder At Wayne Manor: An Interactive Batman Mystery, stressing that it's nowhere near as dark as The Dark Knight. Which proves I have a kinder, gentler side. I think.

Opening Shots: Half the Blood of Brooklyn

I don't like him. I don't like the way he smells. I don't like the way he looks. I don't like his shoes. If I stuck a blade in him and drank the blood that shot out of the open wound, I wouldn't like the way he tastes.

Half the Blood of Brooklyn
by Charlie Huston
(Del Rey, 2007)

("Opening Shots" is a new feature here at Secret Dead Blog where I post the opening line of a particular novel. Check back every Monday for more!)

Presumed Guilty

I'm the process of moving my office down to the basement... er, I mean, ground floor of Secret Dead Blog Headquarters. (The daughter will be inheriting the room in which The Wheelman, The Blonde, Severance Package, and a fairly large chunk of the next one were written, as well as the first eleven issues of Cable and other assorted comics.) I've been going up and down the stairs, carefully transporting my Richard Stark collection, my Richard Matheson collection, my pulp paperback reference collection, my Black Lizard collection, my Manhunt collection... yeah, I've got a bunch of collections going.

Just took a break now, though, and I was happy to see that Paul Goat Allen is calling Severance Package a hit of "literary methamphetamine" in the Chicago Tribune. (I hasten to add that very few Severance readers have reported weight loss, meth mouth, and/or a sudden resemblance to Amy Winehouse; ask your doctor if Severance Package is right for you.) He also think it's a guilty pleasure novel full of "dark, twisted energy." Not going to complain about that one bit.

And I forgot to blog about Adam Woog's review in the Seattle Times that appeared last week. He also think Severance is a guilty pleasure, and adds that it's "gleefully crude, cartoonishly violent, and as thoroughly addictive as the best (or worst) of Tarantino and Spillane."

Which reminds me; time to move the Spillane collection downstairs.

James M. Cain Wrote Here

This is 2966 Belden Drive up in the Hollywood Hills, where James Cain wrote Double Indemnity, Serenade and Mildred Pierce, among other classic stories. (The Postman Always Rings Twice was written at Cain's house in Burbank, according to Roy Hoopes' biography.) Cain thought the place was haunted, and once wrote about the ghost in a newspaper column:

[The ghost seems to] see everything you do, hear everything you say, and disapprove all the way down the line as a matter of principle."

Still:

"[California] hasn't got the climate for ghosts. In this fragrant night, with the bright stars shining overhead, the lights of Hollywood blazing far below... our ghost is a flop."

Savage Lagoon

What would happen if 1930s-style hero pulps collided with 1940s/50s-era horror/SF flicks? Find out here. (Courtesy the diabolical David J. Schow, and by extension, the Monsterverse Blog.)

Charles Bukowski Wrote Here

Welcome to 5124 De Longpre Avenue, in East Hollywood. The place is still there (as of this past weekend), but a November 2007 piece from L.A. Weekly suggests it may soon be torn down to make way for condos.

Howard Sounes described the place in his Buk biography:

[Bukowski] and FrancEyE moved into the one-bedroom bungalow, next to the sidewalk. The lounge had an old couch, a rickety coffee table and book shelves constructed from building blocks... The typewriter and typing table his parents had given him were by the window so he could watch people while he wrote.

And it was in that room where Bukowski wrote his first novel, Post Office, in about three weeks.

Opening Shots: The Kill Riff

This time he would pull the trigger without blinking.

The Kill Riff
by David J. Schow
(Tor, 1988)

("Opening Shots" is a new feature here at Secret Dead Blog where I post the opening line or two of a novel. Does it grab you? Does it make you want to track down this book right this very instant? Let me know!)

Hollywood Hangover: Steve is Missing!

(Photo by The Bride. Somewhere, a Steve Carell fan is masturbating furiously.)

Hollywood Hangover: The Separation of Church and Sex

Near Hollywood and Highland. And just a block from where Jim Thompson spent some of his final years. (Photo by The Bride.)

A Bit of Indie Cred

Just wanted to share this extreme cool piece of news: it seems that Severance Package was June's number two bestselling trade paperback at indie mystery shops across the country. If only it weren't for that meddling, award-winning Tana French...

Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy, especially those who shopped at one of many fine mystery bookstores.

Hollywood Hangover: Under the Roosevelt

(Photo by The Bride.)

Ethan Iverson is Still Trying to Kill Me

I'm very happy about Ethan Iverson's reaction to both Severance Package and my buddy Sunshine's latest, Savage Night. (And yes, he's right -- there is a Bad Plus reference folded up and tucked away where you probably least expect it. Heh heh heh.)

I'm also glad he got over his funnybook phobia and picked up Criminal, Ed Brubaker's brilliant n' nasty crime comic published by Marvel's Icon imprint. All I have to do now is convince him to check out Scalped. And 100 Bullets. And DMZ...

There's also a great bit at the end of the post about my hero Fredric Brown and his mystery writer pal William Campbell Gault, taken from David Laurence Wilson's 1984 L.A. Times piece on Gault:

Gault’s closest friend was Fredric Brown, a frail intellectual who had also started out in Milwaukee. "Fred was the great, innovative one," Gault said. "He had a mind like Einstein and he peddled it for two cents a word."

What a brain whore.

(Photo by Chadwick Ginther. Yes, those are scotch bottles to the left and right of Sunshine's book.)

Hollywood Hangover: Spider-Man on Vacation

On Venice Beach. (Photo by The Bride.)

Opening Shots: The Cold Spot

Chase was laughing with the others during the poker game when his grandfather threw down his cards, took a deep pull on his beer, and with no expression at all shot Walcroft in the head.


The Cold Spot
by Tom Piccirilli
(Bantam, 2008)

("Opening Shots" is a new feature here at Secret Dead Blog where I post the opening line or two of a novel. Check back every Monday for more. The "Monday Moment of Noir" and "Hardboiled Fridays" will most likely resume in September. Maybe.)

The Mark of Cain

I've been dipping back into one of my favorite author bios these past few days: Roy Hoopes's Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain. It's a big, meaty hardcover that is so detailed, you swear you can hear Cain talking to you, makes jokes, telling you about his life. It's fun to just roll around in for 5o pages at a time. I love author bios, in general. They make me feel just that little bit more sane...

Some of my other favorties, off the top of my head, in no particular order:

Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito
Willeford by Don Herron
Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die by Francis M. Nevins
Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin
The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman
The Life of Raymond Chandler by Frank McShane
Ross Macdonald by Tom Nolan
Martians and Misplaced Clues: The Life and Work of Fredric Brown by Jack Seabrook
Dashiell Hammett: A Life by Diane Johnson
Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett by Richard Layman
Dean Koontz: A Writer's Biography by Katherine Ramsland
Stephen King: The Art of Darkness by Douglas E. Winter
Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic by Douglas E. Winter
Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante by Stephen Cooper
Will Eisner: A Spirited Life by Bob Andelman
Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes

I'm still waiting for an English translation of Phillipe Garnier's Goodis, la Vie en Noir et Blanc. (Or, I'll have to get around to learning French one of these days.) I'd also kill for a good Mickey Spillane bio. Or a Horace McCoy, Charles Williams, Paul Cain, Donald Westlake...

Are there any author bios you'd recommend?

Hollywood Hangover: Hot Dog Stick

And fresh lemonade. (Photo by The Bride.)

The Summer I Read 47,000 Books

I've been in the process of moving my book collection around, which made me think of the summer of 1997, when my collection grew by leaps and bounds. July 1997, to be specific, because that was the month I started working as an editor at Details magazine.

At the time I was living with the Bride (just before she became the Bride) in lovely Allentown, PA, but we weren't able to relocate to NYC until September. For a little over two months I experienced what I now fondly refer to as the "Summer My Book Collection Grew Like Crazy," but back then called my "Three State Commute From Hell." See, to make it to my office at Broadway and Bleecker by say, 9:30 a.m., I had leave our apartment by 6:45 a.m., drive 10 minutes to the Wescosville Diner, where I could catch the two-hour Bieber Bus ride to Port Authority in Hell's Kitchen, then hop a 15-minute B,D,F or Q subway line down to the Broadway-Lafayette Station. All told, about two and a half hours. Then, the same thing back at night. Repeat five times.

Sure, once in a while I cheated and stayed with a friend for a night or two. But for the most part, my ass was traveling 5 hours per day, five days a week.

(There are some people who do this all of the time. Like, for a 30-40 year career. So I'm not complaining. Especially now that my commute is about 10 seconds.)

So new job, plus long commute, created the Perfect Storm of Book Acquisition. Suddenly:

a.) I had five hours to do nothing but read; and

b.) I suddenly had a decent-paying job, which meant my book budget had increased four-fold; and

c.) I was working in Manhattan, pretty much the book capital of the friggin' universe.

So I read my fuckin' eyes out.

It got to the point where I'd start a novel in the morning, and finish it somewhere around Clinton, New Jersey. At which point I'd read a magazine, or start tomorrow's book.

I read like coke fiends snort.

I can remember where I bought each book: mostly Shakespeare and Company on Broadway (aross from NYU) and Tower Books, just around the corner. Shakespeare, though, was my favorite, because they stocked a mystery/crime section like nobody's business.

And I can remember the titles of pretty much every book I read.

Which included: all of Raymond Chandler (minus The Long Goodbye, which I'd read the year before); Raymond Chandler Speaking; Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye, and Amnesia Moon; Haruki Murakami's Wild Sheep Chase, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Dance Dance Dance, The Elephant Vanishes; Picador's Jim Thompson Omnibus 2 (After Dark My Sweet, A Hell of a Woman, Savage Night, A Swell Looking Babe, Nothing More Than Murder); Robert Polito's Savage Art; Geoffrey O'Brien's Hardboiled America; John Ridley's Stray Dogs; Astro Teller's Exegesis; Fredric Brown's The Far Cry...

I could go on. (Seriously.)

But what I realize is how much these books have stayed with me, influenced me, haunted me. Hardboiled America, especially, kicked off my 10+ year love affair with vintage paperbacks and Gold Medal-style pulp. There's a checklist of books in the back, and damned if I haven't been slowly working my way through that list ever since.

I have to say that my two-month binge (a mix of noir, SF, and noir/SF hybrids) was a big influence on Secret Dead Men, which I wrote the following summer.

I also think that the experience of gorging on novels -- having the luxury of five friggin' hours to totally immerse myself in a piece of fiction -- left me with the desire to do the same for other readers, which is why my novels tend to be the type you snarf down quickly. Novels where you don't even need five hours.

And, as the Bride can tell you (shaking her head wearily) that's where my book collection, as it exists today, was truly born. We were in New York for two years, and sweet Jesus in heaven did I gather an unholy number of books -- new, used, free, whatever.

I'm looking at my Jim Thompson omnibus right now, and I tell ya, I'm gettin' misty.

(Illustration at top by Scott Laumann.)

And With This, I Announce the Titles of My Next 47 Novels

(Nicked from JohnAugust.com, who in turn, nicked it from Team Forty. Created by Tom Gauld.)

The Immortal Iron Fist...

... as illustrated by the amazing Travel Foreman. Is this not insanely cool-looking? These are pages 20 and 21 of our first issue, due out later this month. There are more preview pages right here.


Update: Marvel.com has an Iron Fist (and Cable) Q&A with me right here.