And That's An Order

Today's mail brought three copies of Letzte Order, which is the German edition of my latest novel, Severance Package. "Letzte Order," according to Secret Dead Blog's in-house team of translators, means "Last Order" (or perhaps "Final Order"), both of which certainly apply. But man, do I love this cover. (Click on it for a larger version.) It has the champagne, as well as a nice hint of blood. (Okay, maybe it's more than a hint.) It carries over the look of my first German edition (The Blonde, a.k.a., Blondes Gift, a.k.a. Blonde Poison). And while there are no sweet Dennis (X-Men Noir) Calero illustrations inside, the folks at Heyne did include their own version of the handwritten "death list," which was fun to see.

And I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a thrill from the line at the bottom: "Vom Autor Des Bestsellers Blondes Gift," which I'm pretty sure means "From the Author of the Bestselling Blonde Poison." (It's true; that book was a bestseller over there.)

What do you guys think? If you spoke German, you'd pick this up, right?

(And for those of you who are new to Secret Dead Blog, here's why I'm Duane Louis in Germany.)

Six Hours in Five Days

Next week brings Punisher: Frank Castle #66, the first issue of my arc, "Six Hours to Kill" (with superstud Canadian artist Michel Lacombe). You can read me yapping about it with CBR's Dave Richards.

This Means War...

... Messiah War, that is, which is a big X-Men mini-series kicking off this March. It's the official sequel to X-Men: Messiah Complex, and will play out over issues of X-Force and Cable. For more details, check out IGN's Richard George Q&A with me and Chris Yost right here.

(I was visiting the Marvel office earlier today, actually, kicking around some Cable cover concepts with X-Editors Axel Alonso, Sebastian Girner, John Barber and Jody LeHeup. Meanwhile, on the other side of Manhattan, a hero pilot saved 155 lives with a spectacular water landing in the Hudson River. Tell me today wasn't full of magic.)

Oh, Honey

Lester Dent is best known for the bajillion Doc Savage pulp stories he wrote during the 1930s. According to Lee Server 's Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers, Dent started to turn his hand to crime fiction in the mid-1940s, and even sold a hardboiled novel called Cry at Dusk to Gold Medal in 1952. And then, that was it. Dent retired from the pulp and paperback game... until now. Charles Ardai, somehow, has managed to find an unpublished hardboiled Dent novel called Honey in His Mouth; Hard Case will be publishing it this October. You can check out a sample chapter right here. I'm routinely stunned by the gems Ardai digs up; October can't come soon enough. I want to read everything right now, damnit!

Miniature Manhattan

Just discovered the Tilt-Shift Maker (thanks to Boing Boing), which makes your ordinary photos look all miniature-y and surreal. Above, midtown Manhattan, shot from the Top of the Rock in early December. (Click on it for a closer look.) Yes, I should be working instead of doing this. But as Jack Torrance told us in The Shining, all work and no play makes Swierczy a dull boy.

Thrown to the Wolves

Two new Swierczy comics out today: Cable #10, which is the conclusion of the "Waiting for the End of the World" arc. One thing of note: finally, after nine issues (and a King-sized special), the Messiah Girl gets a name. No, it's not "Duanina." Check out the issue for more.

Also out: my first issue of Dead of Night: Werewolf By Night #1, with art by the amazing Mico Suayan (of Moon Knight fame). As I've yapped about previously, WBN was the first comic I ever read, and it's been an incredible treat to tell a Jack Russell story of my own. If you're into horror, I hope you'll give it a try. You can check out the first eight gore-soaked pages right here. And here's me talkin' Werewolf with CBR.com's Dave Richards.

Donald Westlake (a.k.a. Richard Stark) 1933-2008

So sad to be in a world where Donald Westlake won't be writing any more novels. I discovered Westlake in Stephen King's The Dark Half; in an afterword, King talked about how fictional tough-guy writer George Stark was modeled on Westlake's "Richard Stark" alter ego. I was 17 years old, and I remember thinking I really needed to track down some stuff by this Stark guy. But this was an internet-less 1989, and I couldn't find a single one, in print or used. Life moved on. In 1997, I read and loved a novel called The Ax by Donald Westlake, and later remembered that, oh yeah, this was that Stark guy. The first Stark novel I found was The Damsel, a beat-to-hell Signet edition I found on the bargain shelves at Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookshop. (Shelves, I later learned, that Westlake helped build.) I read it in a gulp, and craved more. By that time, Stark had resumed writing the Parker novels, and slowly... very, very slowly... older Starks returned to print. In the years that followed, I finally managed to track down all of the original Parker (and Grofield) novels, from The Hunter through Butcher's Moon. If there's a better series of American crime novels, I have yet to discover it.

And of course, I devoured all of the Westlakes I could find. I enjoyed them all, but loved the harder-edged stuff the best: The Ax, Killing Time, 361, The Hook, Don't Lie to Me, Murder Among Children, Killy, The Smashers (a.k.a. The Mercenaries).

But it was Stark's novels about Parker, a tough amoral heister with no first name, that really grabbed me. So much so that when I decided to write a straight crime novel, I wrote one about a mute getaway driver named Lennon. Needless to say, The Wheelman owes a serious debt to Richard Stark. So do a lot of other tough guy novels in the Stark mode, including Max Allan Collins' Nolan series, Garry Disher's Wyatt, and more recently Dan Simmons' Joe Kurtz and Tom Piccirilli's Chase. None of these would have happened without Stark blazing the trail, inventing a subgenre with a form as strict (and beautiful) as a sonnet.

My wife and I even named our first-born son Parker, in honor of both the Richard Stark character (as well as Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man).

A year and a half ago, I was lucky enough to meet Westlake at the MWA Edgar Awards. Sarah Weinman introduced us, and I believe I just stood there, trying like hell not to say something stupid/stammer/collapse. Thankfully, Westlake was gracious, funny, and totally laid back. I shook his hand, and thanked him for his "body of work" (or something geeky like that). Incidentally, this was the Edgars where Stephen King received the MWA Grandmaster Award. I wish I could have gathered both of them in the same place to tell them: You two! You're the ones who did this to me! And God, I can't thank you enough.

I'm very sad about Westlake's passing, but I am hugely grateful for the large body of work he left behind. And the best way to honor a departed writer is to re-read their work and promote it to those who haven't had the pleasure. So if you haven't, pick up 361. Or the University of Chicago Press edition of The Hunter. Or The Ax (which is wayyyyy timely all of a sudden). Or maybe start with Hard Case's The Cutie, a reprint due next month that was Westlake's first crime novel (published as The Mercenaries). And then you can read them all in order.

People die, but stories and novels have that odd shot at immortality. I really like Westlake's chances.