Daily Cheap Reads

If you own any kind of an eBook reading device, this is a site that you probably need to know about. Daily Cheap Reads has been running for a while in the US and has now opened a dedicated British outlet.

The point here is that there's nothing bargain-basement about the cheap reads. Bargains yes; bargain basement no.

I just took a look and Daily Cheap Reads is very impressive - classy design, professional-looking presentation, and a strong sense that you're getting a set of intelligent editorial picks and not just an open crap spigot of self-publication. They're not neglecting the indie market, but they are discriminating in their choices.

Recent listings include Kate Atkinson, Maeve Binchy, and Sebastian Faulks. They've found Ian Rankin at £1.49, Kazuo Ishiguro for £2.44... you could spend your days scouring the net for this stuff, but now you don't have to.

The Top Suspense Group

Exciting stuff - I've been invited to join the bunch of fellow-writers who have founded the groundbreaking Top Suspense Group. It's an online resource for readers in the fast-expanding eBook market.

To mark my debut with the gang I'm launching the Kindle version of my novel Valley of Lights at the rock-bottom Amazon price of 99c, for one month only.

When Phoenix Police Sergeant Alex Volchak discovers the true nature of a predator that has survived among us unnoticed for generations, he puts himself and those around him in mortal danger. "An excellent thriller... a cracking pace... large helpings of deadpan gallows humour... a genuine ability to create a sense of evil." Evening Times "The best fusion of crime and horror since Hjortsberg's Falling Angel." Time Out

This is a significant development, I think. As readers we look for some kind of filtering and guidance to help us seek out the kind of books we might like, and in this brave new world there's not a lot of it around.

From the group's initial press release:

The e-book market is exploding. With over 700,000 e-books currently available and hundreds more added every week, it’s growing increasingly difficult to distinguish quality books from those that are unedited and written by inexperienced authors.

That’s why nine established, professional authors have formed Top Suspense Group, a site where readers are guaranteed to find top-notch, award-winning authors in multiple genres who deliver a great e-reading experience in their dozens of highly-acclaimed books.

"Readers can count on us," acclaimed author Max Allan Collins explains. "Every member of our group has already made his or her mark on genre fiction, whether it's noir, crime, mystery, thriller, horror or Westerns, and in some cases, several of these genres."

Top Suspense authors have each:

* Published multiple novels with traditional publishers
* Won or have been nominated for major literary awards
* Been internationally published
* Received critical acclaim from national publications

The original lineup includes Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Lee Goldberg, Joel Goldman, Ed Gorman, Vicki Hendricks, Paul Levine, Harry Shannon, and Dave Zeltserman. They're joined by Naomi Hirahara, Libby Fischer Hellmann, and me.

All of us appear in the group's first anthology of short fiction - call it a taster, if you like - about which, more below.

The Top Suspense Anthology

I've been allocated twenty-five Advance Reading Copies of the Top Suspense anthology to give away, in the e-format of your choice. All you need to do is agree to post a no-spoilers review, positive or negative, on your blog, website, Goodreads page, Facebook page, or the Amazon listing for TOP SUSPENSE in the next 60 days.

Click here or on the Contact tab, and drop me a line with FREE TOP SUSPENSE BOOK in the subject line. Don't forget to include your preferred eBook format and the name of your blog or website, if you have one.

Hold on tight for a literary thrill-ride into the wickedly clever, frightening, and exhilarating world of Top Suspense, a sizzling collaboration of twelve master storytellers at the peak of their powers in thirteen unforgettable tales... Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Stephen Gallagher, Lee Goldberg, Joel Goldman, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Naomi Hirahara, Vicki Hendricks, Paul Levine, Harry Shannon, and Dave Zeltserman.

This unforgettable anthology – packed full of cold-blooded killers, erotic tension, shady private eyes, craven drug dealers, vicious betrayals, crafty thieves, and shocking twists – is coming out on APRIL 1 and is only a taste of the thrills you will find in the breathtakingly original ebooks by these authors at www.topsuspensegroup.com.

US Kindle price will be $2.99.

The Good Old Stuff

The header comes from the great John D McDonald's title for a collection of his pulp writing, energetic, reader-centred fiction of which he was particularly proud, and it seemed like an appropriate way to introduce this guest post from Lee Goldberg.

I've met Lee in person, so I can testify that there's only one of him. Though you'd never guess it from the sheer variety and energy of his output; novelist, TV writer, tie-in champion, film-maker, blogger, leading commentator on the developing (exploding?) eBook market... Lee is also closely involved with the Top Suspense group, a cadre of experienced writers who have banded together in a branding operation that I suspect is going to become more common as readers seek some kind of guidance and filtering for eBook titles.

More on that subject soon. The venture he describes here is in the McDonald spirit, and sounds like a lot of fun.

The Dead Man: Face of Evil is the first in a new series of ebooks and paperbacks that we like to think of as cross between Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, George Gilman’s Edge, and Don Pendleton’s The Executioner... and a blatant attempt to recapture the flavor of those “men’s action adventure paperbacks” of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Those paperbacks were short and tightly-written, with hard-boiled heroes, outrageously sexy women, and gleefully over-the-top plots. Nobody would ever mistake them for great literature, but they were enormous fun to read...and to write. I know, because I broke into publishing in the mid-1980s writing one of those series - 357 Vigilante by "Ian Ludlow" - while I was still in college.

Sadly, the "men's action adventure" genre is virtually extinct now, an early victim of the narrowing of the paperback marketplace. But I’ve never lost my affection for the genre... and the Kindle is the perfect medium for it. So, I figured, why not try it again?

Which is where The Dead Man comes in.

The idea actually began as a TV series that Bill Rabkin & I started pitching around Hollywood over 20 years ago. The pitch went something like this:

There is good, and there is evil.
On November 12th, Matthew Cahill died, buried in an avalanche of snow.
On February 20th, Matthew Cahill came back to life.
Nothing has changed.
There is still good, and there is still evil.
Only now... he can see it.

Each day has becomes a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about...a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become...and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.

Execs always seemed to love the pitch, but we were never able to clinch the sale, and gave up on it a few years back. But lately I’ve had some success reviving my out-of-print books on the Kindle – particularly The Walk – and it occurred to me that The Dead Man would make a kick-ass series of “men’s action adventure novels.”

It took me 30 seconds to convince Bill to go along with idea...and I even managed to cajole a bunch of other writers to pen future novels in the series. Not just any writers... but some of the very best western, horror, mystery, and science fiction scribes out there, including Marcus Pelegrimas, Joel Goldman, Bill Crider, James Reasoner, David McAfee, Matt Witten, Burl Barer, James Daniels, Matthew P. Mayo, Jude Hardin, and Harry Shannon.

The first book, Face of Evil, is out now in the U.K. and will soon be followed by Hell in Heaven by Bill Rabkin and me, Ring of Knives by James Daniels, The Dead Woman by David McAfee, Crucible of Fire by Mel Odom, Lust for Blood by Harry Shannon, and many more, a new book in the series coming out every month or so.

We are all having a great time writing these books and indulging our great affection for the genre. Hopefully, The Dead Man can be the gateway drug that gets you hooked on it, too.

TV, SF

On her Twitter account, independent script editor and Script Angel blogger Hayley McKenzie wrote, "When I think 'sci-fi' I think action-adventure, but the trailers for Outcasts made it look earnest and ponderous." I hadn't seen Outcasts or even the trailer at that point, so I couldn't comment on her impression (here's Good Dog's take on the show, and Den of Geek's more sanguine view).

But with the undoubtedly spurious feeling that I somehow had a stake in the territory, I was moved to point out that early TVSF was suspenseful/cerebral and always built around the core of a surprising idea pushed to its logical conclusion. Out Of The Unknown, Quatermass, Triffids, Chocky...

With a bit more thought and more than 140 characters I might have brought the list more up to date with Sci-Fi Channel's The Lost Room or mentioned Life on Mars. Life on Mars is as solid an inner-space SF concept as you'd find in the pages of New Worlds or anywhere in the New Wave - though to this day the BBC seem convinced that what they had there was just a 70s nostalgia show.

Developing a startling idea with ruthless what-if logic sets science fiction apart as a form, and characterises its unique thrill. But the notion that SF automatically means action-adventure seems to have taken over, much like Sunny D pushing orange juice off the shelves. SyFy, as the Sci-Fi Channel now calls itself, isn't commissioning any more Lost Rooms. I'm not going to blame Star Wars for the crimes of its imitators, but there's a whole raft of crap to be found on SyFy and Movies4Men where clones and cyborgs run around Mad Max landscapes in fibreglass armour, zapping each other. With no central driving idea worth the name, these schedule-fillers recycle the tropes of science fiction in standard adventure plots.

Even at the high end, TVSF has come to mean an ordinary drama in an extraordinary setting. The BBC/ABC co-production Defying Gravity was pitched as 'Grey's Anatomy in space' and then-controller Jane Tranter wrote in the press release, "Although primarily a human drama, the landscape and context and genre of Defying Gravity give it a very different flavour from other dramas on the BBC." Which frankly is completely arse about face - SF isn't a flavour, it's a form.

The Box

New to the Kindle and priced as low as they'll let me, an e-book containing two pieces of my short fiction that appear in neither of my collections.

The Box is the story of a haunted aircrash simulator and of war heroes in peacetime retraining. Eels is... well, the title alone should give you some kind of idea.

The Box was written for a loosely-themed hardcover anthology titled Retro Pulp Tales, edited by Joe R Lansdale. In the year of its publication it won me an award, my second ever. It was for Outstanding Achievement in Horror and Dark Fantasy: Short Fiction and it was presented by the International Horror Guild at the World Fantasy Convention at Saratoga Springs.

Eels was written on request for a special edition of PS Publishing's Postscripts magazine. Most of my short stories were written between bigger projects, as a way to decompress. It took me a while to raise the nerve to tackle the short form; it's hard. It calls for steady-handed precision work, with no room for indulgence or error. A short story works, or it doesn't. There's no covering up with jokes, action, or atmosphere.

Out of his Mind, my first short fiction collection, is now available in a Kindle edition, along with some of my early backlist titles – Chimera, on which was based the ITV miniseries with John Lynch, Scandinavian supernatural suspenser Follower, nightmare chase thriller Oktober, and police revenge drama Down River. The Painted Bride is the story of Molly Gideon, ex-junkie, unlikely Guardian Angel to her dead sister's children.

John Barry

Woke up this morning to the news that musician and film composer John Barry has died at the age of 77; I shouldn't be taking it personally, but it's hard not to. He had a rare gift for infusing high drama with a melancholy that made it soar.

The Suicide Hour

The dust is finally settling after internal restructuring at Random House - I expect you can read about that somewhere else - so with thanks to those who've gone out of their way to ask, I can tell you that The Suicide Hour is back on track.

I received a copy of the edited manuscript on Christmas Eve and worked on it over the holidays. It's a sympathetic edit, and some of the points raised have driven me to make significant improvements to the finished book. A reminder to me of how a good publisher raises an author's game. Some of my earliest paperback originals were just marked-up and printed without any real editorial or proofing stage, and the results could be pretty shabby. These past few weeks have made me cast my mind back to my first proper engagement with an experienced editor - neither critic nor reader, but another kind of creature altogether. One whose forte was finding my weak spots, the points where I'd maybe had my doubts but persuaded myself to ignore them, and exposing stuff I'd unconsciously thought I could get away with.

The Suicide Hour is set in 1912. It isn't a direct sequel to The Kingdom of Bones but a new story featuring that novel's Sebastian Becker, ex-British Detective, one-time Pinkerton man, now working as Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy.

It's a murder mystery, with locations ranging from Southwark to the Americas. Becker is sent to the West Country to establish the mental state of Sir Owain Lancaster, a discredited industrialist under the control of a personal physician. Following the deaths of two children on Lancaster's land, Becker unravels the secrets of a disastrous expedition that destroyed the man's reputation and possibly his sanity.

Life is strange. In the UK I'm a forgotten '90s horror writer (no complaints; it was a hell of a run) while in the US I'm now a literary author.

I'll post dates and cover scans when I get them.

Chiller

Thanks to friend-of-the-blog Stan for the news that Network DVD will release the complete Chiller anthology series on February 28th.

Produced and in part directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, we kicked off the series with an adaptation of Peter James' Prophecy and pulled in, as I recall, somewhere in excess of 11 million viewers. A number that ITV went on to squander by pre-empting later shows for sports fixtures.

Some of the stories were available on VHS back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, but as far as I'm aware this is a first UK DVD release. A couple of years ago I got hold of a copy of an Australian set, and that's the only DVD version I was aware of until now. I'm not sure if I checked out the transfer quality on that one - the shrinkwrap's off the box but I can be funny about viewing my old stuff. All I ever seem to see are things I want to fix.

The one that puzzles me by its absence from the shelves is Murder Rooms, which was shot in lovely widescreen Super 16 and released in the UK as individual shows in a piss-poor 4X3 transfer that mostly seemed to sell in Past Times shops, between the Celtic teatowels and candlestick holders. In case you didn't see it, Murder Rooms featured period mysteries involving the young Arthur Conan Doyle and his real-life mentor Joseph Bell, in stories that interwove fictional sleuthing, biographical points, and echoes of the Holmesian canon. Made to a high standard by BBC Films, it was a fresh take on a popular subject and the episode I contributed is one of my favourite pieces of work. A second season was planned, but cancelled before the commissions went through. I found it an inexplicable decision until I read that the word around the BBC was that it had been 'too successful for the wrong department'. In its place, BBC Drama made yet another Hound of the Baskervilles.

The US Murder Rooms complete set is widescreen but still not looking as good as it ought to; Amazon has a Swedish 'complete season' issue listed but at 65 quid, I'll stifle my curiosity over how that one looks.

What he said, yeah

After a bit of a hiatus Good Dog is blogging at length again, with an entertaining and entirely personal commentary on the movie year that was 2010. I swear to you that I'd already seized upon this sentiment to excerpt before I followed the link at the end of the piece:

Everyone probably has some gripe about trying to watch a movie in an auditorium with uncomfortable seats, sticky floors from spilt soda, poor projection and audio set–ups that really sticks it to the dialogue. Then there are the fellow members of the audience who appear to have left any good manners at home. But when the venue’s staff couldn’t give a shit, close the box–office and make you queue for a ticket at the concession stands behind social Neanderthals who can’t decide which flavour ice cream they want, causing you to almost miss the start of the film, that’s more than enough for me. And this whole enforced 3D experience can fuck right off.

And there in a nutshell is the reason why the only thing that would make me give up my big TV is A BIGGER TV.

Welcome back also to This Island Rod, after an announced hiatus so short that no one would have noticed if he hadn't announced it. Roderick Heath is an unstinting critic but one driven by love, which makes his analyses of his chosen films life-affirming and anything but dry. Find him also writing alongside the equally insightful Marilyn Ferdinand for Ferdy on Films, most recently on the subject of Big Trouble in Little China.

Adding a Character

Searching through some old emails I came across this one, written as part of the to-and-fro when I was finally freed up to be able to contribute to the US version of Eleventh Hour. Just as I started pitching the story that was to become the episode titled Subway, CBS came up with the idea of adding a third character to the team. This was my response. I think there's enough distance now that it won't matter if I share it. Not least because it gives me a chance to air some long-held views on the ways in which characters balance each other in series TV.

I'd urge care over this 'third member' question as it's one of those understandable concerns but with a potential to sabotage the fundamental dynamic of the show... imagine if THE X FILES had featured a 3-person team.

A long time ago I noticed a distinction between the shows I liked best and the ones that I still liked, but which stood in their shadow. The front-rank shows were built around single lead characters or were two-handers. Where a show featured a team of 3, the characters always seemed to fall into the same regular configuration; I called them the Father, the Lad, and the Desirable Tomboy. This applied regardless of gender.

The Father is the steady one, the responsible one, maybe older. Finds the cases or receives the orders and is perceived as the head of the team. The Lad is self-assured, impetuous, energetic, a different girlfriend every week. The Desirable Tomboy is intelligent and sexy but she holds herself sexually aloof. She has an unstated thing for the father. The Lad has a barely-concealed interest in her. The Father has relationships outside the team that we only ever get hints about.

(Example: every 'two guys and a gal' team show ever made)

The threesome is stable and it always works but the price of it is a formula-feeling show.

When first working on 11thH I had some ideas about an extended regular cast but always with a view to keeping the Hood/Rachel relationship of equals intact. Add a third corner to the team, and that will go. Hood will be pushed into being the Father.

So a third member needs to be distanced slightly so as not to become the third person in a marriage. I experimented with a senior figure within government, the man who recruited Hood and who protects him politically so that he can get on with what he does. But that was too far offstage and not very interesting.

So my other thought was for a kind of field facilitator, someone who gets sent out to rendezvous with Hood and Rachel in the field and provide them with stuff they may need or make local arrangements - source them a geiger counter, find and rent an aircraft hangar, open a channel of contact with some local activist group. Kind of a cross between Q showing up in Tokyo with a bunch of gadgets for James Bond, and a junior vice-president being sent out to a distant location to crack the studio whip, only to be drawn into the adventure of the shoot. So Hood may manipulate/charm him/her into playing an unwilling part in the week's adventure - a part which forms a separate thread to the Hood/Rachel story. More of a B story running parallel, ending with the supply of some vital piece of the jigsaw for the final act. Avoiding the obligation always to make this character part of the denouement. And used sparingly, to keep them fresh and so their participation doesn't start to feel obligatory and routine.

So what I'm suggesting is; third character fine, but not a fully equal member. A Bickley to their Mork and Mindy.

Here's how it works; what the network asks for, the network tends to get. In this case the outcome was the addition of Omar Benson Miller as Felix Lee. Subway marked his second appearance, so I had some hand in shaping his character. Felix was a hit with viewers and when the show wasn't renewed for a second season, Omar wasn't short of offers. Good for him.

But had we gone into a second season and there had been pressure for more and more of Felix, I'm in no doubt that the show would have grown less like Eleventh Hour, and more like other shows.

Which, at heart, is what networks tend to want.

Misheard in the Movies

Line heard in Don't Wait, Django, Shoot! a badly-dubbed spaghetti western on the low-rent movies4men channel last night: a character looks out of a window to see a man emerging from the building across the street.

The line was meant to be, "Here's a mouse coming out of its hole."

What we heard, thickly-accented, was, "He 'as a mouse coming out of 'is hole."