Category: Authors

I’ll Take a Blood Oath!

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Today while I was checking out Bookgasm.com, I came across a review of Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth.  I’d never heard of the book or author before, but the tag line intrigued me:

The Ultimate Secret.  The Ultimate Agent.  The President’s Vampire.

So I read a little further and was told…

Christopher Farnsworth’s book is an amalgam of the HELLBOY comic and the men’s adventure series THE DESTROYER.

The book sounded interesting and then I came across this trailer that made me want to learn a bit more.  So I went to the Amazon page and saw that it had 36 customer reviews with an overall 4 1/2 star rating and with no rating lower than a 3 [and only 4 of those]!   I’m putting Blood Oath on my To Be Bought List… or perhaps even my Father’s Day Request List [Hint! Hint! to my sons].

Chris Mills Spruces Up Atomic Pulp

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My internet buddy [which means I’ve never met him in person], Chris Mills has retooled his main website.  It will serve as a hub to his other internet joints.  If you click over to this post about the new Gravedigger graphic novel, you might notice that the bad guy that gets the drop on Digger resembles someone we all know and love.  We’ll at least my dog loves me… I think.

Chris Mills is a great guy.  Swing by and show him some love.

The Big Bang by Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

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The Big Bang: The Lost Mike Hammer Sixties Novel.

If you’re a Spillane fan, then we probably thought the same thing as we read the line above:  I want it now.  Although we’re going to have to wait a bit longer, at least we know the broad strokes:

Drawing on an unpublished partial Spillane manuscript dating from the ’60s, [Max Allan] Collins resurrects Spillane’s randy, two-fisted New York City PI, Mike Hammer…

From Max Allan Collins’ website:

In midtown Manhattan, Mike Hammer, recovering from a near-fatal mix-up with the Mob, runs into drug dealers assaulting a young hospital messenger. He saves the kid, but the muggers are not so lucky. Hammer considers the rescue a one-off, but someone has different ideas, as indicated by a street-corner knife attack.

With himself for a client, Hammer — and his beautiful, deadly partner Velda — take on the narcotics racket in New York just as the streets have dried up and rumors run rampant of a massive heroin shipment due any day. In a New York of flashy discotheques, swanky bachelor pads, and the occasional dark alley, Hammer deals with doctors and drug addicts, hippie chicks and hit men, meeting changing times with his timeless brand of violent vengeance.

The Big Bang is available for pre-order now.

A Lawman by Another Name is Justified

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Last August I posted about a tv show called Lawman that would premiere in 2010.  At that time I said that it looked interesting enough to make me want to tune in.  Well, tomorrow night that will happen.  Although the title of the show has been changed, my feelings about it haven’t.

The series is now called Justified and is based on an Elmore Leonard novella called Fire in the Hole.   So at 10pm, I’ll tune in to FX hoping that my feelings are, uh, justified.

Crime/Noir: “The Deputy”

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I’m a big Victor Gischler fan.  I’ve enjoyed everything that I’ve read by him and am really looking forward to his latest novel, The Deputy.  Fans of crime/noir can look forward to a worthy read.  I know I do.  Here’s part of the publisher’s summary…

Toby doesn’t have a lot going for him. Twenty-five, a couple of years of junior college, married to a girl he got pregnant and living in a trailer on the edge of town. He’s working part time for the police department, hoping the budget comes through and they can put him on full time, so he can get health benefits. His wife is a waitress at a little crap diner near the railroad tracks. When he gets the call about the dead body, he pins his tin star to his Weezer t-shirt, slips into a pair of sweatpants and grabs his revolver…

As you can imagine, it’s all downhill from there.

If you order The Deputy from the publisher and use the promo code “twitter” you’ll get three bucks off and free shipping!  Prefer Amazon?  Here’s a link for that as well.

Zombies, Nazis, Monsters & Mutations

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You’ve heard me sing the praises [well, write ’em anyway] of Jonathan Maberry before.  If you read his first Joe Ledger novel, Patient Zero, then you’re a fan of his work.  [If you haven’t read it, you should.  Yeah, it’s that good great.]

Maberry’s second Ledger novel, The Dragon Factory, is now available.  [Yes, I’ve already got my copy!] Maberry talks about Joe Ledger, and more in a great little interview over at StaticEchoes.com.  Here’s a bit of what Maberry has to say:

I always loved the thinking hero, so Joe Ledger grew out of that; and I dug the concept of villains who were smart and devious, and who sometimes used the appearance of the supernatural as a smokescreen. In a lot of ways my villains owe more to the pulps than they do to, say, James Bond.

…the second Joe Ledger novel.. deals with geneticists using transgenic science for ethnic cleansing and to complete the Nazi Master Race program. Lots of monsters and mutations…

The Dragon Factory also has about twice the action –and Patient Zero had a lot—but I dial things way up in the second book.

You can [and should] read the entire interview by clicking here.

“The Expendables” Comic Prequel

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If you can’t wait for The Expendables to premiere in theaters later this year, then perhaps an Expendables comic prequel will help hold you over. CBR.com has an interview with Chuck Dixon, the writer of the project. Here’s a bit of what Dixon had to say:

“This is a movie that Sylvester Stallone has been trying to get together for years; an action movie packed with as many well-known action stars as possible…

“Sly’s not re-inventing the wheel here. He’s just built a really bad-ass, killer wheel of awesomeness…

“My job is to tell a story that takes place before the events of the movie without revealing anything that’s to come in the movie’s story…

To read the full interview as well as see some preliminary art for the comic, simply click here.

Steranko’s Chandler Returns

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This month’s Previews featured a full page ad for a new printing of Steranko’s classic Chandler: Red Tide.  Originally published in 1976, Chandler: Red Tide is sometimes referred to as the first graphic novel.  At the time it was published, Steranko called it an illustrated novel.  I think a more accurate description is the one used by Dark Horse in the press release:

After emerging as Marvel Comics most controversial superstar, Jim Steranko tackled his greatest artistic challenge: creating an entirely new medium, the visual novel -not an illustrated novel or novel-length comic book, but a seamless fusion of interdependent graphic and prose narratives forming a powerful and original new method of telling stories.

But why stop there?  Let’s go on… Chandler: Red Tide is an…

… artistic tour-de-force, Red Tide is hard-boiled detective fiction in the bare-knuckle tradition of Hammett, Cain, and Chandler, as well as the dark, atmospheric milieu of film noir.

Although I own an original printing that’s been in my collection since it was first published, I will be picking up the Dark Horse edition since it…

has been remastered with state-of-the-art digital colors by Eisner Award-winner Dave Stewart, in a collector’s quality hardcover edition.

How can I resist? How could anyone?

F. Paul Wilson & Repairman Jack

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Jonathan Maberry has a nice interview with bestselling author F. Paul Wilson that sadly is no longer online.  Wilson writes about a character called Repairman Jack that Wilson describes as…

…an urban mercenary in Manhattan, a self-made outcast who lives in the interstices of modern society.  A ghost in our machine: no official identity, no social security number, pays no taxes.  He has a violent streak he sometimes finds hard to control.  He hires out for cash to “fix” situations that have no legal remedy.

If this sounds like something you’d like then you can learn more about Repairman Jack and F. Paul Wilson here.

The Killer Inside Me

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly eight years since we posted that Jim Thompson’s classic novel The Killer Inside Me was set to become a major motion picture.  Of course a lot has changed since then.  Dominic “Swordfish” Sena was set to direct and no stars had been named.  The reality is that Michael Winterbottom ended up helming the feature with Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Simon Baker and Bill Pulman co-starring.

A Killer Inside Me is my favorite Thompson book and I hope that everything comes together to make it a good film.  Unfortunately, there’s already been a lot of controversy coming from it’s screening at Sundance.  I guess we’ll know how good it is soon enough… once the distributor decides on a release date.