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The 1970s Come Alive in the Highly Entertaining Lowdown Road
Look at that cover. Hard Case Crime might be the only publisher in this century who remembers how great painted covers used to be. This cover looks like a long-lost book you’d have found on the paperback spinner rack at the 7-Eleven in 1975 as you clutched a Slurpee in your hand, your favorite hero painted on the white, plastic cup. Or it’s the novelization to a 1970s movie you’d see at the drive-in. The cover was pretty much all I needed to see to know this was a book I wanted to read. The plot was just icing on the cake. Let me see if I can boil it…
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The Saturday Night Ghost Club and the Nature of Memory
Sometimes the perfect arrives at the best possible time. I love summer. I love the heat (yeah, really). I love rolling down the windows of my car and blasting loud music (well, I do that all year round…). I love the movies that are associated with summer.But most of all, I love the looser vibe. By the end of summer, however, while I may not be ready to shift into an autumnal mindset, it approaches nonetheless. I always take stock of seasons as they end, and I was in that mood during the last week of summer 2023 as I started to listen to Craig Davidson’s Saturday Night Ghost Club.…
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How’d You Spend the 99 Days of Summer 2023 – (Part 1)
I read at lot and watched a lot of movies. There. End of post. See ya. What did I see and read? I’ll recap the reading next week. Here’s what I watched…and hopefully you did, too. Summer 2023 Movies Were Great When was the last time we had a summer movie season like this? I think many of us earmarked certain dates on the calendar to get ourselves to the movie theater. I did that nearly every weekend this year. The end result was that, with the exception of the Pixar film, Elemental, I saw every movie I wanted to see this summer. And I enjoyed just about every one…
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Lion and Lamb: The Book With the Wittiest Banter This Side of Nick and Nora
“They can catch a killer—if they don’t kill each other first.” That’s the tagline for LION & LAMB, the new novel by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski, released just a couple of weeks ago and I downloaded the audiobook that very day. Yet I had to finish another book before I pushed play on Lion & Lamb, but as soon as it started, I wondered why it took me so long. Okay, fine, it was only a week. Quarterback Archie Hughes of the Philadelphia Eagles is a week away from starting in the NFC Championship Game, the last step before the Super Bowl. And he’s found dead in his car.…
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When a Show is Cancelled, You Get to Write the Rest of the Story
Well, that sucks. Whenever my wife and I start watching an older show on streaming, I don’t look the show up on the internet. I don’t want to be spoiled about things the world already knows. For example, when I started watching “Brothers and Sisters,” my wife did look up the show and discovered Rob Lowe departed the series before its end. I just like to keep the watching as pure as possible. Which can make for a great viewing experience. It can also lead to heartbreak. We recently watched the Hulu series, “Reboot.” It follows the cast and crew of a fictional 1990s TV show that was cancelled and…
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Recharging the Excitement by Talking Shop About Writing
It is rare that we constantly sustain the excitement of what we do. We writers can love the writing process, but after, say, you hit 50,000 words, sometimes the work is more like work than magic. The same thing applies to the publishing side of things. When we’ve finished a manuscript, now comes the more mundane aspects of our jobs: editing, copy editing, proofing, cover design, and uploading files for publication and distribution. After you’ve done it enough times, it becomes routine. A little rote. You know you need to do it, but you might look forward to it the least. That is until you get to talk to someone…
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How Long Before You Give Up on a Book?
I’ll be brutally honest: if I’m not enjoying a book, I pull the rip cord and parachute to the next book. This includes the books in my SF book club. The other guys used to push forward, slogging through the mire of a bad book. Not me. Life’s too short to read bad books. Before I started Project Hail Mary, the latest novel by Andy Weir, one of my friends made an observation: “I think Andy knows how to write one book.” Uh-oh, I thought. Having not even started Project Hail Mary, my hand was already primed to pull the rip cord. Then again, Weir’s first book was pretty good.…
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Will Streaming TV Evolve to a Network TV Model?
A few weeks ago, my wife started watching “Brothers and Sisters,” the family drama/comedy that ran on ABC from 2006 to 2011. It stars Calista Flockhart, Sally Field, Matthew Rhys, Rachel Griffiths, Rob Lowe, and Dave Annable. Like much of network TV I didn’t watch at the time, I kinda remembered it as “that show with Sally Field and Ally McBeal.” But I sat down to watch a few episodes with her and it’s quite enjoyable. Having Rob Lowe speak political words (like he did so well in “The West Wing”) is something I always enjoy. And now that I’ve watched both seasons of HBO’s “Perry Mason,” I now know…
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Time: You Don’t Know How Much You Have So Use It Wisely
The text arrived on Monday night: I’ve got some bad news. Turned out, a good friend from my undergrad years, a guy only a year older than my fifty-four years, passed away. His name was John and his smile lit up several rooms. So did his laugh. We were in Longhorn Band together and he was drum major two of my five years. He expected all of us to maintain a high standard, a standard he modeled, so if there was ever any doubt about how to march and perform, just try to be like John. The news came as a shock to everyone that knew John: how could such…
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The Great “Friends” Rewatch: How Does It Hold Up?
Like many a GenX-er, I watched “Friends” in real time and had multiple discussions as to which Friend we were most like. Also like many folks my age, I rewatched one of the quintessential 1990s sitcoms because my son wanted to see it. So, how does it hold up? The Early Years We started the show in February 2022 via HBOMax, watching an episode a night over dinner. My son continued watching after he moved out of the house last July. He completed the show’s run this past February. My wife and I finished that last episode this past weekend. Ten years of “Friends” condensed down to a year and…