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We're getting close to the end of shooting the first season of The Bridge and I'm starting to think about writing books again.

Swap will be out in Canada in September from ECW Press and in the USA from St. Martins in April, as Let It Ride.

I'm now working on the next one, which I'm hoping will be called Tumbling Dice in both countries.

Here's how it starts:

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

The High had been back together and on the road for a couple of months playing mostly casinos when the lead singer, Clifford Moore, got the idea to start robbing them. Not the casinos so much, the shylocks working them.

    It was two in the morning, they'd played the Northern Lights Theatre at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino in Milwaukee, nostalgia show with Grand Funk and Eddie Money, and Cliff was in a minivan in the parking lot getting a blowjob. Out the van window he saw the bass player, Barry Nemeth, walking between parked cars, looking around like somebody might be following him and putting a wad of cash in his jacket pocket. Cliff said, "What the fuck," and the soccer mom looked up at him and said, you don't like it, and Cliff said, no, it's good, honey, "Really good, I'm almost there." When he finished he signed another autograph, the mom saying the first time she saw The High was in Madison, must have been seventy-eight or seventy-nine, her and her friends still in high school sneaking into the show at the University of Wisconsin. She said, "It was you guys and Styx, remember? I had a crush on you ever since."

    Cliff caught up to Barry standing outside the tour bus having a smoke and asked him about the money, when did he have time to get into the casino, and Barry said, no, he didn't win it, he stole it.

    Cliff said, "You mugged somebody," and Barry said, fuck no, "The money's from a shylock. Come on," and got on the bus. Cliff started to follow, felt a hand on his arm and looked around to see two very hot chicks, had to be teenagers, but maybe legal, looked exactly the same; long blonde hair, tight jeans, low cut tees, like twins, same serious look on their faces and he said, "Hey ladies, looking for some fun?"

    One of the girls said, "No, we're looking for our Mom, she was talking to you before."

    Ritchie came up then, squeezed between the girls, shaking his head at Cliff, saying, "At least they're not looking for their grandma," and Cliff said, "Fuck you."

    On the bus Cliff walked past Ritchie and sat down beside Barry, saying, "What're you talking about, shylocks?"

    They were settled in then, heading to Niagara Falls, going to open for the Doobie Brothers and Barry said, "You know, loan sharks working the casinos."

    Cliff said, "They work for the casinos?" and Barry said, no, "They don't work for the casinos, they work at them. They cash cheques."

"We don't get paid by cheque," Cliff said, "it's direct deposit."

"They buy jewellery, cars, whatever. Usually the same guy sells the speed and meth."

"So how'd you get the money?"

"This guy, I sold him a microphone," and Cliff said, shit, "Now you have no mike," and Barry said it was one of Grand Funk's, "So the drummer doesn't sing back-up, so what?"

Ritchie walked down the aisle then, going into the bathroom right behind Barry and Cliff and Dale, the drummer, sitting across the aisle beside his wife Jackie said, "You take one of your monster dumps in there, you fucking hot bag it," and Jackie said, "Dale, please."

She looked across the aisle at Cliff and Barry and said, "What is it happens to you guys, you get on the road and you're teenagers again?"

Cliff said, "Again?" pointing at Dale, saying, "He ever poke you as much as that PS2," and Jackie rolled her eyes and looked away. She and Dale married nearly twenty years, she was the only wife left on the bus. Dale said, "Do not stink up this fucking bus, there's bags in there."

Now Cliff was whispering but nobody was listening anyway, saying, "They fired a roadie, it was you? How much you get?"

Barry said he got two hundred for the mike, five hundred for the Stratocaster he lifted from Eddie Money – guy never played it anyway -- and a hundred and fifty for the back-up singer's leather boots back at the Northern Lights Casino in Minnesota. Cliff said, shit, "That chick was so pissed off, man, that was a catfight, she went after the black one hard."

Cliff was looking right at Barry now and he said, "All this time we haven't seen each other, it's like I don't even know you anymore."

Barry said, yeah.

Cliff said, "They always have the cash to pay you, just like that?"

"Shit, these guys are mobile fucking pawn shops, they buy anything. They buy cars, it's all cash, people take it right back into the casino."

"Full service business."

Barry said, you know it. "This guy tonight, he probably had twenty, thirty grand on him. I'd like to get my hands on that," and Cliff said, what do you want to do, sell them the bus? But that's when he had the idea.

Ritchie came out of the bathroom, dropped a plastic grocery bag in the aisle between Cliff and Jackie and said, "Here, you want it so bad," and kept going back to his seat behind the driver.

Jackie said, "Oh for Christ sake," making a face like he dropped it in her lap and Dale reached past her, grabbed the bag, opened the window and threw it out in one motion, saying, "I'm not riding in a stinking bus."

Cliff said to Barry, "Twenty grand? You think so?"

"Remember that hockey player's brother, guy on the Red Wings, got picked up at the casino in Detroit, loan sharking?"

Cliff said, yeah, vaguely, he remembered something about betting on games, too, wasn't the brother a goalie? "Wasn't he tied to the Saints of Hell, the motorcycle gang?"

"Probably. Gotta be tied to somebody to work the casino. They picked him up, it was on the news, him and his girlfriend, had forty-five grand in cash on them, a pile of jewellery they'd bought, government cheques they cashed."

Cliff said, shit.

Barry said if they could get their hands on a big money item it would make the tour worthwhile and Cliff said, "This whole reunion thing was your idea, you think I wanted to get back on the fucking bus, ride with these assholes?"

Barry said, no, "You wanted to keep selling yuppies half million dollar fucking bungalows in Toronto, bust your hump seven days a week, suck up to everybody in sight, hoping they don't do the deal with their brother-in-law."

Cliff didn't say anything but he thought, yeah, the real estate was getting tough. Tough to get a listing, tough to keep a client, working eighteen hour days, always on call, working every minute of long weekends. He was ready when Barry called with this idea of putting The High back together, heading out on the road.

Cliff said, "Maybe you don't have to sell them anything," and Barry said, what do you mean? Cliff said he had an idea, but wait a minute and he went in the bathroom.

There was a plastic bag full of other plastic bags in the little sink and Cliff got one out and stretched it over the toilet seat thinking it was just like all the dog owners in his neighbourhood back home, always carrying bags, always ready to pick up the shit. Won't give the homeless guy in front of the Tim Hortons a dime for the newspaper he's trying to sell, but they get on their knees to pick up dog shit.

He started to undo his belt and thought, no, really just need to take a leak, this is just nerves, butterflies, but bad ones, worse than getting up on stage ever felt, and then realized, well, you start thinking about ripping off connected guys in casinos, it's got to give you some nerves.

Gives you a rush, too, though. Cliff pulled the bag off the toilet and started pissing, thinking, yeah, add twenty grand to what they were getting for a night on stage, putting the band back together starts to look like a great idea.

Tom Piccirilli Heads Out of Town

To the Ozarks and the originator of country noir. Tom snitches:

I think Daniel Woodrell is woefully underread. He does backwoods noir that is literate, authentic, and dark as hell, but since he's pushed to the Oprah crowd I don't think enough crime readers have had the chance to check him out. His latest WINTER'S BONE is out now. Everyone should run out and snatch a copy up immediately. I'll sit by the mailbox and wait for all your thank you postcards to start showing up.

Read the first chapter of WINTER'S BONE here, and get more info on Daniel Woodrell here.

The Official online bio is, “Tom Piccirilli has sold over 150 stories in the mystery, horror, erotica, and science fiction fields. Tom's been a final nominee for the World Fantasy Award and he's also the winner of the first Bram Stoker Award given in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Poetry,” but that doesn’t get across any of the enthusiasm and humanity that is Tom. Do yourself a favour, check out his excellent website.

And, saying a book is the "latest" Tom Piccirilli will be out of date by the time you get the words typed, but I will say THE MIDNIGHT ROAD has been nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award and THE FEVER KILL is out now getting great reviews.

Grant Mckenzie rats out the big man

He's new, he's fresh, his novel cherry doesn't get popped till the fall, so when we got out the rubber hoses, Grant McKenzie caved and went straight to the top, gave up the boss of bosses:



As a writer, every book I read is an influence. From the brilliant ones, I learn pacing, characterization, dialogue, etc. From the bad ones, I try to learn not to make the same mistakes.

In high school, I became obsessed with Mickey Spillane. While the rest of my peers were busy comparing notes on JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, I had stumbled onto a copy of I, The Jury (probably on the library's list of banned books, which is where I found most of my favourite novels) and was scouring every used bookstore I could find for a complete collection of Spillane's hard-boiled paperbacks. Dog-eared, soiled, I didn't care. It was all about the stories. I read every Mike Hammer mystery in sequential order, relishing my time spent with hard-as-nails Hammer, the voluptuous and equally-deadly Velda, and best bud and voice of reason Pat. Sure, when you binge like that you're bound to spot all the ways that Mickey basically told the same story over and over, and the reveal of the villain never quite takes you by surprise anymore, but, man, did he know how to tell it well. Spillane always started with a bang, kept the punches and bullets flying and delivered characters that you really cared about. Broke my heart, along with Hammer's, when Velda vanished for a few novels. That he also wrote tough-guy dialogue with all the poetry of a Tom Waits song, so much the better.

One of my writing goals was always to co-author an idea I had for a Mike Hammer novel with the master himself. Unfortunately, my journey as a writer is just now entering the starting blocks, while Mickey's legacy is entering the history books. But in this wonderful world of fiction, the possibility still exists, so who knows, maybe one day.



Wikipedia has a whole lot of quotes by Mickey Spillane, including:

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

Now there's a guy who knows what he's talking about.

So does Grant. His short stories have appeared in Spinetingler Magazine, Out of the Gutter 2 and The Late Late Show.

His first novel Switch will be published in October, 2008.



Grant's bio:

Born in Scotland, living in Canada and writing American fiction, I like to cover all the bases. My debut novel, Switch, will be published in mass-market paperback by Bantam TransWorld UK in October, 2008. My short stories have been featured in Out of the Gutter and Spinetingler magazines and my first screenplay won a 2007 fellowship at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriting in Vancouver, B.C. As a journalist, I have worked in virtually every area of the newspaper business from the late-night “Dead Body Beat” at a feisty daily tabloid to senior copy/design editor at two of Canada’s largest broadsheets. In between regular newspaper gigs, I have also contributed technology/humour columns to various magazines around the world. I currently reside on British Columbia’s beautiful Sunshine Coast with my wife and teenage daughter.

IJ Parker Snitches...

Okay folks, this is interrogation room, the place where we strap a crime writer to the chair and get out the rubber hose. The only way out of here is to snitch, to give up name.

Today it’s Shamus Award winner IJ (Ingrid) Parker, author of the Sugawara Akitada series of mystery novels set in 11th century Japan. Here’s what she gave up:

My reading time is severely restricted by work, but even in a thin year there have been a number of outstanding books by such writers as Olen Steinhauer and Steven Torres. My own favorite subgenre, however, is the police procedural and since I had the pleasure of discovering a writer who was new to me and who impressed me enormously, my choice is Stuart McBride's COLD GRANITE, a page turner of a Scottish police procedural in the manner of Rankin, but with more humor and humanity. The protagonist, Logan McRae, recently wounded in the line of duty, becomes involved in a child murder case. The quality of this excellent novel sent me quickly to Amazon to order the next two: DYING LIGHT and BLOODSHOT (originally titled BROKEN SKIN in the UK). All three are highly recommended.








About IJ Parker, the New York Times recently said, "You couldn’t ask for a more gracious introduction to the exotic world of Imperial Japan than the stately historical novels of I. J. Parker."




Publisher Weekly said (in a starred review), “Parker's fourth Sugawara Akitada mystery (after 2006's Black Arrow), set in 11th-century Japan, manages to outplot its superb predecessors... The Shamus Award Parker won with her first Akitada short story may soon have company.”
Check out Ingrid’s website here.