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Showing posts from July, 2011

What's Going On

Been working on a secret project. I'm almost finished with two of the three parts. I'm not really sure if I can talk about it just yet, other than to say it's going to be something a little bit different than what I usually produce and I'm very excited about it. I think you're going to like it when it comes out. _______________ Still hard at work on my Shane Stevens piece. I've made two really exciting discoveries in the last two weeks. Those I definately cannot talk about. All I can say is that it's poured gasoline on my fire. _______________  We finally watched the True Grit remake. I liked it quite a bit and have since gone back to work on "The Plum Thicket " . _______________  My Amazon order came yesterday. It included the twelve movies Andy Sidaris'  made in his Bullets, Babes, and Bombs series. I got the baker's dozen for a mere $6 bucks and plan on writing about Sidaris over at Jimmy Callaway's Let's Fuck Eve

The Last Bus To Rockaway

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About a month ago, Dan O'Shea issued a challenge. For the details and additional stories go here . For my story, keep reading. The Last Bus To Rockaway Last bus from Brooklyn College Station. The Q35 all the way down Flatbush and cross the Marine Parkway, over Jamaica Bay and then—the Rockaways. The Ave is packed. Everybody out tonight. Everybody who not out is on this bus. S’okay. Nobody paying me attention. Nobody looking at me or what all over my coat or what I gots inside it. Just sitting here, head pressed against the glass, hand cupped over a cigarette, watching the lights go by.               First time I remember the Irish Riviera, my father took me. This back before the Playland closed. We’re there early in the morning, soon as it opened. Rides and hotdogs and cotton candy all day. That was some good times. Course then it was mostly Irish. Now, it’s a lotta Russians and a Russian dude is the last man I gots to see tonite to try to keep things that way they is. You se

Camelot

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Netflix just added Camelot , one of Starz's new programs. Currently, we get Starz (it was given to us by our satellite provider as a thank you), but I always seemed to miss it when it was airing week to week. Honestly, I think I prefer watching programs this way, having it all in front of me and being able to watch as much or as little as I want at my leisure. So far, three episodes in, it's okay. A couple of things are really keeping the show from being better. First, it's obvious they've retooled their retelling of King Arthur to feel more like A Game of Thrones with a dead king, several warring factions, and political and personal machinations. Most of the sets and the locations shoots are quite good and believable, but every now and then there is a set that just looks incredibly fake. The worst offense, however, is the casting of King Arthur. It's the thing I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get past. It's not that I think Arthur should look like

Frustration

I'm working on the Stevens piece again, polishing it while waiting to get another round of edits and hopefully hear from a few new sources of information. Managed to find a whole cache of photos. Hope to hear back about those in a couple of days. Man, it's rough. It fires me up. It gets me excited. The writing. The acknowledgement of one of my literary idiols. Stevens got me into crime. When I feel like just saying fuck it or writing the easy shit, the mindless dark shit that's just about something awful happening because awful is hip and edgy and easy and it seems like that's what people want to read, Stevens reminds me of my purpose as a writer. I owe him. He should not be forgotten that's what I want fom this. I want people to remember him. I want people to discover him for the first time. I want some writers out there to read him and think, "Oh, shit, that's what I'm supposed to be doing with crime fiction." But it's frustrating. So m

Close, But No Cigar

Wow. Someone found this blog by searching for: "tennis girls skimpy outfits showing sex". I just tried it myself. That particular search string brings up the post I did on the upcoming NBC show, The Playboy Club . In the post I use the words: girls, skimpy outfits, and sex ual. This blog comes up as the second result. I really don't think a review of a television show and a feminist rant is what they had in mind. Talk about close, but no cigar.

A Rip Through Time

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Are you a fan of the good old stuff? Doc Savage? The Shadow? The Avenger? Perry Rhodan? Analog Science Fiction and Fact ? Amazing Stories ? Have you read all the classic pulps you can get your hands on and want more? Do you miss bold and exciting prose? Quick pacing? Adventure? Excitement? And danger! Then why aren't you reading  A Rip Through Time ? For over a year Beat To A Pulp has been tantalizing us with chapters from Simon Rip's adventures. This sci-fi serial has everything you could want: a dashing hero, a brilliant scientist, a beautiful woman, travels across time and space, monsters, and some fantastic action-packed writing by Chris F. Holm, Charles Gramlich, and Garnett Elliott. Feel the wash of chronal energies: Part I Part II Part III

Happenings

Finished Blue World last night. I had forgotten how much I loved that book. I'm still surprised no one as ever adapted the like-named novella into a movie. _______________ The second episode of the new season of True Blood , "You Smell Like Dinner", was fantastic. Worth watching for no other reason than the flashback to London in 1982. _______________ Started Elegy For April . Read the first chapter. Kind of bland so far and the prose reads like writing. _______________ "The Silence of Untranslated Stars" is stalled out. As well as the western I had been working on. I suspect those two may be damned to the hard drive. _______________ Have been busy working on an undisclosed project that won't see the light of day for many months and a horror piece for Christopher Grant's other site, Eaten Alive . _______________ Here's the link to an old story, Maiden's Prayer . The follow-up story, "The Method", features the same chara

True Blood

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This past Sunday was the Season Four premiere of True Blood. We just finished watched Season 3 on DVD only a couple of weeks ago. When I saw the new season was starting, I checked to see how much it was to add HBO for a couple months since the DVD wait is lengthy. The cost wasn’t bad, so I added it. For some time now, we’ve been talking about getting rid of cable all together and just using Netflix.I mean, comparing the amount of things we actually watch on cable to how much we’re paying, it’s just not worth it. I think of this as my last cable hurrah. Besides that, some friends of ours recently moved back into town and one of them is a huge fan. True Blood is a show that lends itself to group viewing, I think, so she came over. We made snacks and sat down for premiere night. As the opening riff of “Bad Things" played over the credits, it struck me as a little funny that I was this excited. I remember when Maria suggested watching True Blood, I wasn’t too keen on it. In fact