Good News!

Five Star Books, the fiction imprint of Thorndike Press, made me an offer to publish The Splintered Paddle. They plan to publish it in hardback. The offer included options on trade paperback, large print, and ebook. There is still the contract to sign, so no pub date yet, but I'll keep you informed.

The Splintered Paddle was second runner up in the Claymore last year, although the title was The Law of the Splintered Paddle. I shortened it at Five Star's request.

Jack Reacher

We saw the movie, Jack Reacher yesterday. I was skeptical about Tom Cruise's ability to pull off the role, but I think he did a good job. Yes, he's smaller than Reacher as described in the stories, but that doesn't matter. Cruise appears hard and tough and he definitely has the Reacher attitude. He's no longer the baby-faced loose cannon from Top Gun. It didn't take long to get past my concerns about the size difference.

The movie is well-done with lots of action. It's based on the book, One Shot, and faithful enough to it that you can anticipate what's going to happen if you read the book. I was surprised that they didn't give it the same title as the book.

One of my misgivings was that the movie would turn out to be a mash-up of several stories, as was the case with V.I. Warshawski. Now I'm wondering if any of the other stories will be made into movies and, if so, what will they be called--Jack Reacher 2? Reacher Again? Reacher Farther?

Reacher can be violent, of course, and some of the movie fight scenes were as violent as in the stories. I've always admired the way Child can write such convincing fight scenes, so I was disappointed in one fight that looked like slapstick. If it was intended to get a laugh from the audience, it worked. I thought it detracted from the story overall.

The movie also had a car chase, which seemed out of character for Reacher, who admits he drives competently, but seldom and not well. I suspect the slapstick and the car chase were thrown in because the director was not sure how to present Reacher to a larger audience.

Overall, the movie is worth seeing. If you have not read the books, you don't need to read them before seeing the movie, but you should read them.

New Story Accepted

I just signed a contract with Etopia Press to publish my short story, The Rules. There is no publication date as yet, but they plan to publish it as a stand-alone ebook, which will be available in all the major ebook stores, and as part of a print anthology.

The Rules is the first story in a new series featuring Honolulu PI Ava Rome, who runs The Splintered Paddle Agency. Ava is a former MP and Army CID agent who has left the Army and lives in Hawaii.

Here's a short synopsis of The Rules:

Personal Protection specialist Ava Rome follows three rules: A professional never calls attention to herself or her principal; a professional never leaves her principal; and, the most important rule, a professional never gets involved with her principal. To break the rules is to die.
Ava's principal, Paul, comes from a family with many enemies. The greatest threat, however, comes not from the outside, but from Ava's growing desire. In order to save them both, Ava must leave Paul. But Paul does not want her to leave.

This is a novella length story of about 11,500 words. There are not many markets for stories of that length, although that used to be a common length in the mystery field. Now mystery publications are looking for shorter stories. Romance and erotica publishers, however, are finding the novella length to be very popular and more and more markets are springing up. If you go to the Etopia Press site, you'll find that most of their stories are romance and erotica. The Rules is neither. I consider it a hard-boiled mystery/thriller. Etopia doesn't have many such stories although they do have a category for them in their publication listing. I think they are hoping that mystery readers will also go for this length.

So, look for The Rules from Etopia Press. When I get a publication date, I'll announce it.

Great News

I was notified yesterday that my manuscript, The Law Of The Splintered Paddle, is a finalist for the Claymore Award to be given at Killer Nashville on August 25.

World War II interesting fact

In 1941, the San Jose State Spartan football team was in Honolulu to play the University of Hawaii in the Shrine Game when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The attack left the team stranded so they joined the Honolulu Police Department as reserve officers. According to the account below, some stayed for the duration of the war.

 
 
 
  Watch this at CSN Bay Area

New Review of Game Face

The marvelous Helen Ginger just posted a great review of Game Face on her blog, Straight From Hel. You can read it here:
http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/2011/12/book-review-game-face.html

Helen is a writer, editor, and speaker without equal. Her newsletter is a must read for every writer. Check out her blog and leave a comment.

Home Wreckers

My first attempt at a hard-boiled story, Home Wreckers, is now available at Smashwords and soon on Kindle. The idea for this story came from the title of an article in Sports Illustrated, "Home Wreckers," about the Purdue women's basketball team beating the Lady Vols of Tennessee on their home court. The title suggested more than basketball, however. It suggested cheating and adultery. It was published in the inaugural edition of Nefarious: Tales of Mystery, edited by Bob Forster. Nefarious looked like a winner at a time when a lot of webzines were starting up. Unfortunately, it has had an on-again/off-again history, so not many people know about it, and, sadly, not many people got to read Home Wreckers. It is probably the least well-known of my stories. A word of warning, this story contains strong language.

This cover is my sexiest. It would be downright dirty without the strategically placed title.

Horns

Horns was originally slated to be published in Sex, Lies and Private Eyes, edited by Michael Bracken. But, when that project was cancelled, I sent it to The Thrilling Detective where Kevin Burton Smith and Gerald So took a chance on it in 2009.  It can now be had in ebook from Smashwords and soon from Kindle. The genesis for this story came from a short article in Sports Illustrated about unsung champion athletes who earn high pay but get little recognition. One of them was a rodeo bull.

Teed Off

I met Alexandra Sokoloff at Bouchercon and she said, "Publish your backlist." So here, continuing with her advice, is my favorite short story, Teed Off. It is now available at Smashwords and soon to be available on Kindle.

Teed Off was originally published in Michael Bracken's anthology. Fedora, Private Eyes and Tough Guys. Otto Penzler and James Ellroy considered it worthy of honorable mention in the Best American Mysteries of 2001.

I'm afraid not many folks read it in Fedora, so I hope this gets a wider audience. Of all my stories, I believe this one deserves to be read.

I wrote this with an eye to exploring some hardboiled themes. It features Val Lyon. Moon Ito also has a large role. It's the only short story in which he appears.

Mom's Birthday

Mom was 90 last week. We had a party in St. Louis, but none of her grandkids, except for Sadie, who is the only one still in St. Louis, could attend. Ted got them all to send video greetings and put them into a video for her. Here's the video.

Kill Leader is now available for download

The latest story in my campaign to republish my backlist is now available at Smashwords and on its way to Kindle.

Kill Leader is probably my most successful short in terms of the number of times it has been reprinted. I love the cover.

The Shamus Nominees for 2011

From the Private Eye Writers of America. The awards will be presented at the Shamus Award Banquet at Bouchercon in St. Louis in September.

Congratulations to all the nominees.

Best Hardcover P.I. Novel:

• No Mercy, by Lori Armstrong (Touchstone)
• The First Rule, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
• Voyeur, by Daniel Judson (Minotaur)
• If the Dead Rise Not, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
• Naked Moon, by Domenic Stansberry (Minotaur)

Best First P.I. Novel:

• In Search of Mercy, by Michael Ayoob (Minotaur)
• One Man’s Paradise, by Douglas Corleone (Minotaur)
• Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge)
• Random Violence, by Jassy MacKenzie (Soho)
• City of Dragons, by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel:

• Hostage Zero, by John Gilstrap (Kensington)
• Nightshade, by Tom Henighan (Dundurn Press)
• Mister X, by John Lutz (Pinnacle)
• The Panic Zone, by Rick Mofina (Mira)
• Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore (Grove/Atlantic)
• The Little Death, by P.J. Parrish (Pocket Star)

Best P.I. Short Story:

• “The God of Right and Wrong,” by Steven Gore (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2010)
• “The Lamb Was Sure to Go,” by Gar Anthony Haywood (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2010)
• “The Girl in the Golden Gown,” by Robert S. Levinson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2010)
• “Phelan’s First Case.” by Lisa Sandlin (Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd and Johnny Byrd; Akashic Books)
• “A Long Time Dead,” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (The Strand Magazine, June-Sept. 2010)

The Big Dance With Death

Old story, new life. The Big Dance With Death was first published in FUTURES in 2001. It is available once again as an ebook through Smashwords.com  and in the Kindle store. It will soon be available for other e-readers such as iBook and Nook. This is the first of eight Val Lyon short stories that will be released in ebook formats. For those who like the printed page, I have plans to put all of them in a collection.

This story began when Mary Fran said I should write about the NCAA women's basketball tournament. It was first published the year that Notre Dame won the championship and, fittingly, is re-published in the year that the Aggie Women beat Notre Dame for the championship. WHOOP!

Update on Ballsy, Kick-ass Babes

I posted the following story two years ago. At the time, Lanae, the subject of the post, was a student worker. I predicted that, after graduation, she would be wearing tailored suits and carrying a leather briefcase.

Boy was I wrong! Lanae graduated and today she sent word that she is officially a Peace Corps Volunteer as a Community and Organization Development Facilitator in Albania. She leaves in March.

It's enough to give you chicken skin.

Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps passed away this week. You can read my post about him on Make Mine Mystery. The idea behind the Peace Corps originated in the writings of the American philosopher, William James, who proposed a moral equivalent of war. Throughout human history, young men have gone off to prove their manhood waging war. Why can't there be an equivalent way to prove their manhood waging peace? Sending young men (and women) off to wage peace was the moral equivalent of war.

It took 55 years for the idea to turn into reality. Now that idea, the Peace Corps, is celebrating 50 years of sending men and women to wage peace. Over 200,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries. Lanae is the latest one. If anybody can wage peace, she can. She has nothing to prove to me.

Best of luck, Lanae.

Originally posted on

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Women's Rugby, Texas A&M University, September 27.

That's right, Rugby.  This is the sport that was the violent precursor to American Football.  It was deemed so dangerous that American players needed pads and helmets.  My image of the typical rugby player is a large, loutish fellow with broken nose and missing teeth, whose breath smells like the floor behind a bar.  Most girls would cringe at the thought of bringing a rugby player home to meet the parents.

What if the player IS a girl?

The blonde on the right, putting the hurt to the other girl is a student worker in my office.  Her name is Lanae.  She is a junior marketing major and when she graduates she will be wearing tailored suits, carrying a leather briefcase and leading focus groups.  Maybe that's what she's doing now.  Focus, group!

Lanae is attractive.  Most people would say she's cute.  The male student workers say she's a babe, a chick, a hottie.  But those are words you normally wouldn't use for people who play a sport such as rugby, a sport even most men are too chicken to play.

Monday morning conversation in our office sometimes goes like this:

How was your weekend?

Good.  I broke a girl's nose.

Lanae is a product of Title IX, the Federal Education Act that leveled the playing field for men and women.  She played soccer and basketball as a kid, even hoped to get a basketball scholarship.  When that didn't work out, she came to A&M where she joined the Rugby team.  

Rugby is a non-varsity sport.  There are no scholarships, no locker rooms, no training facilities, no team bus or plane.  They don't play in front of 85,000 screaming fans.  In fact, there are hardly any fans at all.  Unlike football, there is no future full of signing bonuses and ESPN highlights.  No Madden 2009, no fantasy leagues.  

The players practice just as hard, play just as hard, but when they get hurt they have a team mate drive them to the emergency room.  No team physicians for them.  They have to come back to class on Monday and they are still expected to keep up their grades.  

So why do women play sports like this?  Why put your body at risk for so little extrinsic reward?  Lanae likes the excitement, the competition and the other players.  The team is like family, she says.

Billie Jean King, in an interview about Title IX, said that the best thing about the act was the effect it had on team sports.  There had been plenty of women athletes before Title IX, but they were mainly individual sports like tennis, golf, swimming and figure skating.  They were certainly not contact sports.  The picture above is exactly what a lot of opponents of Title IX feared--women engaging in acts of violence, delivering pain, and enjoying it.

It is no surprise that women can deliver violence, but the traditional view of women is that they are violent in defending their family.  Men, on the other hand, can be violent in defense of the group.  Thus, women stayed home while men went to war.  Title IX and the opening of team sports to women, changed that.  Now women could be violent and could sacrifice themselves for the group, not just the family.  Or, as Lanae says, the team becomes the family.

Title IX was important to me because most of my stories have a woman protagonist.  I admit that I had a hard time understanding my characters until I gave them a team sport background.  Val Lyon was a college and pro basketball player.  Ava Rome, my newest detective, plays volleyball and paddles.  Playing a team sport adds a dimension to their character and motivation that I can readily understand.  I think a lot of recent women detectives have had some background in team sports and that makes them believable protagonists when the story demands that they put their bodies on the line for someone who is not family.  The intrinsic motivation of playing for pure pleasure and comradeship makes a character much more likable. It's hard to like an over-paid professional athlete, but easy to root for someone who plays for the love of the game.

When I began writing Val Lyon, I drew inspiration from Jennifer Rizzotti, a point guard for the U Conn Huskies who played in knee pads because she wasn't afraid to throw herself on the floor after a loose ball.  Another source of inspiration was Sheila Tighe, who, at 35 years of age tried out for the WNBA after having been a star in college years before.  Tighe worked so hard that she painted her toenails black to match the bruises on her toes.  More recent inspiration came from Stacy Sykora, the US Olympic volleyball player who chest-butted her team mates when she came on court and kept them fired up.  

Lanae, putting the hurt to an opponent on the rugby pitch, is now my inspiration.  I hope Ava is ready for some rugby

New Book Published

Well, actually, it's a new translation of a book I co-authored and was published in 2009. The book is Clarifying Some Myths of Teaching and Research. The new translation is in a simplified version of Chinese. You can read more about it here. If you can read Chinese, that is. It will set you back 29 Yuan for the paperback edition. Maybe if I do a book trailer for it, I can boost sales.

Happy Birthday Sargent Shriver, 95

I think one would be hard pressed to find anyone who had greater influence on the U.S. in the last half-century. Many of the iconic institutions of our time were his brainchildren. How many can you name? I would have said two--the Special Olympics and the Peace Corps, which wasn't his brainchild, but as its first director, he put an indelible stamp on it.

Here is the list of what we owe Shriver.

Head Start,  

VISTA, 

Job Corps, 

Community Action, 

Upward Bound, 

Foster Grandparents, 

Special Olympics, 

Legal Services, 

the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services, 

Indian and Migrant Opportunities,

Neighborhood Health Services. 

He directed the Peace Corps and ran the War on Poverty during the Johnson administration. He was a candidate for vice-president in 1972.

Happy birthday Sargent Shriver. 

Book Trailer for Pilikia

You can see a new book trailer for Pilikia Is My Business on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikP583W1-uY

You can find the book on Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25474.

Rangers are in the World Series

Wow!

What more is there to say?

Last Night on Hawaii Five-O

The episode opens with a great hook, tourists on a submersible discover the body of a woman in Waikiki Bay. The body is the daughter of the US ambassador to the Philippines. His other daughter is also missing. The 50 team has to find her.

The episode title is "Nalowale" which means missing or disappeared.

Backstory. McGarrett is in bed with a gorgeous woman. I didn't recognize her at first. It turns out she is the naval officer who re-tasked a surveillance satellite for him in a previous episode. She does it again for him in this episode. I hope he can maintain this relationship, otherwise things could get complicated. Something like this.

McGarrett: I need to you to get a video on the abductors.
Former girlfriend: Get it yourself, you two-timing son of a bitch.
McGarrett: But they have the President's daughter.
Former girlfriend: Too bad. Get your new little Barbie to do it.

McGarrett's sister, Mary, shows up inconveniently. This time she meets the girlfriend leaving McGarrett's bedroom, which results in a lame joke.

Mary: Old house, thin walls.
Girlfriend: Oh, God.
Mary: I heard that a lot.

Mary seems to have nothing to do except watch TV. When she goes looking for the batteries for the TV changer, she finds the box of evidence McGarrett's father had left behind. You would think McGarrett would conceal it more securely, but no, it was under a table. Mary gets into it and begins photographing the evidence.

Locations: The daughter appears to have been taken by people in the sex-trade who use date-rape drugs to abduct young women from clubs. The girl is taken to a place on Kuhio Ave. in Waikiki, which McGarrett refers to as the red light district. There's some truth to that. It's a main street in Waikiki where street walkers congregate. The scene, however, appeared to have been shot in a studio, not on location.

Kono watch. Kono goes undercover as an abductee. She looks great in a party outfit. Competently takes down the guy who supposedly abducted her and then gets tough with the madame, forcing her to tell where the ambassador's daughter is being held. No surfing.

Pilikia Epub Update

Smashwords accepted Pilikia Is My Business for premium distribution on 10/11/2010. On 10-14, Smashwords shipped it to Barnes and Noble, Apple, and Diesel. It shipped to Kobo and Sony on 10-15. According to Smashwords, the book should appear in Apple about 1 week after shipping and 2 to 8 weeks for the others. In fact, Pilikia appeared in the Apple iBook store almost immediately. You can now read it on the iPad. Search for Mystery and Suspense or Women Sleuths. Now I have to get the book trailer up and watch the other stores for its appearance.