Scorched Noir

The Border … an alkaline limbo between two worlds, where desperation and violence loom like the ever-present sun.

Two-Trick Pony (The Drifter Detective Book 8)

Very stoked to announce that Two-Trick Pony by Garnett Elliott is now available for both print and ebook. Here's the description and thank you, dMix, for the cover:

What happens when a Drifter stops drifting?

Two-Trick Pony features the first and last (?) cases of wandering P.I. Jack Laramie, bookending his not-so-glamorous career. In ‘The Big Bronc Hit,’ a fresh-faced young Jack travels to Amarillo, eager to earn his money on a foray into Texas horse country—until he learns the true nature of his ‘investigation.’ Rodeo clowns, a broke-down bronc-riding champ, and a mystery woman round out the cast, with a final confrontation among the rocky crags of Palo Duro Canyon.

In ‘The Vinyl Coffin,’ an older, more jaded Jack makes his next-to-last mistake when he decides to settle down in Dallas, finally opening the detective office he’s been dreaming of. But quitting a vagabond’s life doesn’t do much for the middle-aged blues, and after a nightcap at the infamous Carousel Club that leaves him face to face with an old nemesis, he finds himself helping a faded star already down the path to self-destruction. Does Jack get pulled in too, or does he rally in time to save both of them? Well, it is his ‘last’ case ...

Rumors and Impending Action

Hope all bloggers had a superior weekend!

Monday finds me typing away at new articles for Criminal Element where I moonlight as a freelance writer. The latest post is my take on the Westworld debut. Did you watch? I thought it was a bit familiar but overall has my curiosity piqued with what Anthony Hopkins has planned for his unusual amusement park. So I'll be reviewing that for the next ten weeks and, in addition, finish Longmire season five recaps by Friday and every Tuesday whittle my way through The Dark Tower. Tomorrow we come to the conclusion of The Gunslinger and I hope you have your library cards ready to pick up the second book in the series, The Drawing of the Three.

On the publishing front, I'm looking to release Garnett Elliott's Two Trick Pony very soon. This will be the eighth book in The Drifter Detective series and it may just be where the road comes to an end for Jack Laramie, grandson of Cash Laramie. I'm not saying for sure but there are rumors, pilgrims.

That's it for me on the work front—never slow down, never grow old.

Pale Mars Cover Reveal

What I've been working on with dMix and Garnett who says it best, "'Pale Mars' is the Atompunk sequel to 'Red Venus.'"

Pale Mars

I'm working on the sequel to VENUS called PALE MARS. Brilliant sci-fi from Garnett on the way very soon.

Book review - Carnosaur Weekend

Nik Morton reviews BEAT to a PULP's Carnosaur Weekend.

Red Venus

The Cold War just bled into the cold void of space

SUPERPOWERS CLASH on the DEADLIEST PLANET in the SOLAR SYSTEM ... 

Fog-shrouded Venus had refused to give up her mysteries, until the USSR sent their best and brightest on a top-secret scientific mission. Now the crew of the Krasnyy Sokol, led by gorgeous Cosmonaut Nadezhda Gura, must brave a hellish hothouse of jungle swampland crawling with monstrous life. It’s Russians and rayguns against a death planet—and that’s before the Americans show up. 

At 17K words, RED VENUS is a slam-bang trip on atomic-powered rockets, seen through the eyes of the East. Read it, tovarisch, and experience a part of the solar system that never was. 

* * * * * 

Praise for Garnett Elliott and RED VENUS: 

“Garnett Elliott takes the Cold War into space in this rip-roaring planetary adventure tale that wouldn't be out of place in the browning pages of an old issue of Imagination or Imaginative Tales, two of my favorites from the ’50s. Check it out!” 
—Bill Crider 
Anthony Award-winning author 

* * * 

“Garnett Elliott’s RED VENUS is an exciting science fiction thriller that is at once pulpy yet high tech, crackles with sharp characterizations, a full-tilt pace, plenty of twisty surprises, and action galore … Oh, and did I mention the hostile planet teeming with fierce, grotesque creatures who fly and crawl and ooze out of the muck to relentlessly stalk and strike at practically every turn? Buckle up tight and get ready for a maximum-G thrust into outer space adventure!” 
—Wayne D. Dundee 
Author of Fugitive Trail, By Blood Bound 
and the Joe Hannibal series 

* * * 

“RED VENUS is a solid, old school pulp sci-fi story, equal parts adventure and intrigue. But it’s also an insightful ‘what if’ narrative … a terrifically fast-paced alternate history with great characters and pacing. I loved it, and I'm pretty damn hard to please when it comes to sci-fi.” 
—Heath Lowrance 
Author of Hawthorne: Tales of a Weirder West

And Now Dinosaurs in Kevin's Corner!

I had quite a lot of fun reading and publishing Garnett Elliott's latest adventures. Kevin Tipple enjoyed them as well saying, in part, "The tales of Carnosaur Weekend are all very good ones very much worth your time." Full review here.

Free ebook! Carnosaur Weekend by Garnett Elliott

It’s a dirty job …

Policing the timelines has always been dangerous, but the brave agents of Continuity Inc. have arguably the most important job in human history. Protecting human history.

Newly promoted agent Kyler Knightly teams up with his uncle, Damon Cole, to stop unscrupulous developers from exploiting the Late Cretaceous. A luxury subdivision smack-dab in the middle of dinosaur country threatens not only the present, but super-rich homeowners looking for the ultimate getaway.

CARNOSAUR WEEKEND includes the original Kyler Knightly story, “The Zygma Gambit,” inspired by the dream journals of Kyle J. Knapp.

*This book will be a free Kindle download for several days and the print version will be released next week. 

Review: The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform & Other Stories

The seven tales presented are all good ones that push the boundaries in small and big ways. If you like considering the idea that there is far more going on than meets the eye this book is for you. A crime is present in many of the tales, but the tale itself might be fantasy, fiction or something else. The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform & Other Stories: Veridical Dreams Vol. 1. is one of those rare deals where each story is incredible good making the read simply fantastic from start to finish. --Kevin Tipple

Full review: The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform & Other Stories: Veridical Dreams Vol. 1. Edited by David Cranmer

Free eBook! Dinero Del Mar by Garnett Elliott

Jack Laramie finds himself in the middle of a rural beauty contest that’s as crooked as a busted fiddle. Things get worse from there, and a chance encounter in the Corpus Christi drunk-tank leads to a new case—on Texas’s dazzling Padre Island. A big, old mansion full of scheming rich folks, lawyers, and psychics is just the beginning. Jack survives the ‘trip’ of his life, but is his craftiness a match for the privileged upper crust?

Dinero Del Mar runs about 24k words, the longest Drifter to date, and features an ending that will forever change the series. Don’t miss it!

*****

Dinero Del Mar is the fifth novella in The Drifter Detective series, following on the heels of Wayne D. Dunde’s Wide Spot in the Road, and Garnett Elliott’s The Girls of Bunker Pines, Hell Up in Houston, and the eponymous debut, The Drifter Detective.

The Lizard's Ardent Uniform & Other Stories

There will be more on this very personal BEAT to a PULP release in the next week. But for now here is the cover and description.

"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream."--Edgar Allan Poe

The Lizard's Ardent Uniform and Other Stories (Veridical Dreams Vol. I) takes you on several voyages into every day nightmares, bizarre detours, and hellish worlds. Enlisting the talents of authors Chris F. Holm (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine), Terrie Farley Moran (Well Read, Then Dead), Patti Abbott (Home Invasion), Evan V. Corder, Steve Weddle (Needle: A Magazine of Noir), Hilary Davidson (The Damage Done), and Garnett Elliott (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine), thought-provoking fragments from the dream journals of Kyle J. Knapp (writer and poet of Pluvial Gardens and Celebrations in the Ossuary, who passed away in 2013 at the age of twenty-three) are fleshed out into seven stirring tales of crime, science fiction, literary, and fantasy. Edited and with an introduction by BEAT to a PULP's David Cranmer.

Stories:
The Lizard's Ardent Uniform -- Chris F. Holm
Dust to Dust -- Terrie Farley Moran
Twin Talk -- Patti Abbott
The Malignant Reality -- Evan V. Corder (including "The Needles" poem by Kyle J. Knapp)
Ghosts in the Fog -- Steve Weddle
The Debt -- Hilary Davidson
The Zygma Gambit -- Garnett Elliott

A portion of the proceeds from this collection will go to higher education.

On a Roll: The Drifter Detective Series

The Drifter Detective series is now up to three titles and I gotta say I'm very excited where Garnett Elliott is headed with the next two. And Hardboiled master Wayne D. Dundee will add an adventure of his own, "Wide Spot in the Road" sometime next month.

All stories, thus far, are standalones featuring detective Jack Laramie, grandson of Western legend Cash Laramie, who roves the 1950s landscape in his DeSoto and living out of the attached horse trailer. He carries Cash's old Colt and has much of his granddaddy's grit but his adventures are very much his own as he scrapes along, wandering from town to town, to eke out a living.

If you like hard-boiled noir adventures with a touch of mystery, well, here's "The Girls of Bunker Pines" to get you started that Mr. Dundee says has, ".. all the ingredients you need for some very satisfying reading entertainment."

What fictional detective would you like to be and why?

Garnett Elliott answers this and a few more questions. My name is mentioned in the interview and that's always exciting, right? Take a look here.

And not to be outdone, Thomas Pluck talks Ninjas, "Write the book you want to read," and, you guessed it, David Cranmer.

My thoughts? Well, Garnett and Pluck are damn fine human beings and I owe them so many rounds of beer that I really need to start selling a few more books. *Hint*

What I'm Working On: Simon Rip

The Simon Rip reboot ... A Rip Through Time #1: The Dame, the Doctor, and the Device ... with a fresh edit and a bonus short piece.

Garnett Elliott's Bookshelf

I was putting some paperbacks from storage on their new bookshelf 'home' when it occurred to me that some people might wonder why I've arranged them in the way that I have. Then I thought, "Wonder how other writers' bookshelves look as they organize their most prized worldly possessions." A couple of days later, I was corresponding with Garnett Elliott and asked him if he didn't mind sharing. Ask and ye shall receive:

Here's the "prized books" section of my bookcase, with all the hardboiled authors who have had the most influence of my writing.  Though it's hard to see, from left to right is:   Himes, Higgins ('The Friends of Eddie Coyle,' natch), Thompson, Goodis, Williams (Charles Williams--'The Hot Spot'), Chandler, Hammett, MacDonald (I've got McDonald, too, but on another shelf), Crumley, Willeford, Cain, Peter Rabe, and of course, Mojo Storyteller, Joe R. Lansdale.

On Sunset Blvd, Drinking Sam Adams with Garnett Elliott

Garnett Elliott and I were at the cyber bar off Sunset Blvd, having the last of our Sam Adams. I had put the finishing touches on formatting his “Hell Up in Houston” earlier in the day.

“Drifter continues to sell a couple of copies a day, which is good.” I said. “Word of mouth continues to build. Wayne D. Dundee and Keith Rawson have agreed to write a Jack Laramie. And I'm going to write two.” I swallow the last of my amber brew.

Garn downs his ale faster than he could spill it. He glances at what remains of his hairline in the mirror behind the bar and says: “The lineup looks good, David, and I can start work on #3 shortly.”

“You mentioned Lansdale as an inspiration. Any movies in particular? I'm looking to motivate myself before writing,” I say, reaching for my Kindle Fire that I had brought along to show off the “Hell Up” book.

“Hud and Giant are good—if long—Texas movies, though they're not really noir. Most of the inspiration so far has come from talking to co-workers who are from different regions of the state, also reading Thompson, and Latimer, who wrote Solomon's Vineyard. That story in particular had an influence on “Hell Up in Houston.”

I leaf through the Kindle and find Vineyard but a little expensive for my weekly allotment for books. Then I find Jim Thomson’s Pop. 1280 and download it.

“What’s next for you, Garn?”

“Oh, lots of stuff. Tons of stuff, actually.” He pulls out a planner book and riffs the pages, which are all blank. “Big, big projects. I've been thinking about trying my hand at old school Sword and Sorcery--you know, like those old Daw paperbacks with the cracked yellow spines from the 60s and 70s. What the turbo-geeks call 'Appendix N.' After that, definitely more hardboiled, maybe even something contemporary. Dystopian sci-fi, too. The sky's the limit, Big D.”

He begs me for cab fare back to his cyber studio apartment. It's embarrassing, and I've already sprung for the Sammy A, but what are you going to do? On his way out the bar, Garn convulses like he's just had a seizure and claws a shabby Moleskine out of his back pocket. “I've got it,” he says, writing furiously with a crayon stub, “it's a three-part novella about a crew of ne'er-do-well carpet cleaners, their naive boss, a right-wing radio host kidnapped by his own fans, and an organ-legging operation run out of a gated retirement community in north Tucson ...”

"Another round,” I say, waving to the bartender.



Now Available ...

The Mysterious, Ruby-Encrusted Bracelet and Garnet Elliott's Whereabouts

The middle-aged, ruggedly handsome editor over at BEAT to a PULP is offering up "Vin of Venus" as a free download for several days. Bydgoszcz's renowned Paul Brazill and I worked on the first "LoVINg the Alien" installment and then Mr. Garnett Elliott catapulted the proceedings into the pulp spheres with his continuing storyline. A strange but goody mixture of crime/noir and sword and planet that's best described like this:

Vin, bereft of half his limbs and his memory, struggles between two worlds--the mist-shrouded, verdant hell of ancient Venus and the mean streets of modern Europe--battling both alien monstrosities and underworld villains on his quest to recover his identity. Along the way he is aided by an unlikely cast of allies, as well as the mysterious, ruby-encrusted bracelet that serves as the only link between his heroic past and grim present.

The novella ends on a cliffhanger, but I feel it's a very satisfying breaking point while we all wait for Garn to return from the Kingdom of Bhutan, where I have it under the strictest confidence that Henri Ducard himself is training GE in the arts of stealth and fear as a candidate into the shrouded League of Shadows.

Until then, readers and scribes of all ages, enjoy "Vin of Venus" and have a stellar weekend.

Bullets, Drifters, Sanctuaries, And My Feminist Propaganda Agenda

Been back a day from my sojourn to the Lone Star State, and I’m already chipping away at the to-do list.

Check 1: The Drifter Detective. In this hardboiled tour-de-force by Garnett Elliott, the family line of Cash Laramie continues with his grandson. A tough-as-nails WWII vet roaming the modern West, Jack Laramie lives out of a horse trailer hitched to the back of a DeSoto in search of P.I. gigs to keep him afloat. Had this story been a 1940s flick, I could picture John Garfield playing the lead.

Check 2: Bad Sanctuary. The fourth Hawthorne Weird Western by Heath Lowrance is just around the corner, and in this book, Heath has shed some light on the mysterious 19th century righter of wrongs. Don’t know what I’m jawing ‘bout? Then here’s “That Damned Coyote Hill,” “The Long Black Train,” and “The Spider Tribe” to catch you up.

Check 3: BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 2. After working out some kinks with the cover, the print version of this knockout anthology should be available by next weekend. The eBook is off to a ripe, good start, and we thank everyone who’s supported it. While we’re speaking of Hardboiled 2, you’ve gotta read the one-star ‘review’ from an anathematic creature who says I’m pushing “feminist propaganda.” No kidding, this may be my favorite attack ever. Thanks to a buddy on Twitter, I found out the name of this punk (borrowing my attacker’s lingo), and I will keep an eye on ’im.

Check 4: Bullets for a Ballot. This Cash Laramie eBook by Nik Morton just got a facelift. It’s been doing ok but not quite as stellar as the others in the series. I’d been thinking that a woman’s breasts prominently displayed on the cover gave the impression that the book is a bodice-ripper, not a Western. Ballot has a lot going for it with Cash as a teenager, an appearance by Miles, and my favorite ending, thus far, to any of the books. Oh, and if that isn’t enough, a character arrives on the scene who seems very familiar to the outlaw marshal—though he can’t quite put his finger on it— and the eye-opener is pure Nik Morton genius in storytelling.

So move, old son. Move.

New Cover for Vin of Venus

Sales have been a bit slow for "Vin of Venus," so, because I believe in this Crime/Sword-and-Planet novella, I though it might be time to spruce up the outer packaging. After talking it over with Little d, we came up with this new cover, which I think it is much more eye-catching than the previous. With fingers crossed ... let's try this again.

Description: Vin, bereft of half his limbs and his memory, struggles between two worlds--the mist-shrouded, verdant hell of ancient Venus and the mean streets of modern Europe--battling both alien monstrosities and underworld villains on his quest to recover his identity. Along the way he is aided by an unlikely cast of allies, as well as the mysterious, ruby-encrusted bracelet that serves as the only link between his heroic past and grim present. Written in classic pulp-style, VIN OF VENUS mixes Hardboiled and Sword and Planet elements in a genre-bending series of action tales.