2016 ... So Far

We hit the ground running with 2016 BEAT to a PULP releases and thought it would be nice to arrange all the darlings in a row. The Posthumous Man came out a couple of years back but we gave it a face-lift and wanted to include it here. We are now up to something like fifty published books. But who's counting?

Grey O'Donnell is back to normality after the events in Retribution six months before. He and partner Billy Cole are hunting down a fugitive with a large price on his head, and what should have been a routine job takes a turn for the weird when they follow the trail to an abandoned mining encampment. Something unnatural lurks in the trees near Bentley, and when the living dead pay a visit to the town, Grey enlists the help of a Ute medicine man to fight them off. Trouble is, the love of Grey's life has gone missing, and he's not about to lose Peggy a second time.

The dirty work of policing the chronosphere continues ...

Continuity Inc. agent Kyler Knightly and his uncle, Damon Cole, travel back to Old Vegas, circa 2035, to nab a rogue scientist bent on turning pre-apocalypse America into his own personal demolition derby. It's monster trucks versus monster preppers in a nitro burning, high octane adventure reminiscent of Mad Max.

When Elliot Stilling killed himself, he thought his troubles were over. Then the ER doctors revived him. It's infatuation at first sight when he meets his nurse, Felicia Vogan, a lost soul with a “weakness for sad sacks and losers.” She helps Elliot escape from the hospital, but once outside she leads him straight to a gang planning a million-dollar heist. Does Felicia really want Elliot to protect her from the outfit's psychotic leader, Stan the Man? Or is she just setting him up to take the hard fall? By the time this long night of deceit and murder is over, Elliot will have to finally face himself and come to terms with his own dark past.

Join the search for a hammer of unimaginable power …

From the Valley of Gahm in the land of Brassik, a rogue priest named Nindocai hears the transcendent ringing of a mythical mallet—a call for action from the Goddess Arya. Leading a rag-tag band over frigid, snow-packed terrain, Nindocai goes in search of the hammer of the gods that can free his people, or in the wrong hands could spell annihilation for mankind. But they may not complete their quest with the tyrannical Wyvar regulators, that rule the land with an iron fist, out to destroy Nindocai and his followers at any cost.

Seething hatred spurs The Lawyer forward, with a burning vengeance for his family slaughtered by seven hardened gunslingers. He’s tracking them down, one by one, until every killer is in the ground. His next target, Big Jim Kimbrough, left tracks to the small town of Sundown, Arkansas, where The Lawyer learns his prey has already moved on.

But he can’t leave after he witnesses a black man named Josiah being dragged behind a horse, the man’s only crime is allegedly taking food from a white man’s table, and is about to be lynched. The Lawyer takes up arms to save Josiah, realizing Kimbrough is slipping from his grasp with every minute he spends in Sundown. None of that will matter, though, if The Lawyer doesn’t survive the next twelve hours in the wake of a racially charged mob, fueled by the town’s tyrant and cheap liquor.

Six Guns, Noir Fistfights, and Burnout: Eric Beetner Interview

I enjoyed the hell out of working with Eric Beetner on The Year I Died Seven Times that was one of BEAT to a PULP's critical and commercial successes of 2015. Our second collaboration, The Lawyer: Six Guns at Sundown, was as big of a thrill, taking us back to the 19th century to pick up the trail blazed by Wayne D. Dundee in Stay of Execution and The Retributioners. I begin by asking Eric about making that genre jump.

David Cranmer: Going from crime novels to Westerns, does your approach change in any manner?

Eric Beetner: Aside from the horses, no. I've always seen the vast majority of westerns as crime stories. There are outlaws, law men, guns, violence. I think there is usually a bit more moralizing in traditional westerns, but aside from that most westerns are action pieces.

My experience is more with film westerns over western novels. I am woefully lacking in my knowledge of that area and the ones I've read tend to come from crime writers like Harry Whittington and Elmore Leonard more than classicists like Zane Grey. But in western films, there are some that are only a pair of spurs away from being great noir films. So my approach to the Lawyer books has been the same as I would take to my crime novels. Lead with an exciting story bolstered by strong characters and keep the momentum rolling downhill.

DC: Are you conscious of the reader when you are writing?

EB: I'll say somewhat but not overly. I like to please myself as a reader first and write a book I would want to read. So in that sense, yes. I don't try to write for a specific audience. I never want any outside forces to dictate a story that might make it veer off into being something it doesn't want to be.

DC: You have attended a few Noir at the Bar's. How's that experience?

EB: A few, yes, you could say that. I'm about to enter my fifth year as host of the Los Angeles events and I've read in San Diego, Chicago and Minneapolis. I wish I had a chance to visit all of them. I think the reason they have proliferated in the wake of us stealing the idea from Jedediah Ayres and Scott Phillips in St. Louis (who had stolen it from Peter Rozovsky in Philadelphia before that) is the casual nature of the events and the clubhouse atmosphere they represent. I started the L.A. events as a way to bring the community back together after the loss of a real hub of interaction when the Mystery Book Store closed down. I missed those gatherings of writers where I could meet people, get advice, find new voices. We need that as a community.

Now that there are over a dozen chapters across the country and now even in England, there are multiple hubs for people to gather around and not feel like they are writing alone in a bubble. And with the bookstores continuing to close, this gives writers another place to stop on tour or to read often for the very first time.

Just this weekend I'm hosting writers from Canada, New York, Portland, Detroit and here at home. I love giving writers a place to stop where they know there will be a crowd almost certainly twice the size of what they'll get at a bookstore event.

If airfare was cheaper, I'd be at any event anyone wanted me.

DC: I've heard of the many successes of Noir at the Bar but has any event ever fallen flat, failed to live up to expectations, or come to blows?

EB: They still tell the tales in Minnesota of the Noir at the Bar where a fistfight broke out. Their first one, I believe. We've been drama free in L.A. The worst one I ever put on had to be at Bouchercon in Cleveland. It showed me the importance of the right venue. The bar had no real sound system and the area they put us in was right next to the actual bar where a dozen or two revelers who had no interest in sitting quietly and listening to a bunch of pasty weirdos read crime fiction talked LOUDLY the entire time. That was brutal.

Similarly, the first attempt at a San Diego event ended up in a sports bar that was decidedly NOT the right venue.

DC: Do you enjoy social media?

Enjoy? I wouldn't say I enjoy it. Not for being an author, anyway. It's necessary these days, but I cringe at self promotion and for everyone who tells you it is an essential part of building an author profile, there is another saying it doesn't work in the slightest. I love that I've connected with so many writers who are now friends and I have connected with readers too. As a sales tool, I don't think it's all that effective. But I have very few other tools in my box, so for now it will have to do.

DC: You are a very prolific writer. Ever worry about burnout or the material running thin?

EB: Burnout yes. Ideas running thin - never. Part of why I'm prolific is that I had too many ideas. I could stop conjuring new ideas now and have enough in notebooks and scraps of paper to fuel another ten novels. I have movie ideas, tv show ideas, bad ideas, great ideas.

I worry about keeping up quality, for sure. I don't want to put out substandard material and I trust an editor would tell me so if I tried to pass something half baked. But ideas are never in short supply. So, like it or not, y'all are stuck with me for a while.

DC: You had some big hits (The Year I Died Seven Times and Rumrunners) '15. Besides The Lawyer: Six Guns at Sundown what's on tap for this year?

EB: Get comfortable, we're gonna be here a while. 2016 is another busy year for me. There is a sequel to Rumrunners called Leadfoot that will be out in the fall. In May that same publisher, 280 Steps, will be reissuing my novel The Devil Doesn't Want Me which means it will finally be in print. It will be my first hardcover too, which is cool. Plus, they're putting out the sequel I wrote years ago but never got released. It's called When The Devil Comes To Call and that will be out in June and then I am at work on completing the trilogy which will be out in 2017.

The gents over at Blasted Heath will be doing an ebook version of my novel Run For The Money which I had previously released as a limited print edition under the title Criminal Economics. There were only 100 of those printed so it's a rarity and it will be nice to have that book out for more people to see. I really like it. It's a bit gonzo and over the top.

The sequel to The Backlist, the novel I co-wrote with Frank Zafiro, will be out later this year too. It's called The Short List and its really fun and pulpy.

I'm the proud creator and editor of an anthology called Unloaded which features crime stories written without any guns. It's meant to highlight the issue of gun violence in America and there is an amazingly impressive list of authors who wanted to be involved and make our little statement for sensible gun control. That's out in April.

And my agent is shopping new books, pitching books to Hollywood, pitching TV shows. Something may break this year, you never know. Either way, I'll be here. Still typing. Still telling stories.

On The Nightstand: January 11-31 2016

The Thin Red Line by James Jones

I’ve been asked, as a veteran, to come up with a few words on a novel that resonates personally. It didn’t take long to say yes and that I would like to take another look at the 1962 milestone by James Jones. He’s more known for From Here to Eternity but it’s The Thin Red Line that went deep into the hell that is war.

Basic Math and Pre-Algebra by Denise Szecsei
I DESPISED math as a kid. My parents hired a tutor because I had fallen so far behind in school, but I still refused to learn it (poor Mrs. Mudge! I apologize for being such a snot, dear lady). My recent interest in CERN and various physicists has sparked a fire to learn higher math. Just bought Basic Math and Pre-Algebra as a refresher ... it's amazing how those basics can fade from memory. So, start at the beginning, right?

Six Guns at Sundown by Eric Beetner

Along with Little d (the real force behind BEAT to a PULP since its inception), I’ve been editing Eric’s first of two Lawyer novellas that pick up the narrative first laid down by Wayne D. Dundee in Stay of Execution. Both gentleman have done an outstanding job and for some foolhardy reason I have said that I will write the fifth installment. 

Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty by Lisa Randall

I’m almost obsessive with learning more about CERN’s latest accomplishments. Ms. Randall’s book is easy for simpleton’s like me to grasp.

Graveyard Love by Scott Adlerberg

My full review was published at Macmillan's Criminal Element blog. A sample: Adlerberg’s storytelling is reminiscent of Julio Cortázar conjuring up the befuddled photographer, in “Blow Up” (1959) or Vladimir Nabokov’s unhinged chocolate factory worker from Despair (1934) who erroneously believe he’s found his doppelganger. Both represent unreliable narration from a first-person psychotic point of view—doing their best to convince us they are 100% sane. Kurt is no different, telling us how he’s poles apart from other such obsessive stalkers but the more he makes a case for clear rationality the more it’s obvious he’s just plain nuts.

“Where is Planet 9” blog post by Mike Brown.

I’ve been an amateur astronomy buff since I was a kid. And as I now tell my daughter… we live in exciting times. I follow astronomer Mike Brown (he takes full glee in downsizing Pluto to dwarf status) on Twitter and noticed he tweeted that his daughter had suggested the name Lilah for the new 9th planet. So I replied, resulting in this exchange:

My four-year-old daughter, Ava, was opting for Sally. Her daddy has no idea why but thought I should pass it on.
Mikes' reply: it's now on the list.
You just made her day! Thanks, Mike.

And it did. She's aware the chance is slim of her suggestion being realized but having the scientist who's leading the search consider her proposal is a big, and exciting, deal.

 "The Singular Mind of Terry Tao" article.
I get annoyed when I hear the word genius batted around carelessly. Terry Tao, however, was one at nine years of age. Fascinating piece on a child prodigy and what he's up to today.

A Universe from Nothing: Why there is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss
A theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Krauss has written a book that even my dense understanding can comprehend, uh, most of the time. Not just a book of facts and figures but also human interest stories. Example: how Edwin Hubble (a name we all know quite well) owes quite a bit to the unsung Henrietta Swan Leavitt who was employed as a "computer" at the Harvard Observatory.

The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology by Thomas Paine
Perhaps it’s because political posturing is going into that tedious full pitch with Republicans and Democrats running to their corners, sharpening their daggers that I, once again, turn to Tom Paine. A revolutionary that had the cojones to take on George Washington. Not that The Age of Reason has anything to do with legislation of government—Paine’s Rights of Man and Common Sense handle those questions—but I like his logical voice and the topic of religion has been on my mind extra burdensome of late. Also pulled off my shelf this week is Jack Fruchtman’s Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom. And below is an audio clip of the late Christopher Hitchens on NPR discussing the man who coined the phrase, “these are the times that try men’s souls.”