Number Four

Tonight, at about 11:08 p.m, I finished my fourth novel, tenatively titled Severance Package.

I still have a little revising and tweaking to do. I'm sure my editor will weigh in with excellent editorial advice, as will Sunshine and The Bride and Agent Smith. And I will heed their suggestions, because they've never steered me wrong before, and that's how I roll.

Still: the complete story is told. It's a real book.

Good? Beats me. I had a blast writing it.

It's very, very bloody.

We'll see what you guys think in about a year.

A Moment of Zen...

... from Allan "Sunshine" Guthrie. He subtitled this photo: "Lennon as a child."

She's Here!

At long last, a box containing 32 copies of The Blonde arrived this afternoon. Even my son Parker was impressed. "Boy, that's a lot of Blondes, Daddy." (That's not something you hear from your four-year-old every day.)

These aren't my author copies, so I can't spread them out on the floor and like, roll across them naked or anything. They are the property of The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have to sign 'em, then ship 'em back, unmolested. (Customers of Poisoned Pen: You'll be buying the very first signed copies of this baby! You may or may not find this cool.) I'm hoping my copies arrive tomorrow or Saturday, along with some Wheelman trade paperbacks.

Still, that didn't mean I couldn't take a little looksee. And my my my... The Blonde is indeed a thing of beauty. Once again, St. Martin's has done me proud with a gorgeous compact hardcover that practically begs you to pick it up and nuzzle it.

There was, however, one tiny thing nagging at me.

Faithful readers of this blog will surely remember what I can only refer to as "The Spine Incident."

(Go ahead, refresh your memory. I'll wait.)

So of course I had to check this one. I placed a hardcover on my desk and steeled my nerves.


Carefully, I peeled the jacket from the book...


But what's this? A yellow Post-It note?


I plucked the note from the spine to give it a closer look.


Touché, St. Martin's Minotaur*. Touché.

(* Ah, I kid St. Martin's. They know that. The content of above Post-It note is completely made-up and in no way resembles real correspondence from my publisher.)

Like This is a Friggin' News Flash

It's official. I'm the only Duane Swierczynski in this country.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I'm guessing there must be at least three or four in Poland, though.

(Courtesy Edward Champion.)

400,000 Large

Fresh from today's Philadelphia Daily News: A pair of heisters knocked over a PNC bank in the Great Northeast, not too far from where Secret Dead Blog lives. There are many bank robberies in Northeast Philly, but they're almost always the lone crackhead, note-passer variety, which usually ends in an arrest. And if it doesn't end in an arrest, the best you can do is a couple thou, which compels you to try it again, at which point you'll probably be arrested.

Anyway, these guys -- who hit the bank early, secured the employees, locked the doors, and communicated with a pair of walkie-talkies -- knew what they were doing. And their haul is one of the largest in recent memory. At least for this town. Not quite the fictional haul from The Wheelman, but close.

Like I've said before: If you're going to rob a bank, go takeover.

Of course, you should never rob a bank.

But if you do... I'm just sayin'.

(Thanks to Scoats at the Grey Lodge for the tip.)

Secrets, Horrors, and Jacket Blurbs

Today was a good day on the book front. When I returned home from work, there was a copy of Best New Horror, Volume 17 waiting for me. I've been buying (and loving) these fat little trade paperback anthologies since 1993, which is what? Volume four? Anyway, I look forward to these every October. And in this installment, we've got quite a few Swierczy favorites -- Clive Barker, David Morrell, Brian Hodge, Peter Atkins, Caitlin R. Kiernan -- as well as some interesting whippersnappers in the mix, too, most notably Joe Hill, son of new MWA Grandmaster Stephen King. (This is more or less an open secret.) Hill's story is called "Best New Horror," and it opens with a guy gathering stories for the 17th installment of a certain horror anthology...

Also in the mail: an early copy of Grave Descend, the latest pulp treat from the good folks at Hard Case Crime. The author is John Lange, and we're all not supposed to talk about the fact that it's the defunct pen name of a wildly successful author who publishes big-ass bestsellers under his own name. (No, not Stephen King.) What is it with all of these secrets these days? Next you're going to tell me I'm not supposed to say that Tony Spinosa is actually Reed Farrel Coleman.

Finally -- and this is an especially sweet find -- I ran across a copy of Richard Powell's 1955 novel False Colors at the Book Trader. Powell was a Philadelphia mystery writer who was all but forgotten (certainly in his hometown) until Hard Case reprinted the hilarious Say It With Bullets earlier this year. False Colors was written a few years after Bullets, and features some really screwy jacket flap copy, presumably written by Powell himself:

What you're starting to read now is called a jacket blurb. Its purpose is to tell you enough about the book to steam you up into reading it. Jacket blurbs are usually written by publishers, and sometimes they fib a little about how wonderful the book is.

But this time, the publisher asked me, the author, to write the blurb. I suppose that, after publishing nine other Powell books, Simon and Schuster feel I ought to do my own exaggerating for a change. So let's get that over with: "This is a magnificent book and you'll love every word of it." Now we can relax.

Don't you just love that? I read the first four chapters on the ride home from work, and so far, False Colors readers like a great, long-lost screwball comedy from the 1940s. The dialogue snaps so hard, it makes your fingers hurt. And of course, I love the Philly color.

If you dig Powell, there's good news coming. I can't reveal it just yet, but watch this blog in the coming weeks.

(C'mon, what do you expect? The word "secret" is in the name of this friggin' blog.)

It's Not Too Late...

... to catch the first 23 pages of The Blonde over at DearReader.com. For free! Honest! Just sign up and they'll send you the opening of the book in five handy, easy-to-digest e-mail installments. Don't be the only kid on the block without one! (Or, er, five.)

How the Dead Live

Here's my editor's letter from this week's City Paper.

Sometimes I use this space to talk about the cover story. But this week, I want to tell you about the photos in the cover story, taken by staff photographer Michael T. Regan.

Or more specifically: the photos we didn't run.

Ideally, we like to send Mike out with our writers when they're reporting the story for a one-two-punch effect; the writer reports, and Mike snaps. Sometimes, like this week, it isn't possible. Writer David S. Barry spent months hanging out with cops and the affluent families of kids who have OD'd in Bucks County. The result is "Horse Country," a disturbing portrait that traces the trail of lethally potent heroin from drug corners in North Philly to the allegedly "safe" streets of bucolic Bucks County. It's not clear what's worse: the superpotent blend of heroin that high school kids are snorting instead of injecting, or the extreme denial of some parents and school officials, who seem to take a "what happens in North Philly stays in North Philly" attitude.

Mike wasn't able to tag along with Barry for his reporting, so he decided to chronicle one specific portion of the story: hanging out with a narc squad to watch suburban drug consumers make their way to the Badlands to score.

He spent Thursday night hanging out under the El along with the Philly PD's narc squad. And he wasn't disappointed. In the cover story, you'll see the surprised face of a guy who drove down to Somerset to score a little horse. On the cover, you can see the $10 bags of "Hellraiser" — the brand of that particular block — in a narc's hand.

There are some photos, however, we decided not to run. Not because we censored ourselves, but because they didn't fit in with Barry's story.

Still, they represent a story that needs to be told.

During the shoot, as dusk was falling on the river wards, Mike watched three people poke their way out of weeds and bushes near a Rite Aid parking lot. One was Kelly, a 21-year-old girl who said she was originally from Delaware County.

"How long you been using?" Mike asked her.

"A year and a half."

"Where do you live?"

"In the neighborhood."

The next day, Mike showed us the photos he'd taken of Kelly. At first glance you'd think: pretty girl. But the camera reveals the sad truth. Her face shows the abuse of her three-bag-a-day heroin habit. Her mouth is a graveyard. Her eyes, flat.

"You gotta quit," Mike told her.

"I know."

"You don't look good."

"Aw, really?" She seemed sad.

"You could be a pretty girl if you quit this shit."

"Well, yeah ..."

Kelly supports her $30-a-day habit any way she can. One of Kelly's friends — a former running back at a local high school — needs to come up with $70 a day just to feed his jones.

Why hang out near the El? It's a good spot strategically, the narc squad told Mike. Cops find you, you can race up the stairs, ditch the bag, maybe even hop a train if you're lucky.

Also, it's not far from an abandoned lot where Kelly and her friends shoot up. "There were bags and needles everywhere," says Mike. "I was wearing sneakers — but I should have been wearing combat boots. A pair of Adidas doesn't protect you. There were different bags everywhere — heroin, crack. Random pieces of furniture, like a table, which people would carve their names on. All of the aftermath of the deed."

You can see that photo, a grotesque parody of a middle-class family living room, at the top of this column. (Click on it to enlarge.)

We decided not to show you Kelly. She didn't belong with the cover, and Mike chose the shooting galley for his "Angle" column.

But Kelly's photo stayed with me all weekend, as my wife and I took the kids to — yeah, you guessed it — Bucks County to look at pumpkins and ride in the back of a hay truck. October stuff. You can wrap your arm around your kid, keep them safe from the cold, but you have to wonder: At what point do you risk losing them?

At what point did Kelly's parents lose her?

Start Making Sense

Two cool Blonde-related things:

1. If you go, quick as a bunny, over to LibraryJournal.com, guess what you'll see as today's (actually, yesterday's) editor's pick? Oh yeah. Now that's what I'm talking about.

2. My editor, the hard-workin' "Marquis" Marc Resnick, informs me that Book Sense, the very cool indie bookshop marketing campaign, has named The Blonde as one of their December picks. (Over at Whatever, John Scalzi reports that his sf novel, The Android's Dream, also made the December list.) Huge thanks to the indie bookseller who threw my goofy little exploding head/Sybian novel into the mix. I owe you many large beers and a hearty meal.

Random Crime Goodness

I'm coming a little late to the party, but check out Ray "The Great Raymundo" Banks' interview with Martyn Waites over at the Crimespree website. It's a pdf download, and a DVD extra, of sorts. Ray gives superb interview, even if he can't resist that nose-breaking question.

Finished with that? Head on over to Tribe's joint for his interview with Murdaland editor Michael Langnas that has the mystery/crime blogosphere a-buzzin'. (Especially over at Sarah's site.)

Still need more? Did you know that James Ellroy guest blogged at The Rap Sheet yesterday?

You did? Then have you seen the wicked awesome cover for Laura Lippman's next novel yet?

You have? Fuck. Surely, then, you haven't read John Rickards' advice for would-be writers yet, have you?

If all of that is old news to you, then watch this.