A Hard Case for King

It wasn't enough that I was absolutely in lust with Hard Case Crime paperbacks--what, with Westlake and Sunshine and Stansberry and the gang on the roster.

Now look what Charles Ardai has gone and done to me...



Yeah. As Charles put it, that Stephen King.

The guy who first turned me on to the power of the narrative voice back when I was 15 through a 1,000-page monster epic called It. The guy who first turned me on to two different strains of fiction--horror and crime--that are actually two sides of the same fucked-up coin.

Yeah. That guy.

From the press release:

New York (February 28, 2005) – Winterfall LLC, creator of the celebrated Hard Case Crime line of pulp-style paperback crime novels, today announced that a new book by Stephen King will be the lead title of the line’s second year. The Colorado Kid tells the story of two veteran newspapermen and their investigation into the mysterious death of a man on an island off the coast of Maine. The book was written specifically for Hard Case Crime and has never previously been published.

It'll be out in October, the same month that The Wheelman appears. Guess which book I'm looking forward to seeing the most?

One Percent More Evil Than Ray Banks

I guess it's because I'm older, and I've got a few more sins on the ol' odometer.

A Night with the Jersey Crew

Last night I was lucky enough to enjoy some pre-birthday drinks with Mr. Charlie Stella, Mr. Pat Lambe, and Mr. Dave White. They drove all the way from... well somewhere in Jersey (still haven't pinned it down exactly; to Philly boys, Jersey is pretty much driveover country on the way to New York City or the Jersey Shore.) They met me at the corner of 2nd and Chestnut, pretty much the heart of hip strip in Old City, right where I work.

So where do I take them? Mint? Glam? The Khyber? Tin Angel? Cuba Libre?

Uh-uh. Me and my boyos, we roll old school. (Besides, Charlie wanted to smoke.) We hit Nick's Roast Beef, which true to its name, serves the best damn roast beef sandwich in town. The beer is cold, and there's a massive fish tank behind the bar. What else do you need, right?

Highlights and random factoids:

* Charlie brought his hardcover copy of Secret Dead Men for me to sign, which became the first hardcover copy of a novel I've ever signed for anybody. (Note to Charlie: You'll probably be able to eBay that sucker for $32.95 in a couple of years.)

* Dave and Pat are taller than me. And I consider myself tall (6'2").

* When Dave, Pat and I started gabbing about comic books and Spider-Man in great detail, I could almost read Charlie's mind. He was thinking: Should I beat the crap out of these geeks and clean out their wallets, just on general principle?

* Charlie Stella used to have long hair. Like, hippie-long hair.

* The way the conversation went at times, I kept looking at Dave, wondering if he was wearing a wire.

* At least one person at the table (maybe more, I'm not saying) is an Average White Band fan.

* Most talked-about person, not at the table: Ken Bruen.

* Most talked-about person, not at the table (second place): Al "Sunshine" Guthrie.

* Pat thought Al Guthrie was a Jehovah's Witness, like Mickey Spillane.

* Charlie smokes unfiltered Camels.

* When Dave bummed a Camel, and it burned most of the way down, it looked like he was holding a joint.

* Dave thought I was much, much older. Like, in my fucking 50s or something.

* Pat, like me, lacks the sports gene.

* We broke the seal in the following order: Dave, Pat, me... then (several hours later) Charlie.

* Most bathroom trips: Dave.

* The Center City Philly Award for Finding Street Parking and Feeding the Meter All Night, Thereby Giving the Finger to the Overpriced Garages in Old City: Pat.

* Nobody believed that RoboCop is my favorite movie of all time.

* Seriously. The Average White Band.

What's great about this weird virtual blog/e-mail community we live in? I felt like I knew Charlie, Dave and Pat before I even sat down with them. And by the end of the night... well, I didn't want the night to end.

But Dave started rambling on about seeing the Liberty Bell, and that's never a good sign.

Guys, I can't wait to get together again in the near future. I've got some Doc Ock stories that will drive poor Charlie over the edge. Excelsior!

Gonzo Is Dead, Long Live Gonzo

I remember the exact moment when I decided I wanted to become a journalist. It was 1991. I was 19, sitting in my parents' backyard in Philadelphia, drinking a warm can of Miller High Life and reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72:

Early tonight I drove down the beach to a place called Dixie's Doll House for two six-packs of Ballantine Ale. The place was full of old winos, middle-aged hookers and aging young hustlers who looked like either junkies or Merchant Marine rejects; bearded geeks in grey t-shirts staggering back and forth along the bar, six nasty-looking pimps around a blue-lit pool table in the rear, and right next to me at the bar a ruined platinum-blonde Cuban dazzler snarling drunkenly at her nervous escort for the night: "Don't gimme that horseshit, baby! I don't want a goddamn ONE DOLLAR dinner! I want a TEN DOLLAR dinner!"



Rest in peace, Dr. Thompson.

Dead in Philadelphia

Nope, this is not another Ken Bruen Death Rumor. (Though if you read the sixth chapter of Ray Banks' The Big Blind backwards, it reveals the message: "I buried Ken in cranberry sauce.")

Instead, I'm proud to report that David Montgomery's long review of Secret Dead Men is in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

It's especially cool that his review appeared in the Inquirer. When I was a kid, I'd spread out the pages of the Inky every Sunday and soak in everything--especially the Arts & Entertainment section. To see a review of my first novel in there is a mind-blower.

This year at B-Con, when you see a tall Polish guy running around like mad with a tray and a towel draped over his arm, that will be me, fetching David cocktails.

G is for Geek

Flashback to February 22, 1989.

It's my birthday. I've turned 17. My favorite present? A copy of They Might Be Giants debut LP (not a download, kids, nor a CD or a cassette, but a real album, a black disc with grooves on it and everything). I was already a rabid fan, thanks to a copy of Lincoln I purchased at Sam Goody on a whim.

So I eat too much cake and rock out to songs like "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog" and "Don't Let's Start" and "Hope That I Get Old Before I Die."

Flash forward to February 19, 2005.

My kids listen to They Might Be Giants' second children's album, Here Come the ABCs, which I reviewed for the City Paper this week.

They rock out to songs like "Alphabet Lost and Found" and "Go for G!" and "Pictures of Pandas Painting" and "Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order."



A circle is complete.

I've successfully passed along the geek gene to my kids.

Now, I can die.

Secret Dead Men: the eBook

Until recently, people who wanted to read Secret Dead Men had only three choices. Pay $30, pay $15.95, or be related to me.

Now $30 is a serious chunk of change. That's at least two six packs of beer and a sensual rubdown by someone wearing too much mascara in a bad neighborhood.

Fifteen bucks ain't no picnic, either. You could buy a decent poster of The Hoff with that kind of money.

And the third option? I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

But brothers and sisters, there is a fourth option. Thanks to the folks at Fictionwise.com, Secret Dead Men... the very novel David Montgomery called "offbeat, quirky and confident" ... and Publisher's Weekly called "muddled" ... well, that bit of mystery entertainment is now yours for the low, low price of five bucks and change.

Thanks to the magic of ebooks, you can download a piece o' Swierczynski on the cheap. Simply point your web browsers to this handy ordering page.

(Note: If anybody actually does this, let me know how it turns out. I haven't seen the ebook version yet. For all I know, it's written in Korean.)

My First Foreign Edition

This came out a short while ago, but I only just received this today. (The Bride intercepted the mail, and saved it for me as part of a V-Day gift.)



It's the Korean edition of Spy's Guide: Office Espionage, the book I wrote with H. Keith Melton, and my first book to sell to a foreign country. It's slightly bigger than the U.S. edition, and somehow seems more... wait a second.

Hey, I think they screwed up my last name!

Forget V-Day

Today is the 75th anniversary of the original publication of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, arguably the greatest P.I. novel of them all. (Sure, Hammett'sRed Harvest came first, but stop a random person on the street and ask them who the Continental Op is. They'll think it's a friggin' breakfast special. Then ask them about Sam Spade, and watch the lights go on, even if they've never read a single line of the Ham-meister.)

January Magazine asked a bunch of mystery pros (Ken Bruen, Victor Gischler, Max Allan Collins, George Pelecanos) and a couple of mooks (Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks, Jim Winter, me) to contribute mini-tributes to Spade and his hunt for that rarest of birds. You can find the results, perhaps best described as "Hammett on Wry," here.

So let's scrap Valentine's Day; henceforth, celebrate Happy Hammett Day.



Best of all: If you forget to pick up a card or candy, nobody's going to punch you in the kisser.

Super Bowl Update

Okay, okay, so I tuned in for the halftime show.

Very disappointing. Is it me, or does Sir Paul look increasingly like a cartoon turtle?



Plus his boob didn't pop out. Not a once.

Dead in Chicago

I'm late in linking to this, but that doesn't mean I'm not absolutely thrilled by David Montgomery's review of Secret Dead Men in today's Chicago Sun-Times.

A quick highlight:

If you’re starting to suspect that Secret Dead Men is not the ordinary mystery novel, you’re right. It is offbeat, quirky and confident, revealing Swierczynski as a talented newcomer.

This is my first fiction review in a major newspaper; thank God it was this one.

David is officially going to receive a copy of every book I write for the rest of my natural life. God help him.

UPDATE: Still not watching the Super Bowl. I cleaned my goldfish Pete's bowl, then leisurely answered a few e-mails. Tore the plastic safety wrap from a bottle of contact lens solution, because the other bottle is low, and I'll probably need to tap into the new one tonight. Yeah, go birds.

Hey, Sports Fans!

It's Super Bowl Sunday! The Philadelphia Eagles are prepared to duke it out with the big, bad New England Patriots! And I really couldn't give a rat's ass!

Wake me up when it's over and this city regains its fucking mind.

Polygon Takes a Hit of Sunshine

It was about 8 p.m. Philadelphia time. Which made it about one in the morning in Edinburgh.

Which made it insane for me to be placing a call at this hour.

But I couldn't help myself. About 10 minutes before, I'd just learned that Allan "Sunshine" Guthrie had just been offered a two-book deal at Polygon, the Scottish publishing house that launched the careers of two obscure mystery writers you've probably never heard of. (Namely, Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith.)

The deal? To reprint snazzy trade paperbacks (and a short while later, A-format paperbacks) of Two-Way Split and Kiss Her Goodbye. The first novel will be available in the UK in August 2005; the second, in March 2006.

So I couldn't wait to call, could I? After all, this is sort of a tradition with us. One of us receives some incredibly good news, the other calls to congratulate. Of course, the last time Sunshine called me, it wasn't one o'clock in the morning.

"Hello? Is Al there?"

"Mmmmrppffffzzzzzwwwwhat?"

"Um, Al?"

But the voice -- as much as I could understand it -- was decidedly female. This wasn't Al, unless he'd been lying to me all these months.

Oh no.

I'd woken up Mrs. Sunshine.

So let this serve as my public congrats to Al, and my public apology to his wife, Donna. I'm so sorry. Next time Al has good news, I swear, I'll try to call during normal business hours.

Kevin Smith Digs Dead

Kevin Burton Smith, of course, the madman behind Thrilling Detective. God bless 'em, he's read Secret Dead Men and given it its first full-length review, which made my day. And which officially makes him my favorite Kevin Smith in the whole wide world.

The line that made me chuckle the most:

A Marx Brothers-like frenzy of mistaken identity and soul and body swapping (played out against a backdrop of Philadelphia gearing up for the 1976 U.S. bicentennial celebration).

Is that a ready-made blurb or what? Kevin closes with...

Yet what could have degenerated into late-season X-Files hokum -- and truthfully, the wheels do come close to falling off a few times -- stays true to Swierczynski's warped, peculiar vision, and he pulls off one of the most surreal, amusing crime thrillers in recent memory, a masterpiece of weirdness and humor (deadpan, of course). And if I'm lying, I'm dying. Or perhaps I'm already dead.

That light you see on the horizon, over near Philadelphia? That's me, beaming.

(Thanks to La Weinman for pointing out the review.)

Amazon Dot Come On, Now

Checked the Secret Dead Men page over at Amazon.com, and I was amused to see here was already a copy available in the "used and new section."

For $149.86.

Wait, maybe you didn't hear me.

One hundred and forty fucking nine dollars and eighty six motherfucking cents.

Christ on a cracker. You've got to be kidding me. That much, for a hardback that can be purchased new for about $30? It's not as if it's a signed copy either. I would know, because I haven't signed any copies yet. So what's the deal? Is there an added bonus I'm not aware of? I mean, does the seller promise I'll show up at the buyer's house and clean out the garage or something?

I e-mailed the seller to find what was up; I'll keep you posted on the response.

If I get a response.

My luck, she'll have already sold that copy and retired young.