If Had Been Born 30 Years Earlier...

... I could totally see myself writing a cheesy men's action series. Bill Crider has posted dozens of cover scans of these babies on a Flickr page, and they are mesmerizing. You've got your Hunters, your Stoners, your Peacemakers, your Liquidators, your Smugglers, your Sharpshooters, your Big Brains. At left, an avenger named Wulff (hence the series title, "Lone Wolf," wink wink, nudge nudge) holds a knife to the throat of a scumbag who has made more than a few questionable fashion choices, while at the same time blowing away another scumbag (offscreen)... right in front of Independence Hall! Then again, Philadelphia is an increasingly violent city. Chances are, you could see this scene unfold in real life. (What's up with Wulff's gray streaks, though? He looks more like "The Skunk" than "The Lone Wolf.")

And check out the cover for Bronson, a "knee-jerk liberal until they murdered his family... then he flew into a BLIND RAGE and became more savage than the street scum he stalked." Gee, wonder where this idea came from. This is like me writing a series called "Weller," about a "hard-working Detroit cop who is gunned down and transformed into a crime-fighting cyborg by an evil mega-coporation."

Once again, Bill Crider stuns us all with the range of his paperback collection. This man clearly has everything printed in soft covers since 1776.

And if anybody out there is thinking about reviving one of these cheeseball series for a modern, action-craving audience... dude, give me a call. We could try to bring back the Lone Wolf. Right after we give him a packet of Redken for Men hair dye.

Sorry, Been Busy Storming the Castle

Nothing much new to report here, other than I've been busy plowing away on Castle #2. I feel so much better since switching castles. And luckily, editor Marc didn't want to have my legs broken after hearing about my castle-switching. Said he loved the idea now just as much as when I'd pitched it. (Which probably means he was drunk, just like when I'd pitched it.) Real posting to resume soon, and... hey, don't look me that way. Castles don't storm themselves!

(Okay fine. I admit it. This post is an excuse for running an obscure still from Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness.)

The White-Heads Go Wild!

Paul Giamatti has two reasons to put smile on his face: 1. Lady in the Water opens today. 2. His voice-a-like, New Jersey crime novelist Dave White, has just scored a sweet-ass deal with Three Rivers Press for two Jackson Donne novels. (Brokering this deal was Scottish uber-agent Allan "Sunshine" Guthrie, and offering the deal was Jason "Man in Black" Pinter.) Paul and I couldn't be happier for Mr. White, and plans are underway to form his first fan club: The White-Heads. It won't be easy to be a White-Head; you'll have to be able to stomach the idea of New Jersey, and not mind blindingly-bright sweaters. But the devotion will be worth it; I've known Dave White was destined for greatness ever since I read "Closure" at Thrilling Detective way back in the way. Congrats, Mr. White. (Newly-minted White-Heads are hereby ordered to check out "My Father's Gun," the latest Jackson Donne tale, in Damn Near Dead.)

Scandal! Crider Seen With Strange Blonde

God bless that Bill Crider, even though he totally ambushed me with a stealth digital video camera at ConMisterio, which resulted in a short video that makes me look I've just had a drive-thru lobotomy at an Austin burger joint/fireworks shack/strip club. Because right before splitting ConMisterio, Bill posted the first ever review of The Blonde, and it's a beauty:

This is a terrific book. It's not at all like either of the the others I mentioned, and yet it is. You might even recognize a character or two. But you won't recognize the plot, which is absolutely nonstop action from first page to last. If the movies don't jump on this one, then the guys in Hollywood are crazier than I think they are.

From your lips to God's ears, Bill. Thanks!

Castle Freak

This past February, I pitched St. Martin's two new novels. My original two-book deal (which included The Wheelman and The Blonde) was up, and I wanted to write more books for them. My version of a book pitch is a one-page teaser, which is written in the style of back cover copy on a mass market paperback. This is how I've started every book I've ever written. I imagine the book is done, and I want to tell the reader what's inside. This helps me fix the book in my mind. It also helps the editor see the book as a finished product, ready to foist upon unsuspecting readers everywhere.

So I sent my editor, Marc Resnick, one-page teasers for two novels. Stand-alones. The edit folks at St. Martin's liked the first one, and were a little lukewarm on the second. That was fine with me--in the words of Meatloaf, one out of two ain't bad. (Or something like that.) And I ended up turning the second idea into an original screenplay. But that's another post.

St. Martin's offered me a new two-book deal, which included the novel they liked and an untitled second novel.

Which was awesome. I could come up with the second novel later.

And then I set to work on the first novel.

And then, after a while, I hit a wall.

For some reason, I couldn't find the right way into the novel. Stephen King once described this perfectly. He imagines novels as castles, and believes that there is often only one right way into the castle. You might sneak in a side window, only to fall on a bed of nails. You might leap over the moat, only to have an alligator lunge up and chomp you on the butt. You might scale a wall, only to have Bea Arthur pour a vat of boiling oil on you. (Bea Arthur scares me.)

But there is one right way into the castle, and once you find it, you can conquer the castle.

Well, this particular castle--the one St. Martin's liked? It's a motherfucker. I've tried attacking it every way I know, using techniques that had served me well with the first three novels. Nothing doin'. And even though I know the castle (i.e., the story ) is there, I'll be damned if I know how to get in.

Meanwhile, just for fun, I set my sights on another castle. A vision of this castle came to me like a gift from the gods. Not only did I know how to break into the castle, I knew every room up in that bitch--every secret corridor, every torture chamber, every wet bar. (In my world, castles have wet bars.) Everything that was going wrong with the first castle was going oh-so-beautifully-right with the second.

I'd pitched this other castle to Marc in late April. Marc liked the castle--a lot. We both agreed it would work as book #2 in this new two-book deal. I drank my little sissy drink (see earlier post), we toasted, we clapped each other on the back.

So whenever my attack on the original castle was going badly, I'd walk over to the second castle and kick its ass. Beat my chest. Gloat. Smack Bea Arthur around a little. (In my world, every castle has a Bea Arthur.) I ruled this fucking castle.

But eventually, I'd have to slog back over to the first castle and, like Wile E. Coyote, try to cook up another harebrained scheme to bust into this impregnable mother. It was starting to drive me more than a little nuts.

I'm Polish, so I'm not exactly a quick study. But at a certain point... oh, say, this past weekend... I thought that maybe I was better off focusing my energies on the second castle.

Which is what I'm doing now. Officially.

It's not that I don't think I can beat that first castle. I know I can. (Shaking my fist at you, first castle.) But right now, I think the second castle is the one I'm supposed to conquer. And with any luck, this second castle will be in fine bookstores everywhere sometime in fall 2007.

Writing: It's a screwy gig, ain't it?

(Postscript: While riding on the train home from work yesterday, an idea popped into my head. An idea of how to totally conquer the first castle. Sometimes, I think my own brain is out to get me.)

And the Winner Is...

Secret Dead Blog received nearly two dozen entries for the Damn Near Dead "Boulevard of Broken Hips" contest, which almost overwhelmed the Contest Department here at Secret Dead Blog. But by using a state-of-the-art random number generator (powered by two preschoolers), we were able to determine a winner:

Janine M. Wilson in Kent, Washington, who wrote: "I'm old. I should win because I'm old. And you should respect your elders."

I couldn't agree more. Congrats, Janine! A signed copy of Damn Near Dead (featuring the signatures of at least seven or eight contributors) will be winging its way to the Pacific Northwest this week. Thanks to everyone who entered.

(A note about the illustration: I swear, this is not a reference to Bill and Judy Crider. I searched Google images for "old people" and this sign appeared. Honest!)

Sarah Turns Three

Three years ago this very minute, my daughter Sarah was born. That wasn't the name the Bride and I had originally selected. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this little person was going to be saddled with "Swierczynski" for the foreseeable future, I wanted to sneak a little alliteration in there. Taking inspiration from comic Sarah Silverman, I suggested "Sarah" to the Bride.

Sarah Swierczynski. Sweet, isn't? Almost takes the sting out of that consonant-heavy surname.

And like Sarah Silverman, our Sarah is a piece of work, with an absurd sense of humor that knocks me dead every time. The other day, the Bride offered to help carry one of Sarah's stuffed bears. Sarah stopped, gave her mom a deadpan stare, huffed, then said: "I've got two hands." Folks, she's three. Imagine what she's going to be like in 10 years?

So Happy Birthday to our sweet and crazy and whip-smart daughter. I don't think I'll need to become one of those shotgun-toting worry-dads. She has all the ammo she needs.

To These Seniors, "Adult Undergarment" Means "Shoulder Holster"

The first copies of Damn Near Dead arrived in Houston yesterday. At left is Busted Flush Press owner David Thompson unpacking the very first box. (Or at least, pretending to unpack the first box because I asked him for a photo of him unpacking the first box. Ethics, schmethics. It's a blog!)

Anyway, to celebrate the launch, I'm giving away one copy of Damn Near Dead, signed by as many contributors (Crider! Gischler! Coleman! Abbott! Maybe even the other Abbott!) as I can round up in Austin. I'll even force Thompson to sign it. All you have to do is send me an email (duane.swier at verizon.net) between now and midnight Friday, with the words "Boulevard of Broken Hips" in the subject line. Oh, and your name and address, too.

This weekend, one of my kids will draw one email out of a hat (note to self: find a hat) and I'll announce the lucky winner on Monday. Not a bad deal, huh? Extra credit if you type the entire email in capital letters. Okay, I'm kidding about that last part.

Good luck!

Damn Near Austin

What began as a brief stint at ConMisterio to promote Damn Near Dead has turned into an actual mini-tour. I'll be flying out to Houston early on Thursday morning and meeting David "Busted Flesh" Thompson at Bush International. From there, we'll head straight for the KUHF/88.7 FM studios, where we'll tape a segment with "The Front Row" to promote the anthology. That's at noon. Soon after, we'll hit Murder By the Book for a quick 2:30 p.m. appearance (where the first copies of Damn Near Dead will be available for purchase), and then by 3 we're back in the car and off to Austin for ConMisterio. Somewhere in there, I'm hoping there will be an opportunity to knock back a Lone Star brew or two. Preferably before the radio spot. (Dutch courage, and all.)

The next day, ConMisterio attendees who are hoping to avoid me will be out of luck. I'm on three panels in a row:

Friday 10:00 a.m. – Is Hardboiled Hip? (Reed Farrel Coleman (m), Bruce Cook, Anthony Neil Smith, Duane Swierczynski)

Friday 11:00 a.m. – Journalist or Author; Which is Easier? (Wallace Stroby (m), Duane Swierczynski)

Friday – 1:00 p.m. – Damn Near Dead, Older Characters as the Focus (Reed Farrel Coleman, James Crumley, David Thompson (m), Duane Swierczynski)

Trust me: by noon, even I will be tired of myself.

After the panels, I'll be signing copies of Damn Near Dead along with some of the super-talented folks who were kind enough to contribute a story, including Megan Abbott, Milton T. Burton, Reed Farrel Coleman, Bill Crider, Sean Doolittle and Victor Gischler. Word is that Jeff Abbott, another fine DND contributor, won't be showing up until Saturday, which is a bummer, because I'm dying to meet him. (And I'm leaving Friday evening.) But hey, you can't have everything.

If you'll be anywhere near Houston or Austin during any of this madness, don't be shy. Come on up and say hello. The first Lone Star is on me.

The Name of the Game is Marlowe

There's an excellent piece about one of my favorite writers, Dan J. Marlowe, over at Mystery*File. Marlowe's life story has enough twists and turns for at least three or four Gold Medal novels. Marlowe was widowed at a young age, became close buddies with one of the most notorious bank robbers of the 1960s, and later in his career, suffered a stroke that wiped away his memory--but not his writing ability. Somehow, through all of this, he wrote some extremely fine hardboiled novels, the best being his first two Earl Drake books: The Name of the Game is Death and One Endless Hour. Both were a huge influence on The Wheelman (and in fact, some eagle-eyed readers have noticed the two shout-outs to the Drake books in the story). Charles Ardai is probably tired of hearing recommendations, but... man, the first two Drakes have Hard Case Crime written all over them. Dig it, Chuck: a mass-market two-book omnibus paperback edition, along with an intro by that Crider guy. Can't you just see it?

Friday Book Report... On Sunday

I really try to do these things on Friday. I swear. But sometimes the week gets the best of Secret Dead Blog.

Let's see... the past two weeks have been full of some fine reading. And not just books. If you have the chance, pick up this month's issue of The Atlantic Monthly, which contains Douglas Preston's "The Monster of Florence," a page-turner about an Italian journalist's hunt for Italy's most notorious serial killer. This 8,000-word piece contains a novel's worth of thrills--weird lover's lane crime scenes, a curious murder weapon, an exotic locale, menacing cops, false arrests, and of course, a dogged reporter in a trenchcoat. Preston is half of the Preston-Child writing team behind Relic and The Book of the Dead, but since 2000 he's been collaborating with Mario Spezi (pictured above) on a nonfiction book about the slayings. Preston and Spezi came very close to unmasking the killer, but were shut down by the Italian police, who all but forced Preston to flee Italy and even tried to charge Spezi with being an accessory to murder. (I wrote about the incident in a City Paper editor's letter a while back, as did many bloggers.) "The Monster of Florence" is not available online unless you're a subscriber, but it's worth tracking down at the newsstand. C'mon, when's the last time you curled up with good magazine?

Let's see... bookwise, I read Jeff Abbott's superb Cut and Run, the third entry in his series about Texas Judge Whit Mosley. The plot's a stunner--Mosley tracks down the mother who'd abandoned him as a kid, and finds out she's in the middle of a lurid drug-and-mob drama. (People must ask poor Jeff about his mother all the time.)

I also read Michael Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer, which deserves every ounce of praise lavished upon it in the past 10 months. Legal thrillers, for me, are like two glasses of pinot grigio and a fistful of allergy tables: something to render you unconscious, clean and fast. But not this one. It's a beaut. (Fans of Terrill Lankford will be pleased to see a cameo, of sorts...)

See that needle in my arm? Follow the tube up to the plastic bag and you'll see the name G.M. Ford printed on the side. A few minutes after I finished Fury, Ford's first novel about disgraced journalist Frank Corso, I rushed back out to Borders and scooped up the rest of the series. (Book six, Blown Away, is out in a few weeks.) John Rickards will appreciate the Spider Jerusalem reference in Meg Dougherty, Corso's inked-up photojournalist sidekick. I appreciate the fact that Corso reads like a flesh-and-blood columnist--smart, fierce, and a complete prick.

July 4, 1976

On the Bicentennial, when I was four years old, I got lost. Right in the middle of the festivities, in the heart of downtown Philadelphia.

My father was working that day—playing in a band hired to perform outside Winston’s Restaurant in Old City, Philadelphia. The name of the band was “The Shuttlebums,” and since my dad was also a carpenter, he came up with the idea of making business cards for the band on tiny slats of wood. Someday, when the bombs drop and cockroaches start throwing their own Bicentennial celebrations, those business cards will be around.

Since my father had a gig, and my mother was The Shuttlebums’ de facto manager, I was brought along too, as well as my year-old baby brother. I don’t remember much of the gig, except that it was in front of Winston’s Restaurant, at Front and Chestnut Street, three blocks from where the Declaration of Independence was signed. I also remember what was going through my young brain: big Boat. Very Cool Big Boat.

You see, my father’s full-time carpentry gig was on this restaurant ship called “The Moshulu,” which, in 1976 (and again, about 20 years later), was docked at Penn’s Landing, three blocks east of Winston’s. I somehow put the geography together, and I knew if I walked over the Very Big Bridge (in actuality, a pedestrian footbridge over I-95), I could see the Very Cool Big Boat. So in the middle of the largest crowd ever gathered in Old City Philadelphia, I ran away.

But not alone. I took an accomplice along with me: my Aunt Diane. Relieved? Don’t be. She was only nine months older than me at the time. (My grandmother became pregnant with her late in life—the last in a series of five girls, spanning 22 years or so. God bless my grandpop Lou.) Why Diane followed me, I’ll never know. I’ve never been the persuasive type. And you’d figure a five-year-old would know better. But, oh well.

I don’t remember the walk over there. It was probably scary as hell, and I’ve blocked it from my memory. But I do remember walking into the restaurant portion of the boat, and Diane and I sliding into two seats at a table. A frazzled waitress with a nameplate emblazoned VICKY came over and dropped two menus and a large wicker bowl of popcorn on the table. She must have assumed we were brother and sister, and our parents were nearby. Of course, this was not the case. We were alone, and lost.

--from Secret Dead Men (2005)

Update: The above excerpt is completely true. Except for the part about the waitress being named Vicky. (I don't have that kind of memory.) Many fiction writers, if not all, mine their real life for stories.

Anyway, you can read the complete story this Thursday. I wrote about the incident in my City Paper editor's letter.

This afternoon, I took a walk over to Penn's Landing and retraced my steps from 30 years ago. Funny thing is, you can still see where Winston's used to be. The facade hasn't changed much, even though the restaurant is long gone. The city completely rebuilt the pedestrian bridge and reshaped much of the waterfront area. A naval vessel, the USS Farragut, is temporarily docked where the Moshulu once docked. I turned around, and saw a completely different skyline from what had been there in 1976. There was also an Irish memorial across the street from the former Winston's location, resting on a concrete slab that hangs above I-95. (I have no memory of what used to be there.) Vendors sold giant bottles of water for a buck. "Any drink, one dollar."

The air was thick and humid. A thunderstorm was coming.

I walked back to my office with a funny feeling that was not quite nostalgia, and not quite melancholy.

That was my July 4, 2006.

Your Holiday David Goodis Coverage Continues

Here's a Fourth of July weekend treat for you: photos of David Goodis' bedroom in 1963 and 2006. At left is Goodis sitting on his bed, staring out of his window. I imagine he struck this pose a lot. This photo was snapped by Temple University, and appeared in their alumni magazine. (Goodis is a 1938 graduate.) At right is the bedroom as it appears today. The house is up for sale, and intrepid Goodis-heads Aaron Finestone and Lou Boxer took a tour of the house and snapped a ton of photos. Only one other family has owned the house since Goodis passed away in 1967, and it looks like things haven't changed much in 40 years. And I'm not sure if Goodis wrote classics like Black Friday and Down There in this bedroom; he probably could have set up his typewriter anywhere. But that bedroom looks just about right, doesn't it? On that small, childlike desk and chair? Gazing out into the dark of the Philadelphia night?

Lou Boxer was kind enough to send me all of his Goodis house photos. If anyone's interested, I could certainly post more here. (The Goodis bathroom, anyone?)

Flush With Success

This morning the Houston Chronicle checks in with my pal David Thompson, the man behind Busted Flush Press (which will be publishing Damn Near Dead in two weeks). The most amusing bit:

It's not "Busted Flesh Press," says David Thompson, neophyte book publisher. Given his subject matter — murder and mayhem — some people hear it that way...

Maybe it's just me, but "Busted Flesh" calls to mind prison shower porn. Which is definitely not the point of the series. Unless David's not telling me something...