Harry Crews, author of ‘Feast of Snakes’ and ‘The Knockout Artist’, dead at 76

Marvelous writer of gritty, no-frills Southern fiction from the hard-scrabble griddle of the down and out.

Harry Crews, author of ‘Feast of Snakes’ and ‘The Knockout Artist’, dead at 76

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/harry-crews-author-feast-snakes-knockout-artist-dead-76-article-1.1053093#ixzz1qiK6jbQi

Final Friday of 2011 Doodle

We're running into 2012 as fast as we can (the mad dash at one second per second). This little doodle is my tip of the hat and farewell to 2011.

Happy New Year's Weekend, everyone!

Criminous Haiku on The 5-2

The week of December 26, the crime poetry site The 5-2 is featuring a haiku I wrote. Besides being a haiku about crime, it has a seasonal/holiday slant.

Gerald So, who edits The 5-2 site, posts a new crime-associated poem each week. Gerald is a member of the Academy of American Poets, his poems have appeared in Nerve Cowboy, Barbaric Yawp, Defenestration, Cherry Bleeds, Yellow Mama, Gutter Eloquence Magazine and other provocatively-named venues. He broadcast an invitation for holiday-themed submissions, and I responded. I'm not sure how many weeks he has set aside for the holiday poetry, but I was pleased to receive his acceptance. Gerald also posted his reading of the poem. It's haiku, so don't worry -- it's short.

Incognito turkey for Thanksgiving Day

The tsunami of deliverables for work, plus lots of activities for the Cub and Boy Scouts, has kept me very busy lately, but Space Detective is progressing: I'm closing in on 40K words. I would have reached that mark this past weekend, but a 10-speed bike fell on my nose from its rack in the garage, broke my glasses, and gave me a heck of a bruise and headache. Providence alone kept me from worse pain and worse.

Meanwhile, here's a seasonal drawing from several years ago. When I worked as Content Director for Emazing.com, I provided occasional illustrations for their eCards. This one, done in pen and ink and colored pencils, was meant for Thanksgiving. A caption was meant to accompany it, but I've forgotten what it was.

Anyway, enjoy, and have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

Review of Old Albert

Old Albert -- a limited edition book written by my pal Brian Showers, published by Ex Occidente Press in Romania, and for which I provided a couple of illustrations (including the one on the cover that is depicted) -- is now reviewed very nicely at Speculative Fiction Junkie.

PulpFest 2011 reading

I had a blast at PulpFest 2011.

You can see a fuller report at my PulpRack blog.

I gave the first of four readings at the 'Fest. I read from three of my works in progress: an excerpt from Space Detective, an alternative-1950s SF/hard-boiled detective novel I'm working on with British artist Mike Fyles; a chapter from Shalimar Bang, about a contemporary pulp-styled action-adventure team; and a short chapter from a western novel, The Express Agent.  The audience was interested, the Q&A lively, and the experience overall was very enjoyable. The pieces I read prompted laughs in the appropriate places, and no one laughed during the passages that were meant to be exciting action scenes, so everything seems to be working in the narrative as intended. I look forward to doing another reading someday. 


I'd read excerpts from the first two novels -- Shalimar Bang and Space Detective -- and after some Q&A had enough time left to read from The Express Agent. I first asked if anyone in the room read westerns. Only one person raised a hand out of thirty or so attendees, and I was surprised to see the only person who responded was a woman. Maybe I'm narrow minded in thinking that most western readers are male, but there were fewer women in the room than men, so statistically speaking, I expected at least one male to raise a hand. On the other hand, I know the western genre isn't the most robust sales-wise in the book industry, so I half expected to see no one respond. But I was pleased to see at least one brave western reader among the bunch.


The audience all seemed to enjoy the chapter from The Express Agent as much (or, in the case of some folks, more than) as the other pieces. This reaction pleased me quite a bit. Maybe I converted some non-western readers to try out the genre. I hope so.

Reading at PulpFest

I'll be reading excerpts from two works in progress at this year's PulpFest, an annual convention for fans and collectors of pulp fiction and pulp magazines. The working titles of the pieces I'll be reading from are Shalimar Bang and the Bad Luck Baedeker and The Space Detective at Hell Gate. I'll be reading July 29^th at 1 p.m.  The convention is in Columbus, Ohio. You can learn more at the PulpFest site, thanks to Mike Chomko.


By the way, the accompanying Space Detective illustration is by my pal and collaborator, Mike Fyles. Check out his site for some cool retro-style illustration. Mike's done some nice work for Marvel Comics, producing some covers for Iron Man and Spider-Man titles.


I haven't been very consistent in communicating here lately. My apologies. I've been super-duper busy the past three months. I think I'll get a little more breathing space after the next few weeks. I'll keep my fingers crossed.