“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Gerald So

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
THE JADE FIGURINE (1972) by Jack Foxx (a.k.a. Bill Pronzini). It’s a little MALTESE FALCON, a little TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Either Bill Smith or Lydia Chin by S.J. Rozan.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Tom Clancy, Lee Child, Lee Goldberg’s Monk books ...

Most satisfying writing moment?
The whole process of writing a poem: Jotting down an idea, working on it, finishing it, and submitting it.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’d like to read more Irish crime novels, but for now I’ll go with HER LAST CALL TO LOUIS MACNEICE by Ken Bruen.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD by Declan Hughes.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst and best is coming up with characters and a story on one’s one. It’s a tremendous accomplishment, but necessarily a lonely one. Discussing writing with friends or others is fun for a while, but it isn’t writing.

The pitch for your next book is …?
I’ll pitch THE LINEUP 4, which goes on sale April 1: 26 poets, 32 poems, 52 pages, our largest issue yet, for the same $7.

Who are you reading right now?
Seth Harwood, YOUNG JUNIUS, probably followed by Joe Gores, SPADE AND ARCHER.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. I need an outlet for all this thinking.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
“Terse and powerful.” :) Or, terse, pensive, powerful.

THE LINE-UP 4, a collection of poetry edited by Gerald So, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez and R. Navarez, is available at Poetic Justice Press.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. But It Will Very Probably Be Blogged

Seth Harwood. JACK WAKES UP. You know it makes sense, people …

Easter Rising II – Jack Wakes Up

We rather like the cut of Seth Harwood’s jib, people, given that he’s embarking on a one-man mission to stick it to The Man, in the process offering a pretty much unbeatable try-before-you-buy scenario with the publication of JACK WAKES UP. Quoth Seth:

“It would be great if you could drop a blog entry about JACK WAKES UP this weekend or later this week telling your readers what JACK WAKES UP is and that its release date is Palms Sunday, March 16th, and that the place to buy it on that date is Amazon.com. Include the link to the PDF and let all your peeps download the complete book! I’m trying something new: try it before you buy it. About time books got this on the net. So they can download the PDF, browse through it or even read the whole thing if they want. Just like in a bookstore. Then, if they want to buy, there’s a link inside that’ll take them right to Amazon. I hope that sounds good.”

It sounds entirely Jake to us. Herewith be the link to the PDF of JACK WAKES UP, and anyone remotely interested in supporting independent publishing should log on and give it a whirl. Otherwise there’ll be nothing to read but wall-to-wall James Patterson ‘novels’ in about a decade’s time, and they’ll have to resurrect Dante to invent a whole new level of hell.

Game, Seth And Match

We like Seth Harwood’s (right) moxy, people. First he brought Jack Palms to life via podcasts, and now he’s hustling the hell out of the paperback release of JACK WAKES UP, which hits a bookshelf near you on March 16. Quoth Seth:

“Seth Harwood is back this spring to launch the third free podcast in his JACK PALMS Crime series. With JACK WAKES UP hitting Amazon and a fine bookseller near you in March, Palm(s) Sunday (March 16th) bringing a whole gang of fans storming the web to buy as many copies as they can on Amazon.com, and a Seth Harwood reading tour on both US coasts, what would this spring be without a new instalment of the podcasts that started it all? That’s right, JACK PALMS is back in San Francisco to weather a gunshot wound, find the Russian who’s been trading young girls as sex slaves, and bring this whole sordid investigation to an end. With Vlade and the Czechs back in the city, Detective Shaw and Jane Gannon on the run, this season promises to be the most hair-raising one yet! To hear the JACK PALMS Crime podcasts free (Jack Wakes Up, Jack Palms II: This Is Life, and JACK PALMS 3) visit sethharwood.com today. [Basically a podcast is a free audio series/audio book in instalments.] You’ll also find all the Amazon and iTunes links you can think of, a free PDF of JACK WAKES UP to try before you buy, and much, much more ...”

Seth Harwood versus The Man? No contest. It’s game, Seth and match to the boy Harwood …

Sething The World Alight

If you’ve never wondered what the dulcet tones of Crime Always Pays’ Grand Vizier Declan Burke sound like, we really can’t blame you (we’re reliably informed that he sounds not unlike a cement mixer learning German). Check it out for yourself over at Seth Harwood’s funky podcasting site, where the Grand Vizier entirely spoils the penultimate episode of Seth’s JACK PALMS II: THIS IS LIFE by croaking out the intro in a dull brogue monotone. If you’re not up to speed on ye olde podcasting, never fear – the novel is due to be published on Sunday March 16, 2008 (i.e., Palm Sunday). Check out the full details here, and get involved in the great ‘Shake ’em Down’ scam …

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Dolly Mixture Pick-‘n’-Mix Of Interweb Baloohaha

We’re not sure if crime writers are even allowed to send in their grubby manuscripts, but RTÉ Radio 1 is calling for entries for the 2007 RTÉ Radio 1 Short Story Competition in memory of Francis MacManus. Closing date is Oct 29, so get scribbling … Any excuse to mention Vincent Banville is a good excuse, but hell – exactly how garish is this cover (right) for Sad Song? It burns, it BURNS! … Seth Harwood, author of Jack Wakes Up and This Is Life, is running an interesting experiment in interweb flummery – the novels are podcast-only, and available free over here. Is Harwood an evil genius destined to take over the publishing world? Only time, that notorious doity rat, will tell … The Indo’s Ciara Dwyer has an interview with Mary Rose Callaghan, author of Billy Come Home, somewhere in this direction … It’s not particularly Irish or crime fiction, but the Crime Always Pays elves are trampolining on their tiny little elf-beds at the news that Johnny Depp has picked up the option to Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary … Cora Harrison’s historical mystery set in the Burren, My Lady Judge, is a September Book Sense pick at the Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market blog … Nick Stone, who published King of Swords last week, guest-blogged at Sarah Weinman’s Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind yesterday … Finally, here’s a vid of a very short-‘n’-sweet Q&A with Ken Bruen at Bouchercon, in which Ken picks Mitchum over Bogie on the basis that Mitch once declared he had two ways of acting – with the horse, or without the horse. And that’s it for another week, folks. Thanks for dropping by, have a fabulous weekend and see y’all next week, y’hear?