Monday, December 26, 2011

EL GAVILAN NETS MORE RAVES; CONTEST ENDING THIS WEEK


In recent days, a number of reviewers have turned their attention to EL GAVILAN (officially released about a week ago yesterday):

The New York Journal of Books says, "Craig McDonald uses his skills to write a drama that demands the reader pay attention, if a character has a Latino or Anglo name, the reader can’t make assumptions about where the character’s sympathies lie. His descriptions of the town and the characters are that vivid.”

The Huntington News calls EL GAVILAN: "A nuanced crime thriller," and notes, "It's difficult to find a good book that explores the tensions in the nation's heartland fueled by both legal and illegal immigration, but I think Craig McDonald has aced it in 'El Gavilan.'"

From Shelf-Awareness: "McDonald smudges the lines between right and wrong, leaving readers with potentially conflicting feelings about the characters. It's this conflict that makes 'El Gavilan' so irresistible: love or hate the characters, you can't help but invest in them. The story draws further power from McDonald's descriptive skills, as the sights, sounds and even the smells of his fictitious Ohio town reach from the pages and pull the reader in. 'El Gavilan' proves that Craig McDonald is as capable working in the contemporary thriller as he is with historicals."

And from Technorati: "McDonald explores values, attitudes, emotion, ethics, relationships, and the nature of intolerance in a satisfying, thought-provoking novel. Well-developed characters with unsteady moral compasses populate the pages of 'El Gavilan,' giving the reader much to consider and reconsider."

ONE WEEK LEFT TO WIN THE ULTIMATE EL GAVILAN RARITY


Here’s something quite a bit different: I’m offering a chance to win a major chunk of handwritten writing—a legal pad full of the opening pages of my new standalone novel EL GAVILAN—as I originally penned them.

What you’ll get is a fragment of the idea for the novel as jotted down when inspiration first hit—call it an impulsive mission statement—then about seven chapters’ worth of first pages…first glimpses of characters Tell Lyon, Able Hawk…a first take on the opening pages of the book.

This is truly first pass stuff. I tend to write longhand, then key in the material, revising as I go along. If you, lucky winner, detect breaks in the continuity in the legal pad, that’s a result of me toggling over to write first draft on the computer—something I tend to do more with dialogue heavy scenes.

Now, as originally announced via my newsletter, to win this item, contestants were asked to answer a trivia question related to the book. Unfortunately, jiffy “Look Inside the Book” posting by Amazon made that a far too easy affair.

Also, book availability got a little crazy with some copies getting out far in advance of today’s Dec. 18 official release date.

So I’m changing the contest conditions just a bit, and the deadline for entry.

Want a chance to win some raw EL GAVILAN? Just drop me a note via craig @ craigmcdonaldbooks.com. (Delete the spaces on either side of that @, of course; or contact me here.) Subject line: EL GAVILAN CONTEST.

Then, briefly, say what you’d be more interested in reading next: Another standalone, or number five in the ongoing Hector Lassiter series. Also tell how you purchased your last book written by me—was it a bound copy, or an eBook?

(If you already submitted an answer to the trivia contest, no worries; I've got your entry and you're still in the running.)

That’s all it takes for a chance to win.

On New Year’s Eve, I’ll gather all the submissions in a hat, and a name will be drawn. The winner will be announced in this space New Year’s Day and contacted for mailing information.

In addition to getting the legal pad, you’ll also get a finished, signed copy of the novel containing the polished prose only you will have access to in my own block-letter scrawl.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

WIN A PIECE OF EL GAVILAN IN THE AUTHOR’S HAND



Here’s something quite a bit different: I’m offering a chance to win a major chunk of handwritten writing—a legal pad full of the opening pages of my new standalone novel EL GAVILAN—as I originally penned them.

What you’ll get is a fragment of the idea for the novel as jotted down when inspiration first hit—call it an impulsive mission statement—then about seven chapters’ worth of first pages…first glimpses of characters Tell Lyon, Able Hawk…a first take on the opening pages of the book.

This is truly first pass stuff. I tend to write longhand, then key in the material, revising as I go along. If you, lucky winner, detect breaks in the continuity in the legal pad, that’s a result of me toggling over to write first draft on the computer—something I tend to do more with dialogue heavy scenes.

Now, as originally announced via my newsletter, to win this item, contestants were asked to answer a trivia question related to the book. Unfortunately, jiffy “Look Inside the Book” posting by Amazon made that a far too easy affair.

Also, book availability got a little crazy with some copies getting out far in advance of today’s Dec. 18 official release date.

So I’m changing the contest conditions just a bit, and the deadline for entry.

Want a chance to win some raw EL GAVILAN? Just drop me a note via craig @ craigmcdonaldbooks.com. (Delete the spaces on either side of that @, of course; or contact me here.) Subject line: EL GAVILAN CONTEST.

Then, briefly, say what you’d be more interested in reading next: Another standalone, or number five in the ongoing Hector Lassiter series. Also tell how you purchased your last book written by me—was it a bound copy, or an eBook?

(If you already submitted an answer to the trivia contest, no worries; I've got your entry and you're still in the running.)

That’s all it takes for a chance to win.

On New Year’s Eve, I’ll gather all the submissions in a hat, and a name will be drawn. The winner will be announced in this space New Year’s Day and contacted for mailing information.

In addition to getting the legal pad, you’ll also get a finished, signed copy of the novel containing the polished prose only you will have access to in my own block-letter scrawl.

EL GAVILAN OFFICIALLY RELEASES TODAY


My first standalone novel, EL GAVILAN, officially releases today. (That means it is also officially available for download for Kindle and Nook and other eReaders.)

It goes out into the world in a book buying market that remains uncertain and tumultuous. My sincere thanks to those who have already read and ordered the novel, or are considering doing so.

(A request, also, to any who have taken the time and effort to review EL GAVILAN to please consider cross-posting those reviews to online book selling venues. It's become increasingly clear such reviews, up or down, do have a profound influence on book buying decisions, even by those who ultimately purchase from independent, bricks-and-mortar booksellers).

A synopsis and some review clips from EL GAVILAN follow:



******
EL GAVILAN

The news is full of it: escalating tensions from illegal immigration, headless bodies hanging off bridges and bounties placed on lawmen on both sides of the border.

New Austin, Ohio is a town grappling with waves of undocumented workers exerting pressure on schools, police and city services. In the midst of the turmoil, three very different kinds of cops scramble to maintain control and impose order.

Police Chief Tell Lyon is a hurting man: a former California Border Patrol commander whose family was brutally murdered by a vengeful gang of smugglers. Tell has fled the desert and returned to the heartland to be New Austin's chief of police. He's arrived expecting a Mayberry-like experience, but soon learns "the border is now everywhere."

Conservative hard-liner Sheriff Able Hawk takes a direct approach. Hawk stages mass arrests, posts inflammatory blog entries and bills back the Federal government his costs for jailing illegal immigrants who have nicknamed him El Gavilan.

Walt Pierce is sheriff of neighboring Vale County. Walt has a storied history and long rivalry with Able Hawk. Pierce, a vindictive, closed-minded man and a dangerous enemy, takes an immediate dislike to Tell Lyon.

The rape-murder of a Mexican-American woman triggers a brutal chain of events that threatens to leave no survivors.

El Gavilan is a novel of shifting alliances and whiplash switchbacks. Families are divided and careers and lives threatened. Friendships and ideals are tested and budding love affairs challenged.

With its topical themes, shades-of-gray characters and dark canvas, El Gavilan is a novel for our charged times.

******

"Searing. Sobering and as urgent as tomorrow's headlines. McDonald deftly...dissects one of America's most tormenting social problems."
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"An addictive read."
—Library Journal

"Everything you'd hope to get from a modern day master stretching his impressive-as-all-hell wings."
—Spinetingler Magazine

"A fascinating thriller...highly recommended."
—The Drowning Machine

"A thoroughly gripping crime story."
—Mystery Scene

"Stunning."
—Suspense Magazine

"A major step forward for [McDonald's] already formidable breadth and range."
—Barnes & Noble Book Club

LINKS FOR ORDERING:
(EL GAVILAN IS PUBLISHED IN SIMULTANEOUS HARDCOVER AND TRADE PAPERBACK)
IndieBound (Hardcover)
IndieBound (Paperback)
Amazon (Hardcover)
Amazon (Paperback)
Barnes & Noble (Hardcover)
Barnes & Noble (Paperback)
Books-A-Million (Hardcover)
Books-A-Million (Paperback)



******
MORE:
• El Gavilan at My Book, the Movie.

• El Gavilan: The Page 69 Test.

• Writer's Read: Craig shares thoughts about recent reads.

• J. Kingston Pierce interviews Craig at Kirkus Reviews & The Rap Sheet.

• Guest blog at Spinetingler regarding El Gavilan/Hector Lassiter secret connections.

• A free short story drawn featuring a character from the novel here.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

ONE TRUE SENTENCE FIRST ROUND WINNER

We've wrapped up our first round of playing ONE TRUE SENTENCE and the winner is Marty McCabe.

The game, being played evenings on Twitter (@HectorLassiter or at #1TS) to celebrate the release of my new novel, EL GAVILAN, requires players to finish a sentence I start, as short and truly as they can. At the end of each week's round of play, a winner is picked to receive a signed first edition of one of my novels.

Marty's winning One True Sentence:

"With one jug of water and 30 miles of desert to reach the border, Miguel eyed Juan bleeding out in the sand; now, it was just a long walk."—Marty McCabe

We'll start a fresh round of play Wednesday night on Twitter at 8 p.m. eastern.

In other book news, Joe T. at Austin's BookPeople has declared ONE TRUE SENTENCE one of his favorite five works of fiction of 2011. Also making the cut were SNUFF by Sir Terry Pratchett, OF BLOOD AND HONEY by Stina Leicht, HEARTSTONE by C.J. Sansom and THE WISE MAN'S FEAR by Patrick Rothfuss.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

EL GAVILAN A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY PICK OF THE WEEK


Publishers Weekly has declared EL GAVILAN a Pick of the Week.

Fellow Tyrus Books authors D.C. Brod and Reed Farrel Coleman were also singled out as December top picks:

"Picks this week include a big new Norwegian thriller from master-of-the-form Jo Nesbø, a fresh adventure from Tom Clancy, a girl's guide to hunting and cooking, the story of a Marine and his dog, (another) science-of-time-travel book, and three—three!—star-worthy releases from Tyrus books, your independent publisher of fine crime fiction since 2010. Plus tigers, ducks, and sprouts—you know, for kids."

December 18

El Gavilan by Craig McDonald (Tyrus, F+W Media dist., $24.95; ISBN 978-1-4405-3191-0)

To read Publishers Weekly earlier, starred review of EL GAVILAN, click HERE.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

THE EL GAVILAN/HECTOR LASSITER CONNECTION


After four entries in the Hector Lassiter series, why the EL GAVILAN standalone, and what's its connection to that aforementioned series?

I provide some answers in a special guest blog over at Spinetingler. You can read it here.

Suspense Magazine has a longish review of EL GAVILAN. In part it goes: “This is a truly in-depth tale regarding murder, mayhem, and a very ‘real’ look into the tension and stress that’s currently affecting the nation regarding the subject of immigration. This author does a stunning job of presenting the delicate balance that is in effect in our world right now. From the subject of immigration, to gangs taking over and threatening communities, to the delicate and long-term subject of racism, this author delves deeply into subjects that are slowly turning citizens of the United States against one another.”

Barnes & Noble Bookclub has also weighed in: "With his latest, El Gavilan, Craig McDonald takes the border into New Austin, Ohio where a recent flood of immigration has rocked the status quo and three very different lawmen set about policing the population three very different ways. On a good day they’re uneasy allies, but municipal chiefs Tell Lyon and Walt Pierce and county sheriff Able Hawk will subvert, out-maneuver and finally come into mortal combat with each other over the investigation of a brutal crime. When the body of a Mexican-American woman is discovered raped, murdered and dumped at the nexus of municipal lines, the race is on to claim jurisdiction over the potential landmine of a case. McDonald manipulates the plot—forward action balanced with flashback histories of the major players—to maximize the impact of every event… A major step forward for his already formidable breadth and range.” Reviewer Jedidiah Ayres has more to say about El Gavilan here. (Kudos to Mr. Ayres for correctly identifying much of the music this novel was written to.)

Sunday, December 4, 2011

ONE TRUE SENTENCE: ROUND TWO RECAP


Round two of the Hemingway-inspired, ONE TRUE SENTENCE competition on Twitter is now history. We play to celebrate the release of EL GAVILAN.

I start a sentence and participants finish it, well and truly, adding the hashtag #1TS for a chance to win a signed first edition of one of my seven books. (Please read on below last night's results for an explanation about how to get in on the action.)

Here are some highlights of what our second-round players came up with to finish the sentence:

José shrugged and said, “It’s Mexican math, that’s all—stolen drugs plus one pissed off cartel chief and minus an AK-47 equals…
----
"...a cocaine fueled haze of violence and a high body count."— Mystery Dawg

"...a trail of interrogations by machete leading right across the border. And it's about to get much uglier."—Thomas Pluck

"...Lee Child's next Reacher book." —Naomi Johnson

"...mayhem to make the devil jealous."—Jen Forbus

We'll play againat 9 p.m. Eastern Monday night. Here's a refresher regarding how to join in:

Follow me @HECTORLASSITER. At a pre-announced time each night, I’ll start a fresh round of One True Sentence by posting the start of a sentence.

Any takers can finish that sentence, rationing just enough of their 140 characters in order to add the hash tag #1TS.

Every Friday night, I’ll review the One True Sentences on the #1TS page, and pick the week’s winner. The one who writes the truest One True Sentence will be awarded a first edition of one of my books with their own One True Sentence inscribed inside. Our One True Sentence.

Remember, you have to use the hashtag #1TS to play (and so I can see your entry).

ONE TRUE SENTENCE: ROUND ONE RECAP


Last night we debuted the latest round of the Hemingway-inspired, ONE TRUE SENTENCE competition on Twitter to celebrate the release of EL GAVILAN.

I start a sentence and participants finish it, well and truly, adding the hashtag #1TS for a chance to win a signed first edition of one of my seven books. (Please read on below last night's results for an explanation about how to get in on the action.)

So, here are some highlights of what our first players came up with to finish the sentence:

"With one jug of water and 30 miles of desert to reach the border, Miguel eyed Juan...

----
"...and realized he knew exactly what another man's life was worth."— Vince Keenan

"...and little Sophia, cursing his wife for dying, for dropping her own jug and leaving him with this impossible choice."—Alison Dasho

"...like the tall drink of water Selma had said he was."—Jennifer Jordan

"...passed his younger brother the jug and said, 'for Mama,' before he passed out under the relentless sun."—John Kenyon

"...bleeding out in the sand; now, it was just a long walk."—Marty McCabe

"...and wondered how deep blood lines ran on his mother's side of the family."—Tyrus Books

"...water wasn't a problem and now with Juan ready to drop, soon meat wouldn't be either."—Craig Zablo

We'll play again tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. Here's a recap of how to join in:

Follow me @HECTORLASSITER. At a pre-announced time each night, I’ll start a fresh round of One True Sentence by posting the start of a sentence.

Any takers can finish that sentence, rationing just enough of their 140 characters in order to add the hash tag #1TS.

Every Friday night, I’ll review the One True Sentences on the #1TS page, and pick the week’s winner. The one who writes the truest One True Sentence will be awarded a first edition of one of my books with their own One True Sentence inscribed inside. Our One True Sentence.

Remember, you have to use the hashtag #1TS to play (and so I can see your entry).

BOOKLIST ON EL GAVILAN


Booklist has weighed in with its take on EL GAVILAN, my new thriller about illegal immigration and my first standalone novel:


"El Gavilan is a big and broad story, and McDonald effectively uses a just-the-facts-ma’am narrative, fleshing out primary characters via flashbacks. It’s also an evenhanded story that begins with desperate families making a dangerous journey to an uncertain future. Crime fans will find much to like, and readers unfamiliar with the complexities of the issue will be engaged and informed." — Thomas Gaughan

You can read more of the review HERE.



LEARN MORE ABOUT EL GAVILAN

CHECK OUT MY NEWSLETTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A CHUNK OF HANDWRITTEN, FIRST-DRAFT MATERIAL FROM EL GAVILAN

Saturday, December 3, 2011

TIME TO PLAY ONE TRUE SENTENCE ON TWITTER



LEARN MORE ABOUT EL GAVILAN

CHECK OUT MY NEWSLETTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A CHUNK OF HANDWRITTEN, FIRST-DRAFT MATERIAL FROM EL GAVILAN

Let’s play a game. The prizes are signed first editions.

The arena is Twitter, and the time is every evening, or thereabouts, over the next few weeks.

The name of the game is One True Sentence.

The phrase, “One true sentence,” was a goal and a kind of mantra for author Ernest Hemingway.

When faced with his own writing that seemed false, or prefatory, Hem claimed to dig down into the manuscript of a short story or novel until he arrived at his first “true sentence,” and then begin his tale with that “one true” line of prose.

My continuing character, crime novelist Hector Lassiter, first appeared in a short story called “The Last Interview,” published in the Mississippi Review what seems like a lifetime ago.

In the course of that story, a callow young interviewer sent to write an article on the aging Lassiter circa 1967 ends up engaging in a high-stakes game of One True Sentence with the author.

Hector, a Hemingway intimate for several tumultuous decades, used to play the writing game with Papa over the years and countless drinks, as he explains to his young interrogator.

The game went this way, according to Hector: One author would start a true sentence, and the other had to finish it, nice and pithy, and on the spot.




Something about that game I invented hung with me. When I decided to center a novel around Hector Lassiter — HEAD GAMES — I equipped Hector with a gift Zippo from Hemingway. The windproof lighter bore the following inscription:

To Hector Lassiter:
‘One true sentence.’
— E.H.
Key West,
1932


Asked about the lighter in that novel, Hector says of it, “Something from an ex-friend you’ve been lately reading. A kind of shared credo. I remember it. Not sure he does anymore.”

In the second Lassiter novel, TOROS & TORSOS, Hector and Hemingway are actually seen playing their game. Some of their collaborative “One True Sentences” from that novel roll this way:

• “The old man died…” “illusioned and therefore disappointed.”

• “The drunken priest, awaiting execution..” “…wished that one of his fellow prisoners was a whore.”

• “Absinthe tastes…” “…like regret.”

• “A man truly alone…” “has no last words.”

• “A best friend…” “…one day stands alone.”

Okay. You get the hang of it. We played this game for a while earlier this year when the novel, ONE TRUE SENTENCE was fresh, and some nights had several dozen in the game.



So, to celebrate the release of my first standalone, EL GAVILAN, over at Twitter, I’m going to be re-challenging all takers to a game of ONE TRUE SENTENCE. Our first round starts tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. We'll probably go about 30 minutes this first time.

Here’s how it rolls:

Follow me @HECTORLASSITER. Starting tonight (Saturday, Dec. 3, 8 p.m. Eastern), I’ll start One True Sentence by posting the start of a sentence.

Any takers can finish that sentence, rationing just enough of their 140 characters in order to add the hash tag #1TS.

Every Friday night, I’ll review the One True Sentences on the #1TS page, and pick the week’s winner. The one who writes the truest One True Sentence will be awarded a first edition of one of my books with their own One True Sentence inscribed inside. Our One True Sentence.

Remember, you have to use the hashtag #1TS to play (and so I can see your entry).

So…

Want to play a game?

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

MYSTERY SCENE REVIEWS EL GAVILAN


Mystery Scene has weighed in with its take on my new standalone thriller, freshly available from Tyrus books, EL GAVILAN.

Mystery Scene reviewer Derek Hill says in part:

"A thoroughly gripping crime story...(Tell) Lyon is thankfully anything but a clichéd cop... Lyon’s ability to hold on to his humanity as he moves from one tragedy into the next makes for a refreshing and fascinating character... Even more impressive is the portrayal of the imposing Hawk. El Gavilan is a dark and difficult journey at times, but it never loses sight of its characters' complexities.”

The full review is available here.


In other news, ONE TRUE SENTENCE, my earlier 2011 release (the fourth novel in the Edgar/Anthony/Gumshoe nominated Hector Lassiter series), has been named to two year's best lists.

Book People says of OTS: "McDonald looks at gun-toting Texas crime writer Hector Lassiter during his Lost Generation days in Paris, when he and his buddy Ernest Hemingway were on the hunt for someone murdering publishers. A bittersweet portrait of artists as young men."

Murder, Mystery & Mayhem also selected ONE TRUE SENTENCE as a top historical novel of 2011.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

EL GAVILAN INTERVIEW AT KIRKUS REVIEWS & MORE


As of last Friday, EL GAVILAN, my first standalone novel, is now available a good bit ahead of its official Dec. 18 release date.

At KIRKUS REVIEWS, you can read a new interview with J. Kingston Pierce regarding the book. Some material that didn't appear in the Kirkus version or our discussion can be seen exclusively at The Rap Sheet.

If I were a mogul with deep pockets, I'd adapt the novel for the screen myself. You can see my own preferred cast for such an undertaking at MY BOOK, THE MOVIE.

EL GAVILAN is also subjected to the Page 69 test HERE.

Also, a very fine, thoughtful review of EL GAVILAN can also now be found at The Drowning Machine. An excerpt:

If you're interested in learning more about EL GAVILAN, as well as a chance to win signed books and a rare prize—a legal pad filled with original, first-draft, handwritten material of the novel—you can sign up for my newsletter HERE asap.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

EL GAVILAN CHAPTER READING; SPINETINGLER REVIEW


My first standalone novel, EL GAVILAN, will be released by Tyrus Books in December (official release date Dec. 18, but copies will probably get out a bit in advance of that date).

The Nerd of Noir recently weighed in on the novel at Spinetingler:

“Folks are gonna talk about this one, dear reader... It’s a social novel that doesn’t beat you over the head with its themes and a thriller that doesn’t cheat or go too ‘big.’ It’s tender one moment and savage the next. The storytelling is organic and clean yet you can never guess where the novel will take you next. El Gavilan is big, bold socially relevant stuff delivered painlessly through tight prose and unflagging tension. In other words, it’s everything you’d hope to get from a modern day master stretching his impressive-as-all-hell wings.” You can read the full review HERE.

Over at The Comics Journal, Frank Santoro surveys the comic and creators' scene around South Beloit IL. Among those mentioned is artist Kevin Singles, who, as noted in the article, is at work on the graphic novel of HEAD GAMES for First Second. You can read more about that HERE. You can get a sneak preview of some of Kevin's work on the graphic novel (including glimpses of Hector's iconic ’57 Bel Air and swanky hacienda) HERE.

An update to my official site related to EL GAVILAN will be coming sometime next week. Including word of contests and various prizes. Also, start sharpening your pencil: later this month, we'll be once again playing ONE TRUE SENTENCE on Twitter. I start a true sentence and all types from all over the Twitterverse try to finish it, short and sharp, for a chance at a signed book or the like.

In the meantime, a new video of a reading of the opening passages of EL GAVLAN to acquaint you with the new standalone:

Saturday, October 22, 2011

WHERE STORIES COME FROM

This time next week, I'll be north of the border for the first in what will likely be a proud line of annual conferences for Canadian crime fiction fans called QuébeCrime. My fellow panelists/speakers include Daniel Woodrell, Lawrence Block, Hilary Davidson, Denise Mina, Louise Penny, Ian Rankin and more.

Last night a journalist posed a couple of questions for a Canadian newspaper article to promote the event. One was about where the ideas come from.


My next novel, EL GAVILAN, comes out in December (please consider pre-ordering HERE...end of pitch). Technically, it's my fifth novel, at least in terms of publication sequence.

But the order in which my novels have appeared have been, at best, idiosyncratic...the blessing or maybe the curse of having so much written for so long and kind of culling a back catalogue for the next book to see the light of day.

In that sense, EL GAVILAN's pedigree is strange, even by the standards of my own rather unusual publication history.

In 2005, I was on a kind of epic writing tear. I completed three novels, and a second collection of author interviews, ROGUE MALES.

As to those novels...

I've always written to music, in fact drawing more story and setting inspiration from songs than from other books or from films.

During the winter of 2005, I was writing what would become my debut novel, HEAD GAMES, a Tex-Mex period piece inspired by the music of Tom Russell, a songwriter I regard as the finest we have in America presently. I was drawing plot points from Tom's songs and even writing in little winks to a lyric here or there that I figured nobody but me would ever realize was there.

One song in particular started speaking to me, a song Russell composed with the great Dave Alvin about a California border patrolman. A song called "California Snow."

As HEAD GAMES unfolds, its narrator, fiction novelist Hector Lassiter, is in the launch phase of his own newest novel, a novel set along the southwest borderlands...a story about a border patrol agent he calls THE LAND OF DREAD AND FEAR. Sometime, while still writing HEAD GAMES, I decided I really wanted to write Hector's novel about the border patrolman. EL GAVILAN began to take conception.

In 2005, times were still good and the flow of migrants across the Mexican border and up into even my pocket of Ohio was striking. The effects in terms of social services, school stresses and crime were profound. As a journalist, I was getting a ground-eye view of the results, even in my hometown.

When, I finished ROGUE MALES, and completed a final draft of HEAD GAMES, I set down to write my own version of Hector's land of dread and fear, EL GAVILAN. I wrote that novel in a burst over the course of a spring and long, hot summer, grabbing plot points from the headlines of papers I edited and from what I was observing around me.

In late summer, I called the book done and passed it over to my agent. Casting around for something to cool down with, I wrote a short story about Hector Lassiter prepping for a hurricane in a Key West bar. When I was done, the short story felt more like a first chapter. Between October 1 and Dec. 24 of 2005, I wrote the second Lassiter novel, TOROS & TORSOS. From there, a string of six other Lassiter books followed.

EL GAVILAN is the first of my novels to appear with a contemporary setting. It draws deeply on my own experiences and observations as a journalist and marks the first book set roughly where I live. It comes from life, but it also comes from a single song written by two fine songwriters. Check out Tom performing that tune with Michael Martin:

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

BARNES & NOBLE ON EL GAVILAN & OTHER COMING READS


Coming off a starred review in Publishers Weekly, EL GAVILAN gets some pre-release attention from Barnes & Noble via Jedidiah Ayres:

"El Gavilan by Craig McDonald. McDonald's first novel Head Games was an instant classic, a terse, two-fisted, bullet-riddled and amphetmine-fast introduction to his fictitious mid-century American pulp writer Hector Lassiter. Three Lassiter books later, he's sidestepping to a new stand-alone and modern day tale of border tensions in... Ohio? Man, this looks fantastic with its James Ellroy-esque three-cop structure and lurid, ripped from the (tabloid) headlines, bloody tale of 'shifting alliances and whiplash switchbacks.' Can't wait."

Read more of Mr. Ayre's recommendations here.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Publishers Weekly: Starred Review to EL GAVILAN


After four Hector Lassiter novels, this December brings a standalone from Tyrus Books: a thriller centered on illegal immigration and its effects on a small Ohio Town.

Publishers Weekly has given a starred review to EL GAVILAN, in part, saying, "As sobering and as urgent as tomorrow’s headlines, this searing novel by Edgar-finalist McDonald (Head Games) traces the struggle of the residents of fictional New Austin, Ohio, to cope with out-of-control illegal Latino immigrants...McDonald deftly balances his “now” against the “then” backstory as he dissects one of America’s most tormenting social problems.—Publisher’s Weekly

The entire review can be found HERE.

More about the novel HERE.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

HURRICANE SEASON & CRIME FICTION




The Halifax Public Library system's Halifax Reader has offered up some timely fiction recommendations as the East Coast braces for the devastation (or the anticlimax) of Irene.

The Reader's round up of several recent crime fiction novels that are keyed to hurricanes includes TOROS & TORSOS, which opens with the infamous Key West, Labor Day weekend storm of 1935 (76 years ago, they didn't name tropical storms).

TOROS is still available in paperback and hardcover, or for a mere $2.99, you can read it in eBook format.

There's also a killer audio version available read by the incomparable Tom Stechschulte. You can listen to a sample here.

Back when TOROS was just out, I penned a piece on the 1935 hurricane. That's still available here.


Friday, July 1, 2011

THE SUN ALSO SETS: Hemingway's death, 50 years later

“There are never any…
successful suicides.”
— Ernest Hemingway



Ernest Miller Hemingway has been something of an obsession of mine, dating back...well, for decades.

I was acutely aware of Hem as a persona in the 1960s. He checked out July of ’61. I checked in July of ’62, five days short of Hemingway's own birth date.

The fact Hemingway was first a reporter probably did more to put me on the same career path as anything else that resulted in my making a living as a journalist.

And then there was that larger-than-life persona Hemingway cultivated...

If you grew up a bookish male in the 1960s, your ideal of manhood was, more likely than not, shaped by Hemingway and Sean Connery's James Bond. Those two potent, iconic pop-culture images represented twin poles of a certain brand of impossible to sustain masculinity. Hemingway, I always insist, was destroyed by his aging body and that face in the mirror that couldn't measure up to the words and protagonists he put on the page. Similarly, Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, killed himself early with cigarettes, liquor and a lifestyle that would have put his perpetually 30-something literary creation in an early grave.

"Hem had judged himself.
“'Papa' just didn’t measure up to his own standard for a man, Hector figured.
Writers don’t retire and Papa couldn’t write anymore." — from TOROS & TORSOS




A lot of Hemingway admirers — and detractors — felt or still feel suicide violated Hemingway's own stoic masculine code and revealed Hem to be some kind of hypocritical coward. I've never counted myself among those who feel suicide is an act of cowardice. Despair? Yes. Selfishness? Often. But cowardice? I can't quite agree...

Hemingway looms large in the first four of eight books in the series of Hector Lassiter novels. In the first book, Head Games, Hem casts a long shadow. The second novel, Toros & Torsos, in which Hemingway is a prominent character, ends on the morning of Hemingway's death in Ketchum, Idaho, July 2, 1961.

The third novel, Print the Legend, is an exploration of Hemingway's death, and it examines the role that the FBI and his last wife, Mary, might have variously played in Hemingway's demise. (Interestingly, Hemingway intimate A.E. Hotchner has recently revised his opinion of Hemingway's notorious FBI obsession...echoing a thesis I put forward in PTL. You can read Hotchner's essay from The New York Times here.)

Earlier this year, the fourth Lassiter novel, One True Sentence, was published. Set in 1924 Paris, the novel is driven by a plot revolving around a kind of suicide cult.



The fact Hemingway is used to such a degree in the first four published Lassiter novels has "typed" me with certain critics around the world. On a recent trip to Paris to promote two novels in which Hemingway figures prominently, a French reporter remarked, "So, you'll go out the same way, yes?" That bizarre assertion led to a discussion of whether suicide is a coward's act, or that of a courageous man. Papa's kid brother, a man who'd eventually take his own life, regarded Ernest's death as something akin to the last act of a defiant samurai...as a kind of heroic ritual aimed at beating the Grim Reaper to the KO.

In Arizona earlier this year, at a book event with James Sallis, a man in the audience offered his opinion that the Mayo Clinic and the decision to give a depressed, ailing Hemingway electroshock treatment drove Hemingway to a destructive act he would not otherwise have undertaken.

It didn't seem worthwhile to rebut the man's theory...not in that setting. But I wholly reject the notion that a failed treatment for depression put Hemingway in the ground.

Fact is, Hemingway tried to kill himself several times before he ever received shock treatment. He had guns taken from his shaking hands and hidden from him in his sad, concrete-constructed last house. He tried to walk into a spinning airplane propellor on his way to the Mayo Clinic. If certain sources can be believed, he once tried to open the door of an airplane while in flight.

Long before Hem's father turned a gun on himself, Hem often wrote of suicide. In an excised portion of Print the Legend, I counted the ways in which suicide loomed in Hemingway's fiction, including some pieces he wrote in his teens, each of which ended in self-inflicted death.



Truth is, I firmly believe Hem's own story could only have one bloody outcome.

But what does that violent end have to do with a literary legacy? A lot of articles being published on this grim July anniversary hinge on that question. But that's not a question that resonates with me.

"Trust the art, not the artist," is a kind of mantra that appears in various forms throughout the Hector Lassiter series, and, particularly, in the novels in which Hemingway figures. Writers I submit, more often than not, are better on the page than in person. "It is a dangerous thing," Hemingway said, "to know a writer." Bittersweet personal experience leads me to believe Hem was mostly right on that sad point.

On the 50th anniversary of Hemingway's death, the appropriate thing to do is not to lift a glass, or make a pilgrimage to some Hem-associated site which long ago lost any patina Hemingway himself would have recognized.

Better to crack a spine on a collection of Hem's sublime short fiction, or to delve into The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, or A Moveable Feast.



Authors live most fully in the pages of their books. Even after fifty years under a big stone marker in the Ketchum Cemetery, Hem still speaks to us through his revolutionary prose.


Excerpt from PRINT THE LEGEND:

July 2, 1961

He rose with the sun as he had every morning since childhood.

It was Sunday and the old man was alone in the house with his wife, Mary.

George, his ex-boxer pal, was in the cinder block guest quarters next door. He trusted his damaged memory on that much.

The old man shrugged on his “Emperor’s robe” that draped his wasted frame like a red circus tent. He hardly recognized his own face in the bathroom mirror — his wispy, white fly-away hair was going every which way and his smile back at himself was something terrible to behold. Passionate brown eyes each of four wives praised as his best feature were now as empty and dead as those of the trophy heads gathering dust at his abandoned Cuban Finca.

He reached for his toothbrush with a trembling hand, then thought better of it: perhaps the funk of morning mouth would mask the taste of the oiled barrels of the shotgun.

Mary had locked his guns away from him in the storeroom. She left the key to their hiding place resting on the ledge over the kitchen sink. He had seen the key there last night — as she had perhaps intended…left the key just sitting there on their first night back from the Mayo Clinic. The old man’s rattled brain kept wondering at Mary’s reason for hiding the key in plain sight.

A taunt, or invitation?

A characteristic half-assed kindness?

He snorted at the mystery of his last wife’s motive for making this he was about to do possible, and, grimacing, tiptoed down the stairs to the storeroom.

The old man selected a silver-inlaid, 12–gauge double-barreled Boss bought years before at Abercrombie & Fitch. He broke open his carefully cared-for shotgun and cradled it in the crook of his left arm. He pulled open a drawer and selected a box of shells. The old man’s hands trembled so badly he couldn’t draw any from the container. Disgusted, he emptied the shells into the drawer and scooped a handful in a fast reach for his robe’s puckering pocket. Two cartridges — more than enough to do the job — fell true; the rest pinged as they hit the floor and rolled to the four corners.

The self-declared “former writer” would normally be deep into his morning’s composition at this early hour, but that was in another country, the old man thought bitterly, and his muse was at last dead.

He trudged back up the stairs, lugging the big English-made gun. He thought of his father, making a similar last climb up a flight of stairs, intent upon effecting a bloody escape from his own intolerable half-life. He now had the answer to the question he had posed so many years before, in a story inspired by his father: “Is dying hard, Daddy?”

He knew now how easy it could be, denied your desires and the things you are driven, for better or worse, to do.

He crossed the living room to the foyer directly under Mary’s bedroom, pausing to stare out the window at the cloudless sky and rising July sun glistening on the ripples where the rocks lay thickest on the bed of the Wood River from which two deer now drank.

Gnats sported in the rapid’s spray in easy reach of the trout that gorged on them.

Chipmunks darted through the dew-kissed grass, unaware of the old man’s stalking cats.

Bald buzzards wheeled on the rising vapors.

It would be a good morning for others to hunt or hike or to go fishing...

Seppuku by shotgun: If he could wait nineteen days, he could celebrate his sixty-second birthday.

The old man’s trembling hand rooted the pocket of his robe for the first shotgun shell. His heart beat faster. Robbed of his own words, he resorted to those of another to whom he had once been improbably compared. He muttered the favorite quote over and over to himself:

A man can die but once…he that dies this year is quit for the next.

-©2010 by Craig McDonald

Thursday, May 5, 2011

THIS SATURDAY IN ANN ARBOR...

I'll be appearing with the great Brian Freeman in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the Ann Arbor District Library this Saturday at 2 p.m. The event is hosted by Aunt Agatha's bookstore.

Ann Arbor was actually the setting for a key sequence in 2010's PRINT THE LEGEND, which brought Hector Lassiter to town under rather harrowing circumstances.

As it happens, over at Jen's Book Thoughts, Jen is tracking writers reading at the nation's great independent bookstores this month as part of a "Crime Writers Caught Reading" special. The series kicked off with this shot of Mr. Freeman reading a certain 2008 Best First Novel Edgar finalist...



Speaking of great indy book stores, also very much looking forward to catching up with Robin and Jamie at Aunt Agatha's in Ann Arbor.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Conversations with Daniel Woodrell


A slightly recast version of the Daniel Woodrell interview featured in ROGUE MALES is now available online at the Mulholland Books blog. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. The interview was conducted in 2006 when WINTER'S BONE was just arriving in bookstores.

For more a more up-to-date interview, and a very excellent one at that, check out Jed Ayres' conversation with The Master here. A revelation from that interview? This collection to look forward to come The Season of the Witch.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

HEAD GAMES NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK, + MORE

With the release of HEAD GAMES to eBook format for Kindle and Nook, the entire Hector Lassiter series can now be read in digital format.

I retained digital rights on my first four books and late last year released TOROS & TOROS to Kindle and Nook. The first two books can now be read for less than $6. Books three and four, PRINT THE LEGEND and ONE TRUE SENTENCE, are also available, although their eBook prices were set by their publisher, Macmillan.

The eBook version of HEAD GAMES goes a bit beyond the original bound version, including a reader's guide with suggested discussion topics, as well as the short story, THE LAST INTERVIEW, that introduced Hector Lassiter more than five years ago. The package is rounded out by opening chapters from all four books.



This week also saw some more foreign press in terms of an online review by Paris Match of the French edition of PRINT THE LEGEND. The print edition of that magazine also contains an article about the Lassiter series and photos from my recent travels through France.

A great article and interview with me also appears in Les Echoes, and two online articles from France are also out there, one a very fine review, and the other still another interview.

On a last, French-related note, the mass market paperback edition of TOROS & TORSOS will be released soon there. Here's a look at the new cover (a wink to a certain Salvador Dali painting that features importantly in the plot).

Closing out, a teaser for another book I'll be discussing in greater detail soon. For now, a cover image, and a book trailer for this September's offering:

Sunday, April 10, 2011

POSTCARDS FROM FRANCE, 2: HECTOR LASSITER'S PARIS


My newest novel, ONE TRUE SENTENCE, is set during one week in February, 1924, in Paris.

In that novel, we see a 24-year-old Hector Lassiter, and his friend, Ernest Hemingway, both not yet known as the writers they will become, living and moving along the Left Bank of the Seine, primarily in the area known as Montparnasse. That's where all those great writers of the 1920s more or less were based: the photographers, the painters...those wicked surrealists.

It's where the famous cafés in which they wrote, drank and talked are centered — La Rotonde, Le Select, Le Dôme and La Coupole and Hemingway's own favored café, a bit of walk from those other four, La Closerie des Lilas.

Two weeks ago, I was walking the streets Hector Lassiter and Ernest Hemingway walked. In a kind of post-modern turn, I found myself using my own novel as a sort of guidebook for morning and evening tours of the quarter around interviews my French publisher had scheduled for me in the City of Lights.

ONE TRUE SENTENCE will not be published in Paris until sometime in 2012. The novel of mine that is currently new in Paris is PRINT THE LEGEND, which does include a couple of brief scenes set in 1920s Paris. (My French publisher, Belfond, calls the novel ON NE MEURT QU'UNE FOIS.)

Somehow, perhaps deliberately, when I left a crime conference in Lyon, France to spend a couple of days in Paris with reporters, videographers and photographers, I was booked into a newly refurbished ancient hotel at 9 rue de la Grande Chaumière, the Hotel Best Western La Villa de Artistes.

If I turned left out my hotel door and walked to the corner, I was just yards from the Rotonde, the Select and the Coupole — all those cafés Hector and Hem would sit inside during the winter, or on the terrace if it was warmer, watching the street traffic.

If I turned right out my hotel door, in a very few yards, the street terminated at rue Notre Dame des Champs. That's the street that Hemingway lived on in 1924, shortly after returning to France after a brief and disastrous return to journalism in Toronto, awaiting the birth of his first son. It's the street where Ezra Pound maintained (a seldom used) studio.

Turning left onto the rue Notre Dame des Champs takes one to La Rue Vavin — the street upon which Hector lived in Paris and, specifically, in ONE TRUE SENTENCE. This street view is taken from La Rue Vavin's terminus at the Jardins de Luxembourg. It's established Hector lived on the fourth floor of a building on this street (in France, you don't count the ground floor as number one).


If you walk up Vavin in this direction, you pass by the (now being restored) facade of the building in which the primary action of "Last Tango in Paris" was supposed to have been set. Continue on to the corner, and you reach this famous watering hole.

Following a rainy Sunday night train ride through the countryside from Lyon to Paris, Svetlana Pironko of Author Rights Agency, the first reader outside the inner circle to have made Hector Lassiter's acquaintance and his agent abroad, met me at the train station. I checked into hotel, then we headed to Le Select for dinner and drinks. There I also made the acquaintance of Mickey, the café's venerable cat, who is, by all accounts, somewhere around the quarter century mark, but still relatively spry. Mickey is so famous and beloved, he has a framed photograph of himself above his favorite perch at the bar. I watched to see if he sampled any of the dregs of drinks left languishing on the bar — something that might explain his longevity — but never saw him take a taste.


After dinner, we passed through others of the famous cafés, walked Hector's street to the Gardens, and to the approximate spot where Hemingway's second Paris apartment would have been located. (Svetlana noted, ruefully, many historic buildings, including Hemingway's, were lost in the 1970s. Their replacements, to be charitable, are undistinguished, at best.)

That first night established something quickly: One walks in Paris. I believe I took two cabs in two days there — one to lunch my last full day in Paris, and one to the airport.


Knowing Paris first and most vividly through Hemingway's A MOVEABLE FEAST, and having some sense of the places he'd walk any given day — and taking into account the hilliness of that quarter of Paris — I was struck by something that must have troubled Hem, particularly. Hemingway suffered severe injuries to his legs in World War 1, and actually had a reconstructed kneecap. Having twisted my ankle on a bad landing off a stage in Lyon, and now walking a hell of a lot, I figured those first couple of years in Paris, particularly, must have been murder on a fairly gimpy, if young, Papa.


That night, flummoxed by my room's temperature control system, I slept with the windows open, listening to the city and two doves that nested outside my window. Awakening the next morning, I looked out my window at the view across the rooftops of Paris. My hotel, believed by one clerk to date back to the 1700s, backed up against equally old structures. In the morning dark, before the satellite dishes and TV aerials presented themselves, it was easy to imagine the view circa 1924.

The next two days, I was visited at my hotel by magazine, newspaper, online and television interviewers. Photographers also dropped by, and we walked around the Quarter, snapping shots at Hemingway sites and other suitably dramatic backdrops.


Evenings were my own and my family at last joined me in Paris the last two nights. Crossing the Jardins de Luxembourg in a drizzling, cooling rain, we visited Hemingway's old quarter, where he first lived as an unknown writer in a working class section of narrow streets behind the Panthéon. Appropriately, there is now a bookstore under the apartment where Hemingway lived and wrote during his tyro days in the City of Lights.

74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine was where Hem and first wife Hadley lived for many of Hem's formative writing years in Paris. It was from this location he would leave on European assignments as a correspondent for papers back in Canada and the States.

Around the corner, there's another historic Hemingway sign which has history about half right. It claims Hemingway lived above the café now there for several years. Story from Hem himself goes, in the building, one in which the poet Paul Verlaine died, Ernest rented an upper room in which to write. It's in this room, blocked, that Hem describes in A MOVEABLE FEAST his attempts to calm himself with the assurance he need only write "one true sentence."

The last of my Paris interviews was held on a Tuesday afternoon at this restaurant called Kong.

ONE TRUE SENTENCE opens with a scene set on one of the most noted bridges across the Seine, the Pont Neuf. As fate would have it, Kong is located under a glass canopy of an old building overlooking the Pont Neuf.

After lunch, Svetlana and I more or less retraced Hector's walk from the bridge back along the Seine and eventually to his home on the Rue Vavin...a walk he made in light snow in February, and we made in coming rain in late March. We passed Notre Dame and the book stalls Hemingway remembers in his memoir frequenting. Browsing there, I saw French editions of James Crumley, James Sallis and Daniel Woodrell. Later that evening, I shared a similar walk with my wife and daughters.

A key figure in ONE TRUE SENTENCE is the American bookseller Sylvia Beach who ran Shakespeare and Company — a kind of bookstore, lending library and mail office for expatriate writers. She also published ULYSSES by James Joyce. Nazi occupation pretty much killed the original bookstore, but a new one in another location up against the Seine sprang up several decades ago.

For me, the association with the bookstore is Hemingway, even if he never set foot in this version.

My daughters, Madeleine and Yeats, on the other hand, tend to think of the bookstore as the one under which the world's oldest Immortal, Methos, lives, as established in the syndicated series, Highlander.

For our last evening in Paris, my wife, Debbie, Svetlana and I, journeyed by Metro to this particular café, another of Hemingway's prime spots and one immortalized in A MOVEABLE FEAST (pictured below is Svetlana and I, taken by Debbie). It is also in Les Deux Magots where Hector Lassiter shares his first dinner with the pivotal woman in his life, Brinke Devlin. We sat out on the terrace of Magots with Svetlana, facing the street as one typically does on the terraces, watching night settle over the City of Lights.


In a bookstore next door, we found a copy of this volume:

For a last toast in Paris, it seemed only appropriate to end where it began, at Hector's probably most-frequented café, on the corner of his street, in the heart of the section of Paris he loved best.

"Il n’y a que deux endroits au monde où l’on puisse vivre heureux: chez soi et à Paris." —Ernest Hemingway

("There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.")