AT THE BRINKE: ONE TRUE SENTENCE

Monday evening should bring a fairly sweeping Web site update, complete with some news about foreign editions, some new audio-video content, and, most notably, the first bits of news about the next novel, ONE TRUE SENTENCE, coming February 15 from Minotaur Books (and now available for pre-order pretty much everywhere).

Below is the cover illustration for OTS — the first Hector Lassiter novel since TOROS & TOROS to be graced by a painted cover (T&T featured a painting by the great Diego Rivera).

In a way, that's strangely appropriate, as ONE TRUE SENTENCE was written immediately after TOROS and envisioned as a kind of spiritual companion to TOROS.

Both novels take place relatively early in Hector Lassiter's crowded life. TOROS opened in 1935 (Hector was born on Jan. 1, 1900). ONE TRUE SENTENCE opens in February, 1924 and gives us our earliest, full length view of Hector. The novel's structure is also a good bit different than the previous entries in the series.

The first three novels had a tendency to spread across time. HEAD GAMES encompassed 1957, 1967 and 1970 (and flashbacked to the early 1900s). TOROS & TORSOS opened in ’35, as previously noted, then moved to the Spanish Civil War in 1937, on to post-war Hollywood in 1947 and from there to 1959 Cuba before ending on a coda set in New Mexico in 1961. PRINT THE LEGEND was largely set in 1965, before making leaps ahead to the early 1970s, the middle 1980s and wrapping up in our present year.

ONE TRUE SENTENCE is set in exactly one week of February 1924...just seven fast-moving days in Paris. The cast of characters for this one includes Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Beach, Ford Maddox Ford, William Carlos Williams and Jean Paul Fargue, among others.

This novel — one I'm particularly proud of — also introduces us to THE pivotal woman in Hector Lassiter's life, Brinke Devlin — a kind of mash-up of Louise Brooks and Craig Rice. Brinke is a mystery writer who shapes Hector into the man we've come to know through the earlier books and stories. (Check out the cover artist's version of Brinke below.)

This novel also represents a kind of turning or tipping point in the series — appropriate in its way as this was envisoned, and written, as an eight-book series.

So Monday night, if you're inclined, swing by the site: there'll be plot summaries, extended blurbs from authors Margaret Maron, Diana Gabaldon, Stefanie Pintoff, Ace Atkins, Craig Holden and Tom Piccirilli...book trailers and a longish excerpt of the opening chapters of the new novel.

Down the road, you can expect more news on tour dates, special promotional items and another limited edition chapbook featuring a short story tied to ONE TRUE SENTENCE.

NEW INTERVIEW/CONTEST

Jean Henry Mead interviews me at Mysterious Writers HERE.

Topics include strong female characters, the issue of "mystery" various "crime fiction" and more.

Also, leave a comment regarding the interview at Jean's site for a chance to win signed copies of HEAD GAMES and TOROS & TORSOS.

THURBER HOUSE EVENT THIS WEDNESDAY

This Wednesday (July 28, 2010) I'll be the featured speaker at the Thurber House Literary Picnic, talking about, and reading from, PRINT THE LEGEND.

Despite a prodigious amount of touring in recent months, I've never actually read from my work before a crowd, so this will constitute one of many firsts.

The Thurber House is the restored home of Ohio's native son James Thurber. It's located just a bit east of downtown Columbus. Thurber House is noted for its author visits and over the years has brought through a number of crime fiction writers including Lawrence Block, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly, Elmore Leonard, Lee Child and David Liss, among many others.

The evening also includes a dinner option. More information here at the Thurber House blog.

An interview with me from the Columbus Dispatch regarding the event can be found here.

Ohio author reimagines Hemingway's death as possible murder

The Sunday Columbus Dispatch's interview with me in promotion of this Wednesday's (July 28, 2010) appearance at Thurber House to discuss and read from PRINT THE LEGEND: Ohio author reimagines Hemingway's death as possible murder

FATHER'S DAY; COMING TO FRANCE THIS FALL...

The Paperback Dolls have been hosting a "Male Authors Rock" series leading into Father's Day.

I wrap up the week with a tribute to the day and some thoughts about how becoming a father changed the way I write and, to some extent, gave me voice as a fiction writer.

You can read the piece here; also, if you leave a comment, you will be entered for a chance to win a limited edition of my second novel, TOROS & TORSOS.

Speaking of TOROS, the French edition of that novel will be released this September by Belfond. Like HEAD GAMES before it, TOROS will be getting a new title for French audiences, BLACK RHAPSODIE, which is surreally close to the title of one of crime novelist Hector Lassiter's own works of fiction.



Also, HEAD GAMES will be coming out in mass market paperback in France this September. Here's a look at its new look:

ROGUE MALES NOMINATED FOR MACAVITY AWARD

Thanks to all who've written, Tweeted or posted to Facebook congratulations on ROGUE MALES being a Macavity Award finalist.

The complete list of nominees follows:



Macavity Award Nominations 2010

The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International. The 2010 Macavity Nominations are for books and stories published in 2009. Mystery Readers Journal is MRI's publication. The winners will be announced at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, in October. Bouchercon will be held in San Francisco in 2010. This award is named for the "mystery cat" of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats).

Best Mystery Novel
• Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman (Busted Flush Press)
• Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie (Wm. Morrow)
• Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins)
• The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur)

Best First Mystery Novel
• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Delacorte)
• Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (Wm. Morrow)
• A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield (Minotaur)
• The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
• A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Picador)

Best Mystery Nonfiction
• L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City by John Buntin (Random House: Harmony Books)
• Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
• The Line Up: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown & Co)
• Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (Penguin Press)
• Dame Agatha’s Shorts: An Agatha Christie Short Story Companion by Elena Santangelo (Bella Rosa Books)

Best Mystery Short Story
• “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” by Ace Atkins in Crossroad Blues (Busted Flush Press)
• “Femme Sole” by Dana Cameron in Boston Noir (Akashic Books)
• “Digby, Attorney at Law” by Jim Fusilli, (AHMM, May 2009)
• “Your Turn” by Carolyn Hart in Two of the Deadliest (Harper)
• “On the House” by Hank Phillippi Ryan in Quarry: Crime Stories by New England Writers (Level Best Books)
• “The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away” by Marcus Sakey in Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can’t Put Down (Mira)
• “Amapola” by Luis Alberto Urrea in Phoenix Noir (Akashic Books)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery
• A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge)
• In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur)
• A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd (Wm. Morrow)
• Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)
• Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear (Henry Holt)

PRINT THE LEGEND ON UNABRIDGED AUDIO

This weekend, I completed a listen to the newly released, unabridged audio version of PRINT THE LEGEND by Recorded Books and featuring Tom Stechschulte as reader.



PRINT THE LEGEND is the third of the Hector Lassiter novels and the third to be read by Tom. Tom was my first choice to serve as the voice of Hector Lassiter and all those who people Hector's world including Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, John Dos Passos, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich and a host of other historical figures.




Tom earlier read my debut novel, HEAD GAMES — one in which Hector narrates the tale — eerily bringing to life the voice and attitude of the man I'd been hearing in my head as I composed the eight novels in the Hector Lassiter series. (Yes, all eight are already written; number four, ONE TRUE SENTENCE, will be released by Minotaur Books in April 2011). You can hear a sample of Tom reading from HEAD GAMES here.



Next came TOROS & TORSOS, which is presented in third-person POV, and required Tom to embody not only a younger Hector Lassiter than the 57-year-old man of the first novel, but also to portray Ernest Hemingway; a young, obsessed Orson Welles and a woman I envisioned as the kind of ultimate femme fatale. A sample of Tom reading TOROS can be found here.

And now we come to PRINT THE LEGEND. Hector Lassiter is 65-years-old throughout most of this book, and Tom gives Hector the charisma and bearing appropriate to a legendary writer who has been dubbed "The man who writes what he lives and lives what he writes," as well as, "The Last Man Standing of the Lost Generation."



PRINT is Tom's best peformance yet, giving us not only a convincing old and ailing Ernest Hemingway, but also the writer's formidable, alcoholic and dangerous widow, Mary...a passel of Hemingway scholars, the deadly FBI agent Donovan Creedy and the book's heroine, young, Scottish and very pregnant fiction writer Hannah Paulson.

You can read an interview I conducted with Tom earlier this year here.

PRINT THE LEGEND, the recording, is available from Audible here, where you can also sample the opening passages of the recording. The audiobook is also available at your local library.