Hard Twisted: The True Story

With the publication of my sophomore novel in November, an eighteen-year odyssey comes to its conclusion.  I hope you’ll agree that the story behind the story of Hard Twisted is one that’s worth sharing.

In November of 1994, my wife and I drove from Los Angeles to a remote bed & breakfast in southeastern Utah, where we planned to spend the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with friends from Colorado.  This is America’s red-rock country – a hallucinogenic landscape of buttes and spires, mesas and gorges – and is among our nation’s most beautiful, and, paradoxically, least populous regions.  It lies at the northern edge of the Navajo reservation, where the San Juan River divides Monument Valley to the south from the towns of Mexican Hat, Bluff, and Blanding to the north. Continue reading →

The Summer of Jack

Jack Kirby  (1917-1994)

For most Americans of a certain age, the summer of 1968 is viewed as a kind of dark chasm that yawned between the Summer of Love and the Summer of Woodstock.  It was, after all, the summer of Martin, the summer of Bobby.  Of My Lai and Biafra.  It marked the rise of Nixon and the fall of Prague Spring.  It hosted the Chicago Convention.

Continue reading →

Puppets in the Woodwork

A debate has raged in recent years within the auctorial echo chamber, pitting advocates of “traditional publishing” against the insurgent forces of “independent publishing.”  Traditionalists – whom I’ll define as authors electing to cast their lot with one of the Big Six publishing conglomerates, under an advance-against-royalties compensation model – have decried the diluvial onslaught of self-published, print-on-demand, and e-book-original content flooding the marketplace, overwhelming the filters through which literature has historically passed on its long and wending journey to your neighborhood bookstore.  Independents, conversely, delight in the democratization of publishing occasioned – dare we say kindled? – by the advent of the e-reader, and regard as both anachronistic and paternalistic the notion of ceding 80% or more of their book’s sale proceeds to a New York publishing house. Continue reading →

What Stop, You’re Killing Me is Reading This Month

Most of the reviews for HUSH MONEY have included some variant of the phrase ‘we hope this is the first in a series.’  Here’s another, from the good folks at Stop, You’re Killing Me.  Which is all good, because Jack will be back in GREEN-EYED LADY, coming in May:

Hush Money (Minotaur 2012) introduces Jack MacTaggart, a junior lawyer with Henley & Hargrove, the oldest and snobbiest law firm in Pasadena, California. When socialite Sydney Everett’s champion show-jumper Hush Puppy dies unexpectedly, Jack is assigned the insurance claim. The vet doesn’t find any sign of trauma and gives a verdict of cardiac failure, but the insurance company suspects foul play. Jack finds the brittle and calculating Sydney Everett distasteful, but is instantly attracted to her stable manager, Tara Flynn, who sincerely mourns Hush Puppy’s death. Tara, a grand prix equestrian competitor, helps Jack understand the complex world of professional show-jumping and provides a disconcerting riding lesson to demonstrate the physical strength needed by the riders. Jack’s investigation into Sydney’s stables uncovers high monthly payments that look like blackmail, and then the necropsy on Hush Puppy turns up a parasitic infection that appears to have been intentional. A sudden death that just could be murder adds to the tension, and Jack fears that he might be the next victim. Jack is an engaging narrator, his quips balanced by true empathy for those he feels are deserving of help. His other client is Victor Tazerian, a trash collector whose insurance company refuses to pay for a medical procedure that might cure his leukemia. The procedure requires harvesting Victor’s bone marrow while his leukemia is in remission, which the insurance company claims is an unnecessary procedure since Victor is not sick while in remission. The quirks and tricks of legal negotiations are presented with humor in this fast-paced legal thriller, hopefully the first in a series.

You can read about more books on their August list here

On Perseverance

This year’s New York City Marathon is scheduled for Sunday, November 4, 2012.  Which means that, if you’ve registered in advance, and if you’re following a traditional 18-week prep schedule, you’ll need to begin your training regimen . . . already.  So put down that Krispy Kreme, lick your fingers, and figure out where it was you last saw those running shoes . . .

But wait, you say, I’m not a serious runner.  In fact, I get tired driving 26 miles.  And even if I were tempted to do something as loony as train for a marathon, God help me, what about my (fill in the blank: job, family, novel-in-progress)?

Continue reading →

News Alert: I’m Gonna Learn How to Fly!

Or, at least, I feel like I will after learning of the generous and lyrical praise of Hard Twisted from British director, writer, producer and actor Sir Alan Parker, perhaps best known for Bugsy Malone, Fame, and The Life of David Gale:

Greaves’s deft prose twinkles like Okie campfires (in the night). Storytelling at its most compelling: raw, yet tender and as dangerous as warm moonshine breath on a young girl’s neck.

My deep thanks to Sir Parker.