Influences

I'm often asked about the influences on my work. Well, here's a big one. I know I'm not alone in saying Dutch Leonard showed me a way to combine bad guys and bad girls, thrills, violence, humor, a little veiled social commentary, and have a good time doing it.

More on influences later.

Broward Library, Maltese Falcon

Here's a short pan around the auditorium at the Broward Library in Ft. Lauderdale. This was the next to the last event on my Hell's Bay book tour.

On the panel alongside me were Les Standiford (author of the Deal novels and recently The Last Train to Paradise and other wonderful historical works) and the ever smart and fiesty Barbara Parker (author of 13 legal mysteries set in south Florida, many with Suspicion in the title) and Oline Cogdill, the fantastic mystery reviewer of the Sun-Sentinel who acted as our moderator. That's Tara Zimmerman at the mike making the closing remarks.

We had a very interesting discussion about Hammett and Sam Spade and noir and lots of tangential issues. An attentive and engaged turnout.

Insider

Here's a little insider info about Miami.

Final Event

My final event is coming up this week.

The book tour that started on February 5th is coming to a close.

It was a great month with so many highlights I can't begin to recount them. The turnouts were wonderful, and the feedback I've gotten on Hell's Bay both from official reviewers and regular readers has been extremely positive.

One thing I learned is that there are lots of people who like Thorn. And though I've been ambivalent about the character over the years, struggling to break free of him at times, I've come to peace with all that.

The next one will include Thorn and Sugarman again. Another new shock is about to befall Thorn and will change his life and, of course, it will also threaten his life. I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I can say with some certainty that it'll be unlike any of the other Thorn novels. As in Hell's Bay, Sugarman plays a larger role.

Getting out on the road, meeting fans, staying in hotels and driving and flying from place to place, takes its toll, of course. But I'm grateful for the chance to do this part of the business, and meeting so many great folks and spending a few minutes with them has been a real pleasure for me.

After the Virginia event (above) I'm sneaking back in my cave, rolling the rock back in front of the door, and getting back to work. But thanks to everyone who took the time to come out to my events, sometimes in terrible weather, almost always in difficult traffic (especially in Florida). You've got me energized and ready to dig into the new one.

Now back to work.

Happy Easter

A little bit from Genesis on this Easter:


"And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day."

And a little bit from the Washington Post.

I admit, I might be missing something here, but I have a question.

When and why did conservatives stop being conservationists?

If we leave it for the animals to sort it out, ie. survival of the fittest, then hey, we're going to be left with only the big bad mean stuff:




And our old buddy Mothra:

Independent Bookstores

Here's another reason why I love independent bookstores. They make cakes.

This is from Inkwood Books in Tampa--a great one. Thanks to Carla and Leslie.

Heavyweight Review of Hell's Bay

Very cool to be a heavyweight.

Federer, Not

I've been playing this game, or trying to, for fifty years. I started on a tar-covered court in Kentucky, the only tennis court in town, and learned the game from studying still photos in the one tennis magazine I managed to acquire. The game was not broadcast on TV back then, and I had no local players to watch or learn from.




A friend of mine, Bryan Lesieur, and I worked for many hours every day to learn the rules and some basic shots. In the winter we sometimes swept the snow off the court so we could practice and in the summer we played shirtless for hours on that steamy court. (still paying for all that sun...)

The game has changed radically in the last couple of decades. The rackets are lighter, quicker, more powerful and require that the strokes be looser and the racket head speed be faster, and all that requires footwork be quicker. The techniques of striking the ball are so different from the days when I was watching Laver and Rosewall and Pancho Gonzalez.

My father took Bryan and me to Nashville, to watch Laver and some other pros of that era play an exhibition match on an indoor court at Vanderbilt. They stretched a green tarp with a tennis court drawn on it across the basketball floor. I was in heaven that night. I remember Laver broke several rackets from mishits that shattered the old wood frame of his Dulop Maxply. Most of those broken rackets came off his incredibly powerful backhand service return.




These days there's the Tennis Channel for 24 hour a day coverage of all things tennis. And all of the grand slam tournaments are shown from the early rounds to the finals and lots of other out of the way tournaments are on the tube too. It's a great time to be a tennis fan.

But the game is even more of a challenge. I'm still tinkering, still trying to get my feet to move faster, still trying to hit my serve with a bit more kick. Maybe next week I'll finally get that forehand sharp-angled crosscourt I've been working on for the last fifty years.

This first clip is a service return then an approach to hit a backhand volley. My opponent, Fred Begeman, has a great "buggy-whip" crosscourt forehand. I think this one went wide.





And this one shows my first and second serve, and backhand and forehand. I see I've got to stay more nimble through both strokes. Go forward, hit through the ball. Man, this game is tough.

Maltese Falcon

Broward County is participating in The Big Read, a national program to promote reading. Read more here.

And also here.
Les Standiford and Barbara Parker and I will be speaking on a panel next Tuesday (the 25th of March) at 7PM in the Broward Library downtown Ft. Lauderdale.

Read the book, then come. Or just come, and then go read the book. Or even watch the movie. Should be fun:

A Third of Your Life

Pillows, pillows, pillows. After reading this article in the Post this morning, I'm ready to head off to the pillow store.

A lot of hunching at the computer has made me a lot more focused on pillows. And being on the road lately for the book tour, sleeping on all those, ugh, so-called pillows, with various creatures roaming all over them...double ugh...

For instance, here's our friend the dust mite:



Here's a gathering of the little buggers:


















And here they are in motion:







Might be about time to toss the old fungus ridden, drool drenched, mite infested neck and shoulder distorter.