Pulp Fiction discussion

We are glad to have some authors and writers in this group and we want you to be able to promote and engage others in discussions about your book. So here is a place to do this (in a non-spamming way). If you do start a topic about a book of yours, we would love it if you remained active in that thread so people can talk to you about it.

Knowledge Lost, 7/14/2011
For any other writer related topics; such as blogging, writing processes and even book publications, this is the place for you too.

Bloggers talking about their blog or promoting giveaways, please do it here.

Even the most adept crime writer might not be able to translate what cops see in real life. Read 'The scene of the crime' in my Feb. 7 blog (posted Tuesday morning after 4 a.m.): http://kisshergoodbye.authorsxpress.com

Is it ok to post a web comic? I have one I am working on and its pretty hard boiled and would fit this genre well.

I'll be happy to do it for you.
Check out Michael's impressive Runnin' with a Gun webcomic here:

http://runninwithagun.ca/

Okay, I'll plug my story, "Valerie", along with some really terrific masters of noir in Phoenix Noir. I was very lucky to be part of such a wonderful collection of authors and stories about Phoenix, including Megan Abbott and Jim Sallis among others.

Melki wrote: "I'll be happy to do it for you.
Check out Michael's impressive Runnin' with a Gun webcomic here:

http://runninwithagun.ca/"

Thanks :). I owe you a brandy.

I've started reading it, it's a great webcomic

Knowledge Lost wrote: "I've started reading it, it's a great webcomic"
Thanks so much.

I am new to goodreads and still learning my way around. I am enjoying this group, but have been hesitant to promo by story, as I am hoping to avoid any social faux pas while getting up to speed.

That said, I do have a free promo going on this weekend for the Kindle and would love feedback and discussion if any are interested. It is a gritty crime story that is very much on the hard-boiled side. You can link to it here. Free for the Kindle through 8/6. Thanks.

http://www.amazon.com/Bona-Fide-Jobs-...

Back by popular demand: FREE Noir short story from Craig Faustus Buck

RP Dahlke's review sparked a demand for another free offer, so here it is, this weekend only: http://www.amazon.com/Dead-End-ebook/...

Here's her review:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Debut September 23, 2012
By RP Dahlke
Amazon Verified Purchase
When the author posted at All Mystery e-news yahoo group that this short story was Free for the weekend, I figured it would be perfect for an hour of bedtime reading.... and it was, and so much some. This very skillfully written short has all the elements that one would expect from say, Michael Connelly or Lee Child. Set in LA, it's at turns humorous, gritty, violent and poignant... with an ending that is nothing short of a gut punch. I really hope the author is writing a full-length novel, because I predict that once he gets the first one published, his fans will be howling for more.

Hi

To celebrate the upcoming launch of Heavy Duty Trouble, the third book in my hardnosed biker crime series The Brethren MC trilogy, for a limited time we are giving away Heavy Duty People absolutely FREE as a weekly e-serial with a chapter delivered each week direct to your inbox.

The link is at http://bad-press.co.uk/free-biker-thr...

Grab yours today!

I'm trying my hand at writing noir. I'd like to get some opinions on a short story entitled, "In the Bag." Feel free to add me as a friend if you enjoyed it.

http://blubberisland.wordpress.com/20...

Fellow Lovers of Noir,
This weekend, starting today, grab a free download of my noir novella, Philly Rouge. It's a quick read and you won't be disappointed. Be kind and post a review:
http://www.amazon.com/Philly-Rouge-eb...
By Jonathan Worlde, author of critically acclaimed
Latex Monkey With Banana

Looking for readerly engagement with my work of Tropical Crime Noir, Copacabana. To help extend its reach, I've made it available for free today and tomorrow. Please take the time out to download it and let me know what you think in due course.

http://www.amazon.com/Copacabana-Seri...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Copacabana-Se...

Many Thanks,

Jack

Nice links

Starting tomorrow, June 6th I'm running a Father's Day special. "Walking Backwards" and "Two Thursdays" will both be on sale in the print and Kindle versions. This weekend only at Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/C.-Martin-Stepp...

Thrilled to announce the release of 'Monterey Noir: The Barker Mysteries' for the Kindle - soon to be available on Nook and elsewhere too.
Monterey Noir

Good day,

Quick note on last few days of giveaway:

5 readers have a chance to take a free trip to "Telegraph Hill", a hard-boiled PI novel set in San Francisco. If you enjoy noir masters Paker, Lehane and Hammett, you may want to put Telegraph Hill on retainer.

"5 star crime fiction...The prose is pure Golden Gate." -- Book review.

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

This work of Tropical Crime Noir is available to download for FREE - today and tomorrow:

Having retired from the crime world, Pete Murphy relocates from Liverpool to Rio de Janeiro. Here he throws himself into the wild and sordid nightlife of Copacabana in an effort to forget that brutal murder which first forced him into exile.

This self-destructive routine is interrupted by the arrival of John Mullan, a young petty thief who has long idolized Pete, and is now on the run from associates back home. A situation further complicated by the £200,000 of stolen money which John has brought with him.

As the repercussions of this theft become ever more clear, the scene is set for an explosive showdown.

Pete Murphy is about to meet the ghosts of his past head-on.

In Copacabana…

This dark, atmospheric work will be available for free today and tomorrow (25th & 26th July) via the Amazon link below.

smarturl.it/jr 

Many thanks in advance for all and any kind attention.

Jack

September special! Walking Backwards and Two Thursdays will be on sale at Amazon for the entire month of September. $5.95 USD for the print version and only $2.99 for the Kindle. http://www.amazon.com/C.-Martin-Stepp...

JAne Brooke, 9 books at Amazon AND how does a stunning blonde 16 year old runaway from a private girls school become a "CONTRACT KILLER" ten years later for the NJ Mob (The Hit Womans Assassination Handbook) CHeers Jane from Londo9nThe Hit Woman's Assassination HandbookJane, Vegas Pi ALSO...JANE, VEGAS PI

From Today, October 9th to October 13, ebook samples of our hard boiled crime fiction novels are available on Amazon for FREE!

"Original Sin City 20,000 Word Sampler" contains the first 9 chapters of our Barry Award Nominated novel "Little Mexico" and the first 3 chapters of its sequel "In the Name of the Father."

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FLA8KN8

Nov 6: HOW DO PRIVATE EYES DO THAT? 99 cents (regular price $4.99)

Nonfiction book about P.I.s written by a P.I. For detective/mystery readers + writers.

Remains on sale:

Nov 7: $1.99
Nov 8: $2.99
Nov 8: $3.99

How Do Private Eyes Do That?

(Jane, Vegas PI) Hard core film noir...SEE REVIEWSJane, Vegas Pi

I just started promoting Welcome Back, Jack!, my first full length Mystery & Thriller novel. Word on the street has been great, but like everyone else, I'd like to get a wider audience.

http://amzn.to/1el1zPA

Tray Knight was just walking home from a friend's house. Maybe it was the hoodie, maybe it was his race, either way, Tray wound up dead.

The cops did it, the politicians don't care, and the news media is silent. But Black Walnut cares, and he's gonna open a can of whoop-ass in Chicago!

Black Walnut

Book 1 of the Vigilante Justice series. It gets pulpy.

1973 - Hong Kong. Inspector Jim Sharpe is at the end of his rope and facing corruption charges. He'll be off the force by the end of the week, that is until a dead body with a bloody Tarot card gripped in its hand shows up.

Now Jim's called onto the case, but he's more interested in going up against triad gang members than catching a serial killer.

That all changes when Jim starts learning what the cards mean, and the clues will point him toward something no one wants to see.

Tarot Card Killer

The Gwousz Affair by Gary Anderson is currently being promoted as an ebook on amazon. Get your copy now for only 99 cents. Available from now till Saturday May 17. http://www.amazon.com/Gwousz-Affair-G...

Cornelius Planke is having a bad decade. First, his wife of twelve years leaves him for another guy. Then he is canned from the force for no good reason that he can think of. Now an underemployed P.I., he finds himself looking for the killer of a young Developed heifer. The hard-drinking Planke wades into an underworld peopled by Neo-Carnivores, the Meat Mafia, bovine Salvationists, Skullhead scientists, dezoe actors, and rebel Euro-Domestics who are fighting for the rights of undeveloped ungulates in the colonies. Along the way, he falls for the seductive Dween, a Developed ewe. Trapped in a web of deceit, lies, and untold dangers, Planke soon realizes that nothing is as it seems—and more importantly, that the present caper may cost him his heart, and probably his life.

Gritty, funny, speculative, and gripping, The Gwousz affair is cutting edge Sci-Fi Noir for the 21st century.

Hi everyone, Here's a recent review of a collection of pulp stories called the Texas-Siberia Trail by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson who also founded DC Comics. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It's published by Off-Trail Publications and they specialize in reprints of old pulps. http://offtrailpublications.com
There are lots of other titles that you all may find interesting.
MWN is my grandfather and I'm collaborating on an upcoming bio with Gerard Jones who wrote Men of Tomorrow. If any of you read the book please let me know as I'm interested in feedback. Thanks so much!

DANCER'S RAIN on sale at $.99

http://www.amazon.com/DANCERS-RAIN-Do...

‘Even with all the pulpiness, suspense and thriller elements that exist in ‘Dancer’s Rain’, Sutherland writes some insightful, thought provoking, and beautiful prose bordering on the poetic… the novel transcends its genre at times, causing the sexual encounters and violence to clash against its conservative rural setting. Is it unsettling? Absolutely. It blurs the lines between right & wrong, reality & fantasy, and life & death. This is a serious bit of writing hidden within an exploitation genre.’ – Tim Rayne, CHSR-FM

Great idea for a thread; but it looks like another case where all discussion sinks under the weight of 'author promo'. The insensitivity of this is just astounding.

The result: not a very enticing or thoughtful environment to actually discuss the writer's craft.

Hi All

So I'm in the final stages of polishing off draft 2 of my first novel, which is crime fiction, and would like to solicit feedback from whomever is interested in the genre and willing to dedicate their time to read it.

I would send it to you via hard-copy (I'm a traditionalist) and include a postage paid envelope for return. Feel free to write/scribble/cross/add anything you think will improve the story.

A few things:
1. It comes to about 500 A4 pages, as it's double spaced and has larger font for proof-reading.
2. I would like to receive it back by Christmas time to give me the holiday break to work on it.

If you are interested please send me your postal address via message/email.

Thank you for your consideration
Alex

Set in 1946, just after the war, Return of the Falcon should interest WWII and pulp mystery readers. Here's a brief description:

A fortune in Nazi stolen art leaves a London port. Among the treasures, the infamous Maltese Falcon… 

… death is at the heart of it, death and the blood of its victims. Its fabulous wealth has lured greedy prey across the centuries. Chicago P.I. Joe Ganzer, a haunted former WWII espionage agent, gets trapped in this fowler's net by a mysterious Russian beauty trying to locate her uncle, a former Soviet general. Her story doesn't add up but her money does. And an old pal circling the drain needs Joe's help to get him out of a treacherous jam that may claim both their lives. Dark days are about to descend on Joe Ganzer. He will run a gauntlet of Cold War spies, Nazis, stolen booze, stolen art, and at the end of it all is the Falcon of Malta...the stuff of nightmares.

Click the thumbnail for more.....

The Conclusion of - The Case of the Guilty Grocer

bit.ly/Greyson_Sloane-Conclusion

Howdy all,

I've written a new post about some of the shady historical characters and incidents that influenced my latest novel, Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945. The story:

The Wild West of Occupied Germany

I've published three crime novels, and they are decidedly not pulp. An early one was In Uz featuring two successive detectives, the first professional and the second amateur, neither of whom solve the crime. More recently I've written two more: As Told To and The Sea. The first of these is a romp, the story made up is a contest between two long-married old people to see if one can introduce a plot twist the other can't accommodate. In the third one the suspects all appear one by ones, the crime occurs, and they all disappear again, one by one, leaving only the detective.

The last tw are print-on-demand/e-books. I'm a book artist an was using these texts in my books, and decided that it might be a good idea to publish the texts separately, so I did.

I also havwe a theoretical interest -- I joined this group initially to ask a question of the experts about noir. The theory is in an academic book published this year The Figure of the Detective: A Literary History and Analysis

Just started a blog to promote my novel, Blood on the Cobblestones. Hope folks might take a look and decide to give it a read.
thanks Blood on the Cobblestones

New Tartan Noir. Although I've been on the list for a while, and have added to my ever growing TBR list with some of the recommendations I’ve gleaned, my reading has been limited while I’ve been writing and promoting my second gritty Glasgow crime novel, Blue Wicked. Here are the details:
“The tortured corpses of young alcoholics and drug addicts are turning up in Glasgow and only unlikely investigator Eddie Henderson seems to know why. When he tries to tell the police, his information is ridiculed and he's told to stop wasting their time.
One officer, junior detective Catherine Douglas, believes him, and together they set out to discover why the dregs of Glasgow's underbelly are being found, dead and mutilated....”
It’s a bit gruesome in places, so not for the faint-hearted. 'Blue Wicked' is being reviewed very well so far, and there’s links to the reviews and four free chapters at www.bluewicked.co.uk
I’d love feedback if anyone fancies reading it. Thanks for the opportunity to post this.

I love pulps and by pulps I don't mean a general idea of noir mysteries or 1940's and 50's paperbacks but "real" pulps. What do I mean by that? The definition of pulp has changed especially since Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction. Real pulp fiction refers to the incredibly prolific all-fiction magazines that began at the turn of the century and lasted into the late 1930's. These adventure and hero stories became the foundation of the comics.

If you don't know these magazines or their history I'd urge you all to check out any convention where you can peruse boxes and boxes of pulps plus great reprints. There are some terrific publishers who do very nice reprints at reasonable costs.

And yes, I have a vested interest but I also really love the pulps! Most people who know about my grandfather associate him with the beginnings of DC Comics but my favorite part of his life is his pulp adventure stories and that was how I got in to pulps. There is some formulaic writing for the pulps that were house names but many of the adventure and hero stories are fun reads and more than a few authors were excellent writers. I could go on and on obsessively about this genre and I do every chance I get to hang out with the guys and a few women who also love "real" pulps.

If you want to check out a pulp convention and you're in the Ft Lauderdale area, you'll find me at Pulp Adventurecon this Saturday 2/21 at Universal Palm Hotel. I'd love to talk pulps!

I have tried to make a list of what the publishers wanted. They needed to create product, not art. But the rules were somehow helpful to writers interested in the soul of America, and its fantasies. You can see my list at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pulp-A...

Hello all,

Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945 was reviewed in the May 2015 issue of the Historical Novels Review. My favorite line:

"If you like the noir novels and films of the mid-20th century, you will enjoy the prose and the femme fatale of Liberated."

Here's the link: http://historicalnovelsociety.org/rev...

THE TIES THAT BIND, a Kate Stanton Hollywood Mystery - FREE on Amazon May 18 - 22, 2015

Hi Everyone -

In order to kick off the publication of my new book in the Kate Stanton Hollywood Mystery series called THE CROSSING AT BLAISDELL PARK on May 22, 2015, I'm offering another book in the series free all week called THE TIES THAT BIND through to May 22, 2015. Like all my other books in the series, it's a standalone book. I hope you have the chance to check it out. Now here's a little about THE TIES THAT BIND:

Kate Stanton's former son-in-law, Dr. Eric Devane, is a prominent Beverly Hills doctor who's now engaged to beautiful Brooke Connelly, only a few years older than his eldest daughter. With the impending arrival of his and Brooke's baby through a surrogate -- who happens to be his eldest daughter's best friend -- Eric's life has become very complicated, but not nearly as complicated as his fiancee's past.

Four years ago, Brooke Connelly made the biggest mistake of her life when she betrayed her mobster boyfriend by tipping off the intended victim of his next hit. Her timely intervention had nearly cost Brooke her life after she was beaten and left for dead by her boyfriend in retaliation for her betrayal. In desperation, Brooke turned to one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas for protection -- unaware that her arrangement with Clint Staebler was non-negotiable and permanent. Brooke has since relocated to L.A., where she's the general manager of a popular restaurant and nightclub, both owned by Clint Staebler. With her recent engagement to Eric, Brooke is determined to cut all ties to her past but the cards seem to be stacked against her when Eric finds out about her past relationship with Clint Staebler and demands to know where her loyalties lie. Caught between a murderer and a man who refuses to let her go at all costs, Brooke plays her one trump card in the hopes that it will be enough to sever her ties to her past, once and for all. In this sweeping murder mystery set against the glitzy backdrop of Vegas and the powerhouse that is Hollywood, past mistakes are never forgotten and revenge is what makes it all worthwhile...

The Ties That Bind

This is in response to Feliks’s post about wanting to discuss the writer’s craft. Just as I was about to hit the publish button on my first novel (in the interest of “sensitivity” it is unnamed ;-)), I ran into a series of Youtube videos by Ellen Brock, offering advice to writers. Each of the videos (usually 4-5 minutes long) focuses on a different aspect of novel writing. I confess I already knew almost everything she said, but in the heat of composition I had forgotten. Each video is concise and well-presented. I found them to be enormously helpful and they caused me to undertake a major rewrite of my novel (which, of course, will remain unnamed). She also has a blog that’s worth a look. The link is in the description of each video.

Hey Guys,
These are about oligarchs, corruption, theft, embezzlment, murder and other "nice" felonies, moral values and their absence, controversial characters and their sidekicks and all the goodies you expect in a hard boiled pulp. It's also about current Russian aggression and its roots. In case you want to take a look, here they are:
Rise of an Oligarch Mortal Showdown

If you're going to be at Richmond Comic Con this weekend please come to the panel I'm presenting called Spawn of the Pulps: The Twisted Roots of Comics. Authors Tom De Haven, Tom Inge and Danny Fingeroth will be joining me. We'll be talking a lot about how pulps influenced comics. Thanks so much.

http://www.wizardworld.com/home-richm...

Greetings everyone! To promote my futuristic pulp series, CYBIL LEWIS, I'm offering the short fiction piece for 0.99-Reunited: A Cybil Lewis Story via Amazon and it's free if you have Amazon Unlimited.

The series' novels are published by Parker Publishing, LLC and are available in print from online and concrete bookstores.Nicole Givens Kurtz

My new book, "Dead Heat with the Reaper," a pair of noir novellas published by All Due Respect, is out this month on ebook and paperback through Amazon and the reviews so far have been pretty positive. I would love to get some feedback from readers. The Amazon page for the book is: http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Heat-Reape... Love to hear from you all.

Hello,

My debut novel The Red Storm: A Mystery was the winner of the Minotaur Books/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel Competition introducing a black ex-boxer P.I. working in 1930s New Orleans

I'm also doing a Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win one of two signed harback copies: http://tinyurl.com/gul9bp5

Melki wrote: "I'll be happy to do it for you.
Check out Michael's impressive Runnin' with a Gun webcomic here:

http://runninwithagun.ca/"

And what a classic comic that is!

BTW, hi, all - I'm a Melbourne-born, Tokyo-based writer and artist, and I have a new crime/noir novel out on June 30 titled Black Sails, Disco Inferno.

Basically? It's a revisionist take on the medieval yarn of Tristan and Iseult, set in the 1970s.