Book Deals, Births and Buddies

This past week has been crazy and I have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll start by saying how delighted I am that the wonderful people at Snubnose Press will be publishing my novella NEVADA THUNDER.  It’s a fast, hard-boiled ride full of dive bars and bad decisions. Here’s the blurb:

The sun isn’t the only thing that beats on you in the Nevada desert. Johnny Gregson learned that the hard way. He used to be a fighter, sooner or later people will realize that he still is.

 His only knock down came from Carlo Martinez, but it didn’t happen in the ring. Martinez is no boxer. He’s the Las Vegas front man for a Mexican drug cartel. When Gregson refused to throw a fight, Martinez paid him back with a trumped up drug charge. Call it a technical K.O.

 Gregson did the time and came out a little older and maybe a little wiser. He didn’t want revenge, but that wasn’t going to stop his surrogate sister, Kara from trying to get it for him. Her naive attempt at blackmail has landed them both in a world of trouble. Part of the problem is that Kara doesn’t have anything on Martinez; the other part is Martinez believes she does.

If everything goes to plan NEVADA THUNDER should hit the shelves by the end of the year. It goes without saying that I’m pretty stoked about the whole thing and honored to be joining the Snubnose family.

I owe a lot of people a lot of things (money mostly), but I also owe a big thank you to my Zelmer Pulp brothers, Chuck Regan, Brian Panowich, Isaac Kirkman and Ryan Sayles for reading the early drafts of NT. They helped me make it a much better book.

Talking of ZP it’s been a landmark week for Ryan Sayles too, his wife, Donna gave birth to a happy and healthy baby boy on Thursday. Congratulations guys and welcome to the world Gus!

Brian Panowich also had some good news this week, but that has to remain under wraps for now. All I can say is well done, man. It’s no less than you deserve.

Some other happenings:

The Godfather of Brit Grit, Paul D. Brazill has my favorite British writer, Gareth Spark over at his Out Of The Gutter column this week. You can check it out here: BRIT GRIT ALLEY

Tucson writer and all round good guy, Chris DeWildt was interviewed on Bud Smith’s radio show the other night. He talks about writing, noir and reads a couple of stories from his excellent new collection, DEAD ANIMALS. Here’s the link: THE UNKNOWN SHOW

Tom Pitts, author of the fast-paced thrill fest, PIGGYBACK is also hitting the airwaves this week on Nikki Palomino’s Monday night show, DAZED. Tune in from 10pm EST on the 9th: DIGITAL RADIO 103

Finally, no blog post is ever complete without mentioning Joe Clifford. His band, The Wandering Jews have just released a new album, ALL THE PRETTY THINGS. If you dig the rock storytelling of Springsteen and the driving melodies of Gaslight Anthem then you really need to hear this. You can download it right now from iTunes: ALL THE PRETTY THINGS

Plenty to hammer down on there, folks.