My Choices for Most Notable Books of the Year

I wasn’t going to do this. You know, post a list of my favorite reads of the year. There were just so many, is the thing. But seeing all the other “Best of” lists got me thinking, and I even posted a brief thing on Facebook about a couple of my favorites, so… what the hell.

Most of my reading this year was divided between Westerns (old and new) and a bunch of small-press indie releases, mostly on e-book. In fact, I don’t think I read a single new book all year that was put out by one of the major publishers. That wasn’t by design; it just worked out that way. But you know what? I didn’t miss the Big Boy Releases at all.

Anyway, sticking solely to novels, novellas and short story collections released in 2011, and in no particular order, here’s what I consider the cream of the crop:

THE LAST DEEP BREATH, Tom Piccirilli
GUN, by Ray Banks
CHOKE ON YOUR LIES, Anthony Neil Smith
MONKEY JUSTICE, Patti Abbott
SMOKE, Nigel Bird
BRIT GRIT, Paul D. Brazill
TOXIC REALITY, Katherine Tomlinson
THE END OF EVERYTHING, Megan Abbott
THE ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE & GIDEON MILES, VOL. 2, Edward A. Grainger
ONE DEAD HEN, Charlie Williams
PULP INK, edited by Bird & Rhatigan
THE CHAOS WE KNOW, Keith Rawson

… and I’m going to add two more last-minute choices—last minute because one of them I only finished this morning, and the other I’m likely to finish before the night is over and unless it takes some sudden weird turn into shitsville it belongs here. They are:

SOUTHERN GODS, John Horner Jacobs
and
TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT, Andrew Bergen

That’s 14 books out of almost 200 I read this year, so please don’t feel too bad if your book isn’t on this list. You can be sure that, if I featured it here at this blog, I loved it.

Happy New Year.

A Self-Indulgent Look Back at 2011

We all know that the only real closure happens only once in our lives, right at the end. And it’s inevitably pretty anti-climactic. So we fill our days with any excuse possible to imagine a fresh start ahead of us and an end to all the tribulations behind. Nothin’ wrong with that.

That’s why we like these year-end retrospectives and “best of/worst of” lists. They give us a nice sense of having accomplished something, even if that something is nothing more than having survived another 365 days.

Again, nothin’ wrong with that. I like them too. We have to grab up closure wherever we find it, I reckon.

Having said that, 2011 was, writing-wise, a solid year for me. My goals were hazy and ill-defined, but I managed to achieve many of them despite that.

Be warned, the following bit is very self-indulgent, and no one would blame you for not giving a shit. It’s all about me, my own personal bit of looking back and puffing out my chest in self-satisfaction.

My first novel, THE BASTARD HAND, came out in March, and over the course of the year continued to garner good notices if not terrific sales. In the last couple weeks of the year, it kept popping up on those afore-mentioned “Best of” lists, which, no lie, is immensely gratifying. Sales spiked on it because of that, bringing promises of coffee and cig money in the future.

About half-way through the year, almost on a whim, I put out myself a story collection called DIG TEN GRAVES. About half the stories were previously published, the other half new to the collection, and again I was relieved to see it received enthusiastically by readers. Two of the stories in particular, “It Will All Be Carried Away” and “Incident on a Rain-Soaked Corner”, seemed to have struck a chord. “Carried Away” was even nominated for storySouth’s Millions Writers Award.

I made a deal in October to do a series of weird Western e-stories for Trestle Press, the first of them being “That Damned Coyote Hill”. Oddly enough, this story wound up being the most successful of my projects for the year (sales-wise) and it’s still doing pretty well, 2 ½ months later.

I also did two chapters of something called “Deadland USA” for Trestle, but, despite them getting fairly good notices, they were pretty much D.O.A. and their future is uncertain.

Over the course of the year, I managed to place short stories in several e-zines and print mags that I’d long wished to be associated with. Necrotic Tissue, Chi-Zine, Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, and Pulp Metal, among a couple others.

I was invited to contribute a story to Luca Veste’s anthology OFF THE RECORD.

I was given the opportunity to write a Gideon Miles story for Edward A. Grainger, called “Miles to Little Ridge”, which met with more success than I could have imagined.
And finally, the brilliant Snubnose Press agreed to put out my second full-length novel, CITY OF HERETICS, in 2012.

Two or three more great opportunities presented themselves just in the last month or so, but they are stories for this time next year, as they’re still in the early stages.

So that’s it. Not a bad showing for a guy who, this time last year, had next to nothing to show for himself, eh?

And please don’t get me wrong. I know that, as self-indulgent and self-congratulatory as this post has been, I’m perfectly aware that none of it means anything, really. But every little worldly success we encounter provides a little bit of solace, a little bit of self-esteem to cling to while the world goes about its usual business of kicking our asses.

Progress might be an illusion, but I’m well-pleased with this particular fantasy.

My goal for this time next year: Make some fuckin’ money at this.

Why I don't consider myself a book reviewer

I talk about books a lot here at Psycho-Noir, but I’m not a book reviewer, despite appearances. And this is not a book review blog. Honestly, I don’t know what this blog is. Aside from the roster of guest posts featured recently, the bulk of posts have been either self-promotional, rants vaguely related to writing or reading, and fan-boyish chatter about books I enjoyed.

But that’s the thing: it’s only ever books I enjoyed. Like most of you, I read a great deal, and if I like a book I’ll mention it here. But for every five books I read, two or three don’t do much for me. If I was an actual book reviewer, I’d include them here, dissect them, point out all their flaws. But I’m not interested in doing that.

No, if a book doesn’t work for me, I ignore it. I have no desire to tear down other people’s work in a public forum, especially if the writer in question is struggling to be read, to be noticed. That just seems cruel, like making fun of someone struggling to walk again after being in a wheelchair for years.

Yes, you might say, but what if the writer in question really does suck and would be well-served to know that and stop vomiting his crappy prose all over the publishing world? Good point, sure, but you know what? Not my job. I’m not judging actual critics and reviewers who do that, I’m just saying I have no interest in it (with a few exceptions; fuck you, James Patterson and Lee Child, you suck).

So in the coming year, I intend to stop referring to my book chatter as “reviews”. They’re “recommendations”, that’s what that are. And you’ll see lots of recommendations in the coming months.

Kindle Review: DEADLY HONEYMOON, by Lawrence Block

One of the happiest events in publishing this last year was the flood of re-releases on e-book of Lawrence Block titles. His fans finally got to grab up inexpensive editions of some of the Master’s earliest work, and see an entirely different aspect of his vast talents.

One of the earliest of these new e-book releases was DEADLY HONEYMOON, a novel Block wrote in 1967 and which has been in and out of print over the years ever since. I was particularly excited about this one, since I’d been buying and reading the Hard Case Crime reprints and enjoying the hell out of them. According to Block’s essay at the back of the book, DEADLY HONEYMOON was inspired by his friend Donald Westlake, and was his very first hardcover release.

In essence, this is a simple, relentless revenge tale. Dave and Jill are young newlyweds on their honeymoon, bright-eyed and eager for the future, until they witness a murder and become victims themselves—the bad guys beat Dave senseless, and, almost on a whim, brutally rape Jill. Thankfully, Block doesn’t go into detail on this (after all, who wants to read a rape scene?) but in his clinical, almost detached vagueness, Block succeeds in horrifying you. It’s the sudden shift that does it, the juxtaposition of a young couple so happy and naïve just pages earlier, confronted with a sort of violence they never could have conceived of.

Instead of going to the police, Dave and Jill decide to take matters into their own hands. Something has been taken away from them, they feel; something that can only be paid for in blood.

The two of them go to New York on the trail of the enemy, and over the course of tracking them down discover how deep the darkness in their own hearts goes. They still love each other, still want each other, but their desire for vengeance tests everything they think they know about themselves.

DEADLY HONEYMOON is an immensely satisfying novel, moving along at a breakneck pace, lingering only briefly on their fumbling and bittersweet attempts to hold onto each other. A lot of the anxiety in reading it comes from your fear that, after all this, will they ever be able to return to any sort of normalcy. And Lawrence Block keeps you on edge about that until the final pages.

An absolutely top-notch, brilliant novel.

Kindle Review: CALIFORNIA by Ray Banks

You need long-term goals in order to make something of your life. That’s what they told Shug while he was in prison, advice that Shug ponders on and takes to heart. Now that he’s out, he’s singularly focused on that goal, trying to keep a handle on his short-fuse temper and keep his eyes on the prize.

But it’s harder to do than he could have guessed. When he shows up in his old stomping grounds in order to pick up the cash he had hidden before heading out to follow his dream, it leads to several run-ins with his old girl and his old crew, and Shug’s long-term goal begins to look longer and longer term.

CALIFORNIA, the latest novella from Ray Banks, is another expertly drawn character study, disguised as a violent, bleakly funny crime story. In some ways, it’s a bit of a heart-breaker. Banks is terrific at letting the reader know, in very subtle ways, that the whole venture is doomed from the start, that our man Shug is locked into a pattern and no amount of dreaming can change it.

Shug has come out of prison a different man, yes. He actually has a plan for his life now, some dream to cling to. But in CALIFORNIA, Banks questions the whole notion that a dream is a good thing to have. Does a long-term goal make Shug a better person? Does it guarantee his happiness? No, not at all. In fact, the great dream just might be the young man’s undoing.

It’s a very unsettling proposition, this idea that desire leads to ruin. And I don’t know, really, that that was Banks intention. But it resonates. And the inevitable disaster that follows on Shug’s heels is devastating to read. CALIFORNIA could very well be the most intensely compelling thing Ray Banks has yet written, and that’s saying a lot.

Kindle Review: THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR#1 BY DANI AMORE

Dani Amore’s got mad style. She’s been very prolific this year, and if you haven’t read her yet you have a lot of options on where to start. THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR #1 might be the place for you to dig in, as it’s short and sharp and gives readers a nice taste of what Amore is capable of.

The narrative voice is straight-forward and stream-lined—our unnamed hero takes a job from a coven of sleazy lawyers to track down their renegade partner and… deal with him. The assignment takes the Collector from Detroit to Florida, where he gets down to brass tacks and discovers that, unsurprisingly, the bad lawyers weren’t playing straight with him.

What follows is some tightly-written action, wry humor, and a refreshing lack of moral scruples.
THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR #1 is fast, furious and wholly entertaining.

Kindle Review: MONKEY JUSTICE, BY PATTI ABBOTT

In crime fiction, we see a lot of variations on staple characters. Grifters, killers, professional thieves, gamblers, corrupt cops, losers. And that’s all well and good, but…
Those aren’t, generally, the characters Patti Abbott gives us. Instead, the central players in Abbott’s stories are: your next door neighbor. The girl you work with at the office. Your mother. The clerk at your supermarket. Patti Abbott’s characters, in other words, are you and me.

The stories in MONKEY JUSTICE are intricate sometimes, multi-layered, and psychologically profound. They are character-driven pieces with central themes in common, most notably the idea of family and the hurt that comes with it.
Secrets. Lies. Melancholy. Betrayal. Those four Cardinal Virtues of Noir slither through each tale in MONKEY JUSTICE just like the fabled Biblical serpent, linking them together with dry scales.

These stories manage to be deeply emotional and devastating without ever resorting to sentimentality or predictable shlock. They are mature and stoic in the face of loss and bitter disappointment.

On a more practical note, Abbott fills this e-book to the brim. She could just as easily, for the price, split the volume into two separate collections and no one would have complained. Instead, she chooses to give the reader MORE than their money’s worth. I’m grateful for that, because after I’d read the last story I found myself in the unusual position of wanting another one. Reading Pati Abbott could very well become an addiction.

MONKEY JUSTICE is a collection of truly original, literary glimpses into the lives of ordinary, messed-up people, and one of the strongest collections of the year.