"Reverend Childe is a terrific pulp creation..."

You know what's awesome? When a writer you admire greatly says something this cool about your novel. I think everyone knows by now how much I like Dave Zeltserman, so getting this feedback was especially gratifying:

Dave Zeltserman says: "Reverend Childe is a terrific pulp creation, and this wild, crazy book could've sat next to the Gold-Medal pulps of Charles Williams and Harry Whittington if those two were only popping LSD back then."

Hate & Empathy

I have, on occasion, been accused of being a misanthrope. No reason, really, other than the occasional observation that people are idiots, or that the human race is long over-due for extinction. Or that, in my stories and novels, anything with a pulse has a tendency to die horribly.

But I don’t hate people, I really don’t. Sure, I get frustrated by them very often, I rarely want to spend any time with them, and once in awhile I’ll even get the overwhelming urge to start breaking noses. But that doesn’t mean I HATE them. In fact, I quite LIKE people.

Let me put that another way: I EMPATHIZE with people. I’m sympathetic to the pain and suffering that seems to be our lot here on this mortal coil. It distresses me to see another human being in pain, physical or psychological.

Honestly, I don’t think you can be a good writer and actually HATE other people (and of course there are bound to be exceptions to that rule-- I just thought of Patricia Highsmith, a misanthrope if ever one existed, and there are probably others I’m not thinking of, but…).

To write effectively about human beings, you gotta understand them, yeah? And it’s impossible to hate something that you understand.

Yeah, people are still idiots, and still over-due for extinction. But you know what? The dinosaurs were idiots also, and their extinction was a long time coming.

That doesn’t mean I HATE dinosaurs, does it?

...battered and bruised at the Gates of Hell...

Here's what Paul David Brazil says about my novel The Bastard Hand:

The Bastard Hand by Heath Lowrance grabs you by the lapels and drags you on a wild, wild bar crawl that leaves you battered and bruised at the Gates of Hell. Like Jim Thompson jamming with Robert Johnson and Nick Cave on the eve of the apocolypse.

Yeah, I'll take it.

Paul runs the terrific blog You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? and has written tons of stories for A Twist of Noir and Beat to a Pulp, among others. His story 'Guns of Brixton' (a Clash fan!) is going to be in the 2011 Mammoth Book of Best British Crime.

A Little Late...

Dear Mr. Lowrance,
We'd very much like to publish your story in the June issue of ___ Magazine.
Sincerely,
The Editor

Dear The Editor,
Do you mean the story I submitted to you a YEAR AND A HALF AGO?? Apologies, but that story was purchased and published about eight months ago by a different magazine. However, I thank you for your promptness; I'd forgotten you existed.
Sincerely,
Heath Lowrance

James Ellroy, nightmare dick.

So I had this dream last night that I was at some public function, sharing a table with James Ellroy.
Scary enough, right?
But then Ellroy starts acting like an asshole. He says to me, “I read that piece of shit you wrote. You suck. You’ll always suck.”
So then I said to him something like, “Oh yeah? Well you haven’t written anything relevant in what, ten years? Maybe twenty?” I didn’t know what I was talking about but there was my pride to consider…
And next thing you know I’m having a fistfight with James Ellroy, and both of us are cursing at each other and pounding away. That’s when I woke up.
Ellroy is, of course, a genius writer who has written some of the most important crime novels of all time. I’m a fan of the guy, I really am. But I’ve also heard that he can be a real douche bag. I don’t know, mind you… it’s just something I heard. For all I know, he could be a swell guy.
But in my dreams, James Ellroy is a dick.

"Mean, tough, lurid, intense, and entirely engaging..."

Okay, man, here we go with that self-promotion stuff I was talking about. Once a week, I'm going to be blowing my own horn in an effort to get you to part with your hard-earned clams and buy my novel, The Bastard Hand, coming out in March from New Pulp Press.
Believe me, it's written much better than the above paragraph.
One of the first people in the biz to take a real interest in it-- aside from Jon Bassoff-- was Vincent Zandri, author of Godchild, The Innocents, Moonlight Falls, and well, tons of other books. I was really surprised and gratified by Vin's enthusiasm, and I thank him profusely for spreading the word. He had this to say about The Bastard Hand:

"Only on rare occasions-- say once every ten years-- will I come across a debut novel that will want to make me change my name and start all over again, so that I can write one just like it... Mean, tough, lurid, intense, and entirely engaging, this novel is a must-read for all fans of the hardboiled genre. It will also force you to make room on your bookshelf for a whole lot of Lowrance pulps to come."

Scalped!

I just read my first issue of Jason Aarons' Scalped, a stand-alone issue, number 43. Jumpin' Jesus on a crutch, it was tight! I can't believe it's been under my nose all this time, a more than worthy successor to 100 Bullets. If you haven't checked it out, waste no time.
The downside is, now I gotta scrape up 60 bucks or so to buy the trades. Damnit! By being so good, other writers are driving me to the poorhouse!