Take The Money And Run

In addition to being a much honored Los Angeles Police Department officer, author, writer, blogger, and all-around great guy, my buddy Paul Bishop is also going to be starring in a television series starting on August 2.

Here's Paul:

And here's the promo spots for the show.

You should check out one of his new books.

And I've just read his manuscript for one of the books he did for a series we're going to be doing together.  Look for it next month.

Book Giveaway

I've been given three (3) copies of Meredith Fletcher's new book to give away to reviewers who visit my site.  Simply contact me and let me know where you'll be posting your review.

Meredith Fletcher is also offering copies.  You can contact her here.

About the book:

The Warrior

A soldier by profession, a lone wolf by choice, Callan Storm doesn't believe in coincidence. So when the groom—his baby sister's fiance—is snatchec at gunpoint he looks to the one other unexpected element at the bachelor party: the entertainment.

The Dancer

Suddenly Eryn McAdams's favor for a friend has landed her in real trouble. Pulled along by the strong, silent, intense hunk of a man, the security expert is torn between showing Callan just what she can do— and figuring out a way just to stay close.

The Team?

The clock is counting down, the bullets are flying, and secrets are being uncovered—but what else will happen once the night is over?

Bill Crider Has A New Book Out On July 5!

James Scott Campbell Image

Zombie Doorstop

I gotta get this and put it under my kid's door when he's asleep.  He'll freak.  Then I can get extended play out of it by using it again at Halloween.

News here.  They actually have a selection.

Hat tip to Bill Crider!

Marvel Comics Death Toll Continues

First the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four died.  Then Ultimate Spider-Man.  Now James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes has bitten the big one.  Again.

And the comic sales soar during these fatalities.  Maybe old comics readers come back to the fold just to watch their heroes die?

Colin Smith at ComicBookResources.com has an interesting article on the subject.

The Spirit!

Those comic fans not familiar with The Spirit are really missing out.  The stories are fun, not as dark as a lot of comics are these days, but the stakes are always still high.

Went to the farmer's market this morning to get veggies for the coming week (learning to love eggplant lasagna and spaghetti squash), and came back to see Paul Bishop had put some images up of this Old School crimefighter.  I had to borrow one!

Here's a recent incarnation by fan-favorite Darwyn Cooke.

And Old School version by Will Eisner.

Remaindered by Lee Goldberg

The short story was an award finalist in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Reader's Choice and is now available on Amazon.

It was also made into an Indy film which is currently making the rounds at film festivals everywhere.  The short story includes a password that will allow readers to access a streaming video of the film.

 

Flashpoint: Kid Flash by Sterling Gates

By Sterling Gates.  Interview here.

City of Heroes FREE!

This MMORPG has consistently been one of my favorites since it first came out.  I've been a member for years even though months have passed and I have played, and I've never managed to get a Level 50 hero.  Just haven't had time.  But when I knock off every now and again, and don't have a book in my hands, I enjoy saving the world.

My wife has even learned the merits of mindless thug-bashing and last-minute rescues.

Now it's going to be free to new members.  You should check it out.

Go here.

HOUNDED by Kevin Hearne

Reviewed on Bookhound.

Dan Dos Santos, Artist

Site.

Customs Officials Can Now Search Your Computer Files and Electronic Devices

Who knew?  Wow.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=32958

Penalty Shot by Paul Bishop Out Now

From Paul Bishop:

Top-flight English goalkeeper Ian Chapel's last soccer game ended in a kick to the face from a German opponent leaving him with just one eye and believing he could never play the game again.

Working as an editor for one of his brainy brother's sports magazines, Chapel has recovered his fitness, but hasn't touched a soccer ball since his accident. So, he finds it ludicrous when his old army colonel pitches a proposal with him playing goalie for the Los Angeles Ravens, an American indoor soccer team owned by the colonel and his partner Nina Brisbane, who has the body of a goddess and hides her shotgun-blasted face forever behind a veil.

The Ravens are headed for the league finals, but their goalie has just been murdered, and if Chapel takes the job, the colonel and Miss Brisbane would like him to clear up the murder as well.

With much reluctance Chapel caves into pressure, whips himself into good goalie shape, joins the team – which includes the German player who put his eye out – dodges murderous attacks from Irish terrorists, and copes with the very temperamental Miss Brisbane, all the while enjoying the close companionship of the Ravens' second-string goalie, a very fit, ambitious, and pretty young lady.

It's always good to remember where you came from.  Me, age 8.  During the summers I lived on a horse and in crawdad ponds.  We didn't get much television, and I didn't have a library card.  All I had were a few books that I read over and over again, and my imagination.  I was forever making up stories and my brother Johnny would illustrate some of them.

The horse's name was Cocoa, and he was half-Shetland pony.  The birddog was Noble.  Didn't take me long to get onto bigger horses, and at age 13 and 14 (when you bounced off the ground easier), I broke them.

Another J. Scott Campbell Treat

Repost I Thought Worth It

Organ Donor Driver's License

Today was interesting. I'd had plans to hook up with a friend of mine, Josh Pace, a reporter I got to know while he was covering the Moore beat for The Moore American. We've become friends over the last few years and go out to eat. We even went to The Transformers with my little guy, Chandler.

Well, this morning Chandler was kind of down. I've been working all day on Mondays and Wednesdays, and he's not used to not getting to see me on those days. Plus, he's been to the ER twice in the last week for his asthma.

We went the first time on Halloween night, which was when I discovered that the hospital staff dresses up. I'm still kind of undecided how I feel about that. It was weird being attended by witchy nurse. I mean, I'm there for Western drugs and I'm figuring she's got a bagful of home remedies. I'm wondering how I'm going to get Chandler to swallow an eye of newt or a salamander's tongue. Maybe I could pass it off as a glass-eyed Cheerio and a red licorice twist, you know?

And I had to wonder about the guys in the doctor outfits. Suppose one of them took us behind a curtained area and said, "Hey, look. The x-ray machine is broken, but I've got this nifty little camera. Why don't you hop up on that table and get undressed for me?"

I could see a problem.

Anyway, he was stuck with taking his lunch or eating spaghetti at school. I could see there was no love in his eyes. He'd obviously been attacked by a funsucker and left drained dry. So I invited him to lunch with us.

We were also joined by my 18-year-old who's in full-stride in his "I'm a poor college student," lunch mooching mode.

During lunch, we talked. Well, mostly we listened to Chandler. He trotted out an encyclopedic knowledge of strange animals he gleaned from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Guinness Book of World Records 2008.



I initially bought him Guinness at Wal-Mart one night while he still had his foot in a cast. I always put him in the buggy at that time so he wouldn't have to use crutches or risk getting stepped on or knocked down by adults. We were there for 45 minutes. He read to me from Guinness during the whole foray. It was pretty interesting stuff. I noticed a few adults who kind of hung with us an aisle or two while he finished off an article that caught their attention. Chandler even dealt with a couple of rebuttals regarding facts. But he's stubborn and stuck to his guns.

So anyway, we had the buffet while Chandler dealt out the facts about such animal wildlife as the masked booby (which, the first time he told me about it, led to all kinds of concerns on my part as to what he was looking at on the internet)



the world's largest rodent, the capybara



the world's smallest monkey, the pygmy marmoset



bearded ladies



and the world's tallest man.



Then we took him back to school.

It was at that point that Shiloh, my college student, told me he'd lost his driver's license and needed to get a duplicate. So we went to the tag agency.

And, since the computer system was down, we spent over an hour waiting for a duplicate license to be made.

While we were there, we ended up talking with a young stripper equipped with one of the most intriguing tramp stamps I've ever seen. And it was in full view of everyone at the tag agency.



At this time, Shiloh also elected to become an organ donor. I was of mixed feelings about that and I hadn't expected to get into that whole issue and have to think about my son in that context.

Before I could get too deeply into that, Josh said that he'd thought about donating his body to science. I told him he really didn't want to do that. He asked me why. I told him that the last thing you want to do is give a dead body to college-aged medical students. He was under the impression they just hollowed the body out and let them play with the organs.

I explained that no, the colleges got the whole body. And I've talked to guys who've been to medical school. They even showed me the pictures of their corpses they worked on all year. It was kind of harsh anyway, but some of the pictures they had showed the gags they did with the bodies. Makeup, disguises, poses, etc.
All while you're lying there dead and nude, revealed for all the world to see and recorded for, well, not for posterity, I can tell you.

I told Josh he'd be the center of attention in his own Weekend At Bernie's --only he'd be the unrated version. Not me. I know somebody's gotta do it. But I don't take pictures well as it is. I can only imagine how bad they would be if I were dead and nude.

Captain America Movie Poster

James Scott Campbell Does Disney

I loved James Scott Campbell's Danger Girl comics.  The plotlines were thin, but the women, the spy stuff, and the action was awesome.  Didn't know he did a Disney calendar in 2010.

New Ally Carter Heist Society YA Novel Is Out!

The first book, Heist Society, was an absolute rip-roaring hoot!  I finished it in two sittings and my wife read it the next day and enjoyed it.  I just found out recently Ally Carter is from Oklahoma too.  Gotta be something in the water, folks!  :)

The first book was optioned by Disney for a movie and it will be a blast.  If you haven't read any of Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls books, or the first book in this series, you're truly missing out.

Top Suspense Group

A novella from Top Suspense Group (a collection of professional thriller writers just telling stories for the thrill of it).

From Lee Goldberg's blog:

DIE LOVER DIE, a Top Suspense short story, is now available on the Kindle and the Nook for just 99 cents. It's 10,000 words of non-stop action, violence and sex...a wild ride like nothing else you've read before...from twelve masters of suspense, who teamed up to write this rollicking story 250 rapid-fire words at a time, tag-team style, without an outline, without knowing what was coming next. The result is a pure, literary adrenaline rush:

Lauren Blaine is on the run...fleeing across the country, pursued by a pack of ruthless, skilled, and psychopathic killers. That's she's dumped her husband and he hasn't taken it well. Of course, he might have taken it better if he wasn't a major drug dealer with a gale-force temper... and if she hadn't run off with all of his cash. Now she's marked-for-death, a moving target for every mercenary, hitman, and sadist in the midwest. What they don't know is that Lauren is nobody's victim... she's a resourceful, brave, and cunning woman who won't go down without a fight.

About the Top Suspense Group:

Whether you're looking for mystery, horror, thriller, western or crime fiction, you can always count on the award-winning authors at TOP SUSPENSE to deliver a great e-reading experience with their dozens of highly-acclaimed books. The Top Suspense authors are established professionals whose books have been published world-wide, graced national & international bestseller lists, and sparked the imaginations of Hollywood's top filmmakers (the Oscar winning "Road to Perdition") and television producers (the Emmy-winning "Monk"). Top Suspense authors: Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Stephen Gallagher, Lee Goldberg, Joel Goldman, Ed Gorman, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Vicki Hendricks, Naomi Hirahara, Paul Levine, Harry Shannon and Dave Zeltserman.

Only 99 cents!

One of the Coldest, Hardest Short Graphic Stories I've Ever Seen

Take one extraordinary crime writer and one extraordinary crime artist and you get an ice-cold brew in the hard corners of Los Angeles.  I didn't know the L. A. Times Magazine did stuff like this.  I gotta check it out more often.

Go here.

Hat tip to Paul Bishop.

Top Ten Worst Superhero Video Games Ever Made

My 13 year old loves video games, but over the years he's heard me talk badly of SUPERMAN for the Nintendo 64.  I hated the game.  Could never get past the first level.

One day he, in all his infinite pre-teen cockiness, told me he could beat the game.  I bought him a copy and dragged out the old game console (true gamers never throw them away!).  Then I sat down, watched him fire the game up, and watched that sorry game kick his butt time and time again.

Today on Comic Book Resources, I saw the Top Ten Worst Superhero Video games ever made.  Guess what was at #1 with a bullet!

The list.

And for you self-inflicted pain junkies:

Bill Crider Has A New Book On Kindle!

Lizzie Randall, the preacher's daughter, is murdered. The men of the west Texas town are set on lynching Paco Morales, a Mexican teenager who happened to be in the vicinity at the time. No proof, but, after all, he is only a Mexican. Reason and/or conscience work on most of the would-be lynchers, so that, in the end justice is served. The list of suspects grows to include almost everyone in the story, thus providing an agreeable tangle of clues.

New Ultimate Spider-Man Costume!

Ultimate Spider-Man Dies?

This week's issue is coming polybagged.  So is he dead or not?

And they're relaunching the new Ultimate Spider-Man soon.

Guaranteed Frisk?

Interesting news story behind this one.  Read it here.

Hat tip to Bill Crider, whose tastes are obviously questionable.

One of My Favorite Western Series Growing Up

I loved these books.  Hopefully somebody will snatch of the rights and do them as ebooks.  I'd love to read them again.

Great Review For Shooter's Cross

Got a great review up at Davy Crockett's Almanack for Rancho Diablo:  Shooter's Cross.

Bill Crider Has New Book On Kindle!

 "Bill Kane was going to hang for murdering Ryan's sister... After three long years, folks were shocked Ryan would show his face after abandoning his sister to her bloody fate. Others were amazed - and frightened - that he was back at all. No man could have survived that night in Shatter's Grove.

But Ryan was no ordinary man, and Tularosa was in for more shocks and surprises, because Ryan was back for justice - and the real truth behind his sister's betrayal and murder."

Bob Randisi Giveaway

Go to David Cranmer's blog to get details!

Paul Bishop Has New Releases

Paul's actually a highly decorated L. A. P. D. police officer and has been on the beat for over 30 years.  He knows his stuff, and he's a great writer.  If you like police drama and action, you'll enjoy his books.

Calico Jack Walker and Tina Tamiko are back.

1978. Now retired from the L.A.P.D. and captain of his own fishing charter business, Calico Jack Walker pays for ignoring his instincts when he hires out to two shady characters who try to hijack his boat and almost murder his son.

Walker's ex-partner and lover, Tina Tamiko, has promoted to detective. She's deep into an investigation leading to a plot to hijack an L.A.P.D. property barge loaded with confiscated drugs and weapons slated for ocean dumping.

With another ex-partner framed for murder, somebody playing Robin Hood with stolen drug money, and a gang of dirty cops desperate for redemption, Walker and Tamiko know they're in deep water and it's time to gun up and throw down . . .
PRAISE FOR DEEP WATER

"A lively, bloody adventure from a first-class writer." - The New York Times

"Lusty, complex, always authentic . . . With this book Paul Bishop joins the ranks of great novelists." - Jonathan Kellerman

"A bonaroo cop book, and a bonaroo L.A. book most of all. It is well plotted, dark, funny, and grounded in a great love story. Bishop's evocaton of the LAPD is uniquely his own." - James Ellroy

The covers are done by Keith Birdsong.

It's 1977 and veteran L.A.P.D. cop Calico Jack Walker and his rookie partner, Tina Tamiko, are planning to make Calico's last shift on the job something special - but plans, as they do, come apart because Walker and Tamiko are good cops no matter what the cost . . . even if they're L.A. cops, in uniform, in their patrol car, on duty, and way out of their jurisdiction on the Las Vegas Strip.

When a major crime is going down, good cops never hesitate.

PRAISE FOR HOT PURSUIT

"The closest equivelent to Joe Wambaugh yet . . . Hot Pursuit could hardly be better." - The Los Angeles Times

"A full-throttle reading experience that sweeps you aboard with its opening sentences, speed shifts into high gear, and doesn't give you a chance to catch your breath until you've reached The End . . . the most exciting caper you're likely to find in print this year." - Hardboiled

100 Bullets Becoming A Showtime Series

Showtime is now developing a television series based on Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's excellent comic book series about a government agent that delivers an untraceable pistol and 100 bullets (which is where the title comes from) that will give anyone the power to get revenge or commit murder and get away with it.

I really enjoyed the early years of the comic.  You never knew what you were going to get, or who was really doing what to who.  The characters were neat and I liked the moral complexity a lot.

Then, later, things got complicated by secret organizations that made keeping up with the monthly title almost impossible for me.  I just couldn't keep track.

The series was so popular that it almost spawned a video game in 2004 and is currently back in development with a new publisher.

I always equated the early issues of the series as "Fantasy Island with lots and lots of guns."  I hope the Showtime series sticks with that without delving too deeply into the grander mythos of the comics.  At least for a while.