Free Stuff From Worst Enemies, Available Wednesday

Everyone is inundated with promotion. I’m as guilty as the next author. We’re all looking for some way to get our book to stand out among the hundreds of others you’re bombarded with every day. It’s not like we want to irritate you with something we think is a clever way to cajole you into buying our deathless prose. We have to do something, or the book we spent a year working on will slip out of the public consciousness without a trace. I’m not complaining. As Hyman Roth said to Michael Corleone, “This is the life we’ve chosen.”

The only thing an author has control over is to write the best book he or she can; it’s up to the audience to decide whether to buy it or not. So, I held up my end. I gave you my best effort. Is it worth your time and money? Only you can say. To help you out, here’s Chapter 1 of Worst Enemies. Free gratis, as Al Swearengen would say. If you want to read more, the book drops Wednesday from Down & Out.

WORST ENEMIES

Until I got married, I was my own worst enemy.

- Unknown

CHAPTER 1

Tom Widmer needed to pay attention. It’s not every night someone tells you how to kill his wife.

Hard enough to hear in Tease as it was, the tekno/disco/hip-hop cranked to Volume Eleven, so loud the pulsing in his eardrums ruined the floor’s foot massage. Chastity’s nipple in his ear didn’t help. She had the rest of her tit wrapped against his cheek like she was about to go off shift in fifteen minutes and needed to get him into the VIP Room now, which she was and did. This was her go-to move when time got short: sit on the arm of his chair, slip the teddy or camisole or whatever they call that thing she wore off-stage out of the way, then ease it in. Usually he didn’t mind. Usually it cost him an extra fifty for a trip to the VIP Room. Not tonight.

Tom turned his head and Chastity gave him a mouthful. He couldn’t resist a quick lick before he pulled away. “I’m sorry, baby. Marty and I gotta talk. Maybe later.”

Chastity pulled a pout. “I go off shift in fifteen minutes, Tommy. Can’t it wait?”

Tom looked at Marty and saw no, it couldn’t wait. “Sorry, babe. Next time.”

“You’re just a tease.” The smile that never reached her eyes didn’t hide the irritation in her voice. Fifteen minutes wasted. She made a show of tucking the nipple away and ran her tongue around his ear. Bit the lobe for good measure. “Next time. You’ll be sorry you passed.”

Marty waited for her to get out of hearing range, about three feet. “Can I have your attention now, or do I have to wait for your dick to get soft again?”

“You’re sure it has to be tomorrow?” Tom swallowed the bottom half of his gin and tonic, looked for the waitress.

Marty put his hand over Tom’s and forced the empty glass onto the table. “Pay attention. This has to be done before Monday. She hired a lawyer. You understand me? She already hired a fucking lawyer. Once they serve me with papers, there’s no way anyone will believe a burglar killed her. Thursday’s my regular night out and we have this thing with her family over the weekend. It has to be tomorrow.”

“That’s not a lot of time to plan.”

“Fucking A, and I got tired of waiting for you to do it. Everything you need’s in the car.”

“My car?”

“No, dumbass, in my car. How the fuck would I get it into your car?”

Tom really wanted that gin; the tonic had become optional. He’d had fun the past few months, basking in young pussy while he and Marty talked about killing each other’s wives, a couple of lap dances for the road. He figured his divorce was almost as close as Marty’s, and Marian would get half of what was already only half as much as it had been, the market’s death by a thousand cuts bleeding him every day. The sun would shine brighter in a world without Marian.

Now Marty was good to go. Carol had a lawyer and Tom didn’t know for a fact that Marian didn’t. Marty was right: once papers were filed, neither wife could catch cold without her husband falling under suspicion. Of course, wife killing was much more entertaining as an abstraction, and Tom had never killed anything more evolved than an insect in his life. Buried the whole cage when the kids’ pet hamster died so he wouldn’t have to touch Fluffy. Still, it was now or never. Kill her or face the idea of living like an intern again, running the copier for guys whose cufflinks cost more than his car.

Marty was talking. Probably had been, now that Tom thought about it. “You gotta be there at ten o’clock. Earlier and she’ll still be up. Later and it’s too close to when I come home.”

“Huh? Wait. Run that first part by me again.”

Marty squeezed Tom’s wrist until he grimaced. “Pay attention, dickhead. You fuck this up and I’ll come after you myself. There’s no way you’re doing this half-assed and taking me down with you. You listening to me?”

Tom nodded, tried to make eye contact with the waitress without moving his head. She wanted fifty bucks, he’d give her fifty bucks. A hundred. Just someone bring him a drink, for Christ’s sake.

Marty didn’t need a drink. “One more time. The stuff’s in the car. Black pullover, black jeans, black shoes and socks. One of those head things like Hines Ward wears when it’s cold.”

“What? You mean like a helmet?”

“No, not a helmet. Jesus Christ. Are all stockbrokers this dumb? No wonder the economy’s in the shitter. It’s like a skull cap, tight, pulls over your head, covers everything except your face. Race car drivers wear them.”

“Balaclavas?”

“If you say so. At least you’re listening. Put everything on, darken your face up some—”

“How should I do that?”

“Do what?”

“Darken my face.”

“I don’t know. Use some charcoal from the grill.”

“We have a gas grill.”

“Then buy some charcoal. Jesus Christ. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here. Spend three bucks on a lousy bag of Kingsford.”

“It’s not the money. How am I going to explain the charcoal when I have a gas grill? It won’t look right.”

Marty rubbed his forehead with a thumb and index finger, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. “What are you, autistic? Throw the rest of the bag away. It’s just charcoal. It ain’t like they got serial numbers on them. Use dirt if you want to. Just darken up your face.”

Tom had a thing about being dirty, showered before and after work every day. Sanitized his hands after he blew his nose, snot on them or not. Right now he’d swim naked through a pig trough if someone would just bring him a beer. Lite beer, even.

“Look at me, you son of a bitch.” Marty grabbed Tom’s cheeks between a thumb and forefinger. “I’m desperate here. This has to happen, and it has to happen tomorrow. You don’t do this and I’ll ruin you. I’ll tell your wife what I know and she’ll get half of what you got left plus child support. And you’ll probably lose your license. Then what are you gonna do?”

 “How you figure to get my license?” Marty could tell stories about Tom lawyers would line up for like politicians at a microphone. Being a randy drunk couldn’t cost him his stockbroker’s license.

“Remember that time you told me about that old broad—what’s her name?—Finnegan? How you used money in her account for what you called ‘leverage’ to float that hedge fund thing a few years ago? You made a bundle off that, didn’t you?”

“She didn’t lose a dime.”

“She didn’t make any, either. You told me how you got her to sign shit she wasn’t sure what it was? Got to be records of that, right? You move money around, something she has to sign for, I can’t believe they just throw the paperwork away when the money gets moved back. I’m no stockbroker, but they must be pretty fussy about their bookkeeping. I mean, it’s money, right? No other reason for a stockbroker to be in business.”

Fuck. Fuck. Marty told anyone about that and it was over for Tom. He’d be lucky if his old man could get him a job delivering uniforms. If he didn’t go to jail. He opened his mouth to talk. Marty beat him to it.

“Wait. Don’t say it. How do you know I won’t tell anyway? Right? That’s what you’re thinking. Well, think again. You already have me dead to rights for solicitation of murder. That’s a capital offense. If we quit dicking around and go through with it, both of us have enough on the other guy that neither one can afford to talk.” Marty cocked his head, raised his eyebrows. Showed the palms of his hands like he’d just said something so self-explanatory a retard would understand. 

Tom was drunk, not retarded. He understood perfectly that he was well and truly fucked. Didn’t matter anymore whether he killed her or not. Don’t kill her and Marty would ruin him, maybe even send him to jail. Much as Tom disliked getting dirty, he liked the idea of taking one up the ass even less. Kill this woman he’d never met, never ever seen, who’d never done him any harm, and he knew Marty would hold up his end of the deal. Just watching him, the way he acted when he talked about it, Tom knew Marty wanted to do Marian. Hell, he was looking forward to it. Then Tom would be out from under forever.

Maybe he should pretend she was Marian.

Worst Enemies and Grind Joint Re-launch October 26!

You may have noticed things are different here at OBAAT. With Down & Out Books announcing the October 26^th re-launch of both Worst Enemies and Grind Joint, it’s time for the Relentless Self-Promotion Machine™ to get cranked up for another assault on your sensitivities and good taste.

Never heard of either of them? You must be new to the blog. Not wishing to be remiss, this should catch you up.

Penns River is an amalgam of three small towns in Western Pennsylvania where I grew up and still have close family ties. (My parents live in the same house I grew up in, bought in 1960, a couple of weeks before Bill Mazeroski’s home run won the World Series.) My memory of the local economy is a constant stream of mills closing and jobs lost. A lot of people my age—me, for example—left for brighter economic futures.

Pittsburgh recovered to become a hub of medicine, education, and finance. The North Hills and South Hills came back with it. Not so much farther up the Allegheny, where population fell along with the economy. Land that used to be a diary farm, with the easiest access to the expressway that runs into Pittsburgh, is now a relatively affluent bedroom community with homes on two-acre lots. The people who live there neither earn nor spend their money locally.

Worst Enemies spends a lot of time around those houses. Tom Widmer makes good money in Pittsburgh’s financial industry. He and his wife Marian spend it just as fast, if not faster. Neither really wants the other around anymore. This is a murder story. You can see where this leads.

Not two miles away as the crow flies sits what used to be a busy shopping center. Montgomery Ward on one end, J.C. Penny on the other, with a connecting waist of small local businesses. Wards closed in 2003; Penney’s two years later. Nothing replaced them. The city is in constant dispute with the owner and has declared the remaining hulk to be unsafe. The owner refuses to do anything with it, including sell it. The city can’t afford to seize it under eminent domain. It decays a little each year, a monument to failure.

Grind Joint’s focus is here. A real estate developer who missed out on the big money when

the commonwealth legalized casino gambling in Pittsburgh had taken over the building and renovated it into a low-roller casino; a “grind joint,” in the parlance of the trade. The casino brings problems of its own. The feeder streets lack the capacity to support the traffic, and ancillary businesses spring up around it that draw crime the way clover attracts bees.

You wouldn’t think organized crime would be an issue in such a town. Ordinarily it isn’t. The towns that inspired Penns River were once hotspots of mob activity, with afterhours clubs and pretty much any action anyone could want. The underboss of the Pittsburgh crime family—a national figure in his day—lived there along with his brother and his crew. The leader of what’s left of the Pittsburgh mob still lives in the fictional Penns River and has declared it a crime-free zone as a way to build goodwill in a town where everybody knows who—and what—he is, but the old-timers still remember the good old days when the Mob had an even bigger presence and life was good.

Tasked with maintaining order among these disparate forces are fewer than 40 cops, hindered by a city government in thrall to whatever might bring some money back to town. There aren’t enough of them, most of those who are there didn’t sign on for this kind of duty, and no help is on the horizon.

Those are the stories I hope to tell in Penns River.

The books are available for pre-order now; the formal release date is October 26. Full information on ordering is on each book’s page at the Down & Out web site:

Worst Enemies

Grind Joint

I’ll have more on both books as the date approaches.

(Editor's Note: Thanks are owed to everyone connected with Down & Out Books; they're day is coming. I do want to point out the brilliant cover art provided by the indefatigable and seemingly ubiquitous Eric Beetner. Well done, sir, and thank you.)

  

Free E-Books

Starting today, all of my Kindle e-books will be free on Amazon through Sunday, June 29. Included are:

 

A Small Sacrifice. Nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Indie PI Novel, it’s the story of Chicago investigator Nick Forte, who is asked to clear the name of a man who has been publicly vilified as the murderer of his young son. Forte learns, while Doug Mitchell might not be guilty, he’s no innocent, and the circumstances place Forte and his family in jeopardy.

Grind Joint. Named by The LA Review of Books as one of the fifteen best noir reads of 2013, Grind Joint is the story of what happens in a small, economically depressed Pennsylvania town when someone gets the bright idea of solving their financial woes by building a low-roller casino. The local cops find themselves up against more than they bargained for when the Russian mob takes an interest. A Small Sacrifice’s Nick Forte plays a supporting but pivotal role.

Worst Enemies. The first of the Penns River books, the story of what can happen when someone takes the scenario of Strangers on a Train way too seriously. Detectives Ben Dougherty and Willie Grabek have to solve two murders organized by a person who is close to both victims, yet operates at some distance.

Wild Bill. A standalone tale of FBI Special Agent Willard “Wild Bill” Hickox, who’s ready to retire but wants to put the cherry on his career by bringing down Chicago’s Number One crime boss. When a gang war re-arranges all the players, Will must choose between duty, experience, and a combination of the two if he is to ride off into the sunset as planned.

I’ve been shoving the reviews of these books down your throats here for months, so that’s all I’ll say about them for the time being. Take full advantage of the free stuff while it lasts. It’s golden opportunity for anyone who might be curious about any of the books, but has been thinking, “That asshole’s not getting any of my money,” so go for it.

Holy Stuff, Free Shit!

I know I’m not going to sell many—hell, any—books through a Goodreads giveaway, but it’s the Season of the Winter Solstice, when early darkness and lifeless, freezing landscapes promote the spirit of giving, so what the hell. Starting Friday—right, Friday the Thirteenth, bwahaha—through December 19, go on over to Goodreads and sign up. I’m giving away an autographed copy of Grind Joint. I’d hoped to have weekly drawings through the end of the year, but Goodreads isn’t letting me set up more than one at a time. (Maybe I have to wait for this one to go active first. Or maybe it’s just Goodreads being Goodreads, since an alarming amount of it is a pain in the ass, such as all the covers for my books disappearing, and the German language BDSM book I found under my name today.)

If this works and is as much fun as I hope, we’ll do more as time goes on.

But wait!!! There’s more!!!!

Anyone who reads Grind Joint* and sends an email to danakingcrime@gmail.com will receive one of my e-books for free. Gratis. Libre. Gratuito. Kostenlos. Бесплатно. Choose from any of these fine works, some of which have sold into the dozens:

Wild Bill - Will Hickox is a decorated FBI veteran with a legendary ability to cultivate informants, much closer to retirement than to the days when he earned the nickname “Wild Bill.” Operation Fallout should cut the head off of the Chicago mob and provide a fitting capstone to his career. When Outfit boss Gianni Bevilacqua dies and the resulting war places Fallout in jeopardy, Hickox does what he can to save it, and his retirement plans with his lover, Madeline Kilmak.

Worst Enemies (Predecessor to Grind Joint in the Penns River series) - Penns River rarely sees two homicides in a year. Two in little over a week is almost too much for the police force to handle. The assigned detectives—Ben Dougherty, a former MP and Penns River native, and retired Pittsburgh cop Willie Grabek—find links to bind the two cases, but their investigation is complicated by the involvement of private investigator Daniel Rollison, a retired spy on a suspect’s payroll who is really working for himself. Pittsburgh mob boss Mike Mannarino also lives in Penns River and has more than a passing interest in the case. The two cops’ savvy competes with the limitations of their small town’s resources and the interference of Rollison and Mannarino in a story that shows identifying a killer and proving it are separate things.

A Small Sacrifice (featuring Nick Forte, a key character in Grind Joint) - Detective Nick Forte is not impressed when Shirley Mitchell asks him to clear her son’s name for a murder everyone is sure he committed. Persuaded to at least look around, Forte soon encounters a dead body, as well as the distinct possibility the next murder he’s involved with will be his own. Clearing Doug Mitchell’s name quickly becomes far less important to Forte than keeping references to himself in the present tense.

The free e-book offer expires midnight, December 31, 2013. Anyone who knows me well can attest my generosity is exceeded only by my stinginess, so there’s no telling when I’ll suffer another such moment of weakness and decide to give things away again.

* - No proof required. I trust not only the readers of this blog, but anyone else they might tell; no need to keep this to yourself.

Wild Bill and Worst Enemies on Sale for $0.99 Through October 10!

I am leaving for Bouchercon Tuesday around noon, with an overnight stopover at the ancestral home. To commemorate almost an entire week without bitching, whining, harping, carping, moaning, groaning, self-congratulatory, self-promoting, self-pleasuring blog posts—and to celebrate lucking into a panel (Friday at 11:30, be there to see living proof donkeys do, indeed, fly from time to time) both Wild Bill and Worst Enemies will be available for the discounted price of $0.99 through October 10 for both Kindle and Nook.

“How can he afford these prices?” you may wonder. “Is he the Crazy Eddie of e-books?” Maybe I am. Hustle on over to your favorite purveyor of e-books before I come to my senses. Remember, owning a $2.99 version of either book doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy the hell out of a $0.99 cent copy.

See you next week with a full report.

New Mystery Reader Weighs in on Worst Enemies

“I finished reading this book on a gurney in an Emergency Room with crying kids, a car accident victim and a loud drunk keeping me company, and barely noticed them. If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is! Download this book to your e-reader today; you won’t regret it.”

Frankly, I’m pretty happy about that.

For the entire review, click here. New Mystery Reader is an excellent resource for author interviews and reviews. A broad-based staff provides appropriate insights into a wide range of crime fiction. And I’m not just saying that because of this review. Or because I am an occasional contributor. Go look for yourself if you think I’m bullshitting you.

More Praise for Worst Enemies

Mike Dennis, whose Key West noir series is first-rate (Setup on Front Street, The Ghosts of Havana, Man-Slaughter), has given Worst Enemies  a four-star review on Amazon. His comments are below:

Dana King has followed up his first novel, WILD BILL, in strong fashion. Unlike its predecessor, which was a compelling story of Mafia intrigue, WORST ENEMIES is a finely-tuned police procedural, playing out like an episode of DRAGNET, emphasizing the mundane footwork of small-town cops. When a grisly murder grabs their attention, local detectives Ben Dougherty and Willie Grabek roll into action.
King makes a pretzel out of the STRANGERS ON A TRAIN story of two men agreeing to kill each other's wives. Not long after the first murder is committed, the killer is identified, leaving you to wonder where it can possibly go from there. Don't worry. The author holds your interest precisely by making you ask that question at every turn.

I stumbled over the names of the characters on more than one occasion (Obbink, Neuschwander, Zywiciel). I would agree with Charlie Stella's assessment that more familiar, more pronounceable last names would help.

Okay, I’ll give him Zywiciel, but a least he spelled it right. I deserve some points for not naming anyone Dzanaj.

Thanks, Mike. Man-Slaughter waits impatiently on my Kindle as we speak.

I Left It All On the Page For You

Some writers--I'm not naming names--inundate their potential readers with unceasing barrages of self-promotion. I have more respect for my dozens of readers than to do that. Worst Enemies has received flattering notices from both Leighton Gage (Vine in the Blood) and Benjamin Sobieck (Cleansing Eden); those have been duly noted without beating anyone over the head with them.

Wild Bill was pimped at least once a week when it came out. (And is still available here for a paltry $2.99.) My efforts on behalf of Worst Enemies have not been so substantial. Why is that? The Great Computer Meltdown of 2012 has something to do with it. All my writing and online efforts have suffered a production dip the past couple of weeks.

Do I not feel as strongly about Worst Enemies? Au contraire. (As The Sole Heir can point out, that's French for "Are you shitting me?") I think Worst Enemies is even better than Wild Bill. Sure, every author says that. "You thought my last book was good! Ha! This new book can kick its ass in the dark. On a skating rink. With a plastic bag over its head. It's that good." Don't take my word for it;. read what Messers Gage and Sobieck have to say.

The truth is, I'm spent. Every bit of creativity I had on the subjects covered in Worst Enemies went into the book. There's nothing left. I'm drained. Everything I have is on the (virtual) page, waiting for you to take it all in for the minimal investment of $2.99. That's less than three bucks for a peek into--not a year of my boring life--but the lives of fictional people far more interesting than I. My boring life I give away for free on Facebook. These people actually do things, like kill people and have sex and engage in witty banter. And it's all yours for three bucks.

Okay. I've done what I can. See you next week.

More Love for Worst Enemies

The reviews are starting to trickle in for Worst Enemies, and the news is good. Author Ben Sobieck (Cleansing Eden) has this to say: 


That King can put the many pieces together in such a compelling way speaks to the character management he displayed in his debut, Wild Bill....The cast is large, but it never feels that way. king keeps the story grounded in police detective Ben Dougherty, a military veteran trying to shed his hard bark.


By the end, Worst Enemies was miles from Strangers On a Train...When a crime novel goes above and beyond a mere interpretation of a classic, the reader is left as satisfied as the author.


Read the entire review here.


Worst Enemies is available for Kindle for a paltry $2.99, the same as it costs to upgrade from beef to bison on your Silver Diner burger. The burger will be gone in ten minutes. the book will last.

Readers’ Aid

Charlie Stella (Johnny Porno, Mafiya, Rough Riders coming in July) isn’t just a kick-ass writer; he’s a friend to any writer he comes in contact with. He tirelessly promotes other writers on his blog, and has been more than generous to me, both with support and spot-on advice.

Charlie has a problem with Worst Enemies: the names. Not the title; the characters’ names.  “I can’t pronounce the names in my head,” he said after reading a draft. “Isn’t anyone named Smith in this town?” (There is in the final version, just for Charlie.)

Penns River exists—as much as it exists at all—in Western Pennsylvania, up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. It’s a heavily ethnic area: Italian, German, Irish, and Eastern Europeans of all heritages: Polish, Croatian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Slovak. Names that stymied Charlie roll off the tongues of locals like Henry Higgins reading Doctor Seuss.

I would, however, like for people who did not grow up in the area to have a fighting chance. So, to enhance your reading entertainment, here is a pronunciation key for some of the characters' names that may be less than intuitive:

Dougherty – DOCK-ur-dee

Dolewicz – DOLE-uh-wits

Faison – FAE-zahn

Frantz – France

Grabek – GRAY-beck

Mannarino- man-uh-REE-no

Napierkowski – napper-KOW-ski

Neuschwander – NOO-shwan-der

Orszulak – OR-suh-lak

Pranewicz – Puh-RAN-uh-wits

Wierzbicki – weerz-BICK-ee

Schoepf – Sheff

Zywiciel – suh-WISS-ee-ul

It’s not as hard as Dostoevsky, but there ain’t no Muffys or Biffs in Penns River.

Geez, That Was Quick

(No, that’s not what my wife routinely says. Not routinely.)

It’s only been six months since Wild Bill made its appearance in the e-booksphere. Hardly enough time, one would think, to have written another book and gotten it ready for public consumption. Approach with caution. This $2.99 might not be any better spent than the dollar store earmuffs that fell apart the third time you put them on.

Well, there’s a story behind that.

I’ve been backed up for several years. (Not like you’re thinking. Two cans of V-8 a day take care of that for me. Now relax and let me get there.) Early on in my writing efforts, I heard what sounded like good advice: keep writing. So I didn’t stop after the first book was done and I looked for an agent. I kept writing while the agent flogged the book to all the big publishers. I even kept plugging away when a smaller, but highly respected publisher of crime fiction strung me along for two years before sending me a two-line, grammatically incorrect rejection.

Agent One and I parted ways amicably when I decided to take the tone of my stories in a different direction than she was comfortable with. I wrote while I found another agent, and while she pushed what had been the second novel around New York houses. We parted ways when she declined to send out Wild Bill, though she indicated she would be happy to pocket her 15% if I found a publisher on my own. Since querying is my most hated part of the process, I declined and we each went on to other opportunities.

I made a half-assed effort to find another agent, but by this time I’d done my research on what happens after you get a contract, so my enthusiasm was somewhat lacking. Kept on writing, though. About a year ago I’d learned self-publishing an e-book was less odious than carrying hod up a ladder, and looked into having Wild Bill  formatted. All that time I kept on writing, though I had started taking summers off.

Now what I have, in addition to Wild Bill and Worst Enemies (available on Thursday for a paltry $2.99; you had to know you couldn’t get through this without more shameless self-promotion) I now have five books gathering dust on my hard drive, plus enough shorts and flash pieces for a collection, and the work-in-progress. I figure I can keep writing at my current leisurely pace for four more years before I get caught up, assuming I drop a book every six months.

Not that I’m OCD, or anything.

Rest assured, the quality of my writing (such as it is) will not suffer.  (I know some people are thinking, “How would we notice?”) I’m dedicated to producing the same level of entertainment for a measly $2.99 per installment. Two ninety-nine, folks. I looked it up on the Internet and was shocked to learn that’s less than three bucks! With summer approaching, no one wants to damage their e-reader with beach sand; beaches are for paper books. That’s why Worst Enemies is available now, so you can get it read and go on with your summer without worrying about the Three Esses ruining your expensive Kindle: sand, salt, and sea gulls.

Some day you’ll thank me for it.

Worst Enemies–Chapter 1

Worst Enemies will be available for Kindle and Nook on March 1 for the highly affordable $2.99. Here’s the first chapter:

Tom Widmer needed to pay attention. It’s not every night someone tells you how to kill his wife.

Hard enough to hear in Tease as it was, the tekno/disco/hip-hop cranked to Volume Eleven, so loud the pulsing in his eardrums ruined the floor’s foot massage. Chastity’s nipple in his ear didn’t help. She had the rest of her tit wrapped against his cheek like she was about to go off shift in fifteen minutes and needed to get him into the VIP Room now, which she was and did. This was her go-to move when time got short: sit on the arm of his chair, slip the teddy or camisole or whatever they call that thing she wore off-stage out of the way, then ease it in. Usually he didn’t mind. Usually it cost him an extra fifty for a trip to the VIP Room. Not tonight.

Tom turned his head and Chastity gave him a mouthful. He couldn’t resist a quick lick before he pulled away. “I’m sorry, baby. Marty and I gotta talk. Maybe later.”

Chastity pulled a pout. “I go off shift in fifteen minutes, Tommy. Can’t it wait?”

Tom looked at Marty and saw no, it couldn’t wait. “Sorry, babe. Next time.”

“You’re just a tease.” The smile that never reached her eyes didn’t hide the irritation in her voice. Fifteen minutes wasted. She made a show of tucking the nipple away and ran her tongue around his ear. Bit the lobe for good measure. “Next time. You’ll be sorry you passed.”

Marty waited for her to get out of hearing range, about three feet. “Can I have your attention now, or do I have to wait for your dick to get soft again?”

“You’re sure it has to be tomorrow?” Tom swallowed the bottom half of his gin and tonic, looked for the waitress.

Marty put his hand over Tom’s and forced the empty glass onto the table. “Pay attention. This has to be done before Monday. She hired a lawyer. You understand me? She already hired a fucking lawyer. Once they serve me with papers, there’s no way anyone will believe a burglar killed her. Thursday’s my regular night out and we have this thing with her family over the weekend. It has to be tomorrow.”

“That’s not a lot of time to plan.”

“Fucking A, and I got tired of waiting for you to do it. Everything you need’s in the car.”

“My car?”

“No, dumbass, in my car. How the fuck would I get it into your car?”

Tom really wanted that gin; the tonic had become optional. He’d had fun the past few months, basking in young pussy while he and Marty talked about killing each other’s wives, a couple of lap dances for the road. He figured his divorce was almost as close as Marty’s, and Marian would get half of what was already only half as much as it had been, the market’s death by a thousand cuts bleeding him every day. The sun would shine brighter in a world without Marian.

Now Marty was good to go. Carol had a lawyer and Tom didn’t know for a fact that Marian didn’t. Marty was right: once papers were filed, neither wife could catch cold without her husband falling under suspicion. Of course, wife killing was much more entertaining as an abstraction, and Tom had never killed anything more evolved than an insect in his life. Buried the whole cage when the kids’ pet hamster died so he wouldn’t have to touch Fluffy. Still, it was now or never. Kill her or face the idea of living like an intern again, running the copier for guys whose cufflinks cost more than his car.

Marty was talking. Probably had been, now that Tom thought about it. “You gotta be there at ten o’clock. Earlier and she’ll still be up. Later and it’s too close to when I come home.”

“Huh? Wait. Run that first part by me again.”

Marty squeezed Tom’s wrist until he grimaced. “Pay attention, dickhead. You fuck this up and I’ll come after you myself. There’s no way you’re doing this half-assed and taking me down with you. You listening to me?”

Tom nodded, tried to make eye contact with the waitress without moving his head. She wanted fifty bucks, he’d give her fifty bucks. A hundred. Just someone bring him a drink, for Christ’s sake.

Marty didn’t need a drink. “One more time. The stuff’s in the car. Black pullover, black jeans, black shoes and socks. One of those head things like Hines Ward wears when it’s cold.”

“What? You mean like a helmet?”

“No, not a helmet. Jesus Christ. Are all stockbrokers this dumb? No wonder the economy’s in the shitter. It’s like a skull cap, tight, pulls over your head, covers everything except your face. Race car drivers wear them.”

“Balaclavas?”

“If you say so. At least you’re listening. Put everything on, darken your face up some—”

“How should I do that?”

“Do what?”

“Darken my face.”

“I don’t know. Use some charcoal from the grill.”

“We have a gas grill.”

“Then buy some charcoal. Jesus Christ. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here. Spend three bucks on a lousy bag of Kingsford.”

“It’s not the money. How am I going to explain the charcoal when I have a gas grill? It won’t look right.”

Marty rubbed his forehead with a thumb and index finger, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. “What are you, autistic? Throw the rest of the bag away. It’s just charcoal. It ain’t like they got serial numbers on them. Use dirt if you want to. Just darken up your face.”

Tom had a thing about being dirty, showered before and after work every day. Sanitized his hands after he blew his nose, snot on them or not. Right now he’d swim naked through a pig trough if someone would just bring him a beer. Lite beer, even.

“Look at me, you son of a bitch.” Marty grabbed Tom’s cheeks between a thumb and forefinger. “I’m desperate here. This has to happen, and it has to happen tomorrow. You don’t do this and I’ll ruin you. I’ll tell your wife what I know and she’ll get half of what you got left plus child support. And you’ll probably lose your license. Then what are you gonna do?”

“How you figure to get my license?” Marty could tell stories about Tom lawyers would line up for like politicians at a microphone. Being a randy drunk wouldn’t cost him his stockbroker’s license.

“Remember that time you told me about that old broad—what’s her name?—Finnegan? How you used money in her account for what you called ‘leverage’ to float that hedge fund thing a few years ago? You made a bundle off that, didn’t you?”

“She didn’t lose a dime.”

“She didn’t make any, either. You told me how you got her to sign shit she wasn’t sure what it was? Got to be records of that, right? You move money around, something she has to sign for, I can’t believe they just throw the paperwork away when the money gets moved back. I’m no stockbroker, but they must be pretty fussy about their bookkeeping. I mean, it’s money, right? No other reason for a stockbroker to be in business.”

Fuck. Fuck. Marty told anyone about that and it was over for Tom. He’d be lucky if his old man could get him a job delivering uniforms. If he didn’t go to jail. He opened his mouth to talk. Marty beat him to it.

“Wait. Don’t say it. How do you know I won’t tell anyway? Right? That’s what you’re thinking. Well, think again. You already have me dead to rights for solicitation of murder. That’s a capital offense. If we quit dicking around and go through with it, both of us have enough on the other guy that neither one can afford to talk.” Marty cocked his head, raised his eyebrows. Showed the palms of his hands like he’d just said something so self-explanatory a retard would understand.

Tom was drunk, not retarded. He understood perfectly that he was well and truly fucked. Didn’t matter anymore whether he killed her or not. Don’t kill her and Marty would ruin him, maybe even send him to jail. Much as Tom disliked getting dirty, he liked the idea of taking one up the ass even less. Kill this woman he’d never met, never ever seen, who’d never done him any harm, and he knew Marty would hold up his end of the deal. Just watching him, the way he acted when he talked about it, Tom knew Marty wanted to do Marian. Hell, he was looking forward to it. Then Tom would be out from under forever.

Maybe he should pretend she was Marian

Worst Enemies Cover

Heartfelt thanks to Sam Griffiths for kindly allowing the use of the photograph that perfectly conveys the atmosphere, and to The beloved Spouse for her PhotoShop artistry in turning an evocative photograph into what I think is a fine cover.

Worst Enemies–Cast of Characters

When most people talk about a book, they talk about the plot. It’s the most obvious facet of any work of fiction. Plot is what makes best sellers sell, and gets movies made. When someone decides to re-read a book, or author, it’s the characters that bring them back.

Some books have too many. The Phone Book comes to mind, so busy doing information dumps on characters there’s no time to get to know any of them, and the story goes nowhere. There can also be too few, if the main character lacks enough stimulation and conflict to be interesting. The trick is to hit the right balance.

Have I found that balance? Probably not. I lean toward multi-layered stories that require several people to tell them. The trick is to keep each character memorable and interesting, so readers will not only remember them if absent for a while, but will want to read what happens when they do re-appear. Here are the characters who carry the most water for me in Worst Enemies:

Ben “Doc” Dougherty, Detective, Penns River Police. Penns River native who returned after several tours as an MP, one of which took him to Abu Ghraib, where he was not involved but knew people who were. Mid-thirties, lives alone, eats Sunday dinner with his parents, meets his father to shoot pool one night a week at the American Legion. The kind of man who attracts women better than he can hold onto them. Not quite sure how he feels about how the future looks for Penns River.

Daniel Rollison. Private Investigator, rumored to be a retired spy. Rollison makes a good living using information gained in one case as leverage in others, and can often get facts faster than the police, as he’s not concerned with warrants and other legalities. Brought in to work on the defense team of a key suspect, he’s not above using what he learns on this client’s tab to his own ends.

Mike “The Hook” Mannarino. Boss of the Pittsburgh mob, lives in Penns River. Nickname derives from his success as a high school pitcher with a devastating curve ball, at least to high school hitters. Attended Auburn on a baseball scholarship for one year, expelled for selling steroids. Fancies himself an old-school Don, keeps most crime out of Penns River through his own methods, one of which includes tying offenders to a backboard and throwing baseballs at them.

Jefferson West. Retired army, working as a handyman. Survivor of the Vietnam War’s “Lost Battalion,” which suffered 80% casualties during the Tet Offensive. Lives in the townhome next to the unit where a murder takes place. A widower estranged from his children, West wants nothing more than to be let alone, bit refuses to close his eyes to what happens around him.

Marian Widmer. Mother of two, married to securities trader Tom Widmer. Still hot in her early 40s and knows it, also knows Tom is in the process of no longer being able to provide for her in the manner to which she would like to become accustomed, and is not the kind of person to take an affront like that lying down.

There’s more to tell about all of them, and several others in Penns River, but I’m a whore, not a slut. No giving it away here. Go to Amazon or Barnes or Noble on March 1 with at least $2.99 left on credit card limit and see for yourself.

Penns River

My second novel, Worst Enemies, is set in the fictional town of Penns River, Pennsylvania. About twenty miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Penns River has about 30,000 inhabitants, mostly blue collar, if they’re working at all. The bottom fell out of the economy when the steel and aluminum mills closed in the 70s, and the economic renaissance that turned Pittsburgh from a mill town to a medical and education center manages to miss The River every time, no matter how many presidential candidates use the abandoned strip mall as a backdrop for a campaign appearance, promising this is just the kind of town that will rise from the ashes under his administration.

Here’s a brief description from the book, about why Stan “Stush” Napierkowski’s job as chief of police has become so much harder in recent years, Stush listening to a harangue from Willie Grabek, a retired Pittsburgh detective he has brought in to provide some experience:

Stush already getting sick of listening to Grabek tell him how to be a cop. Not that he had any illusions about being Dick Tracy. Stush got his job the old-fashioned way: some seniority, a willingness to do dirty jobs, and his sister’s husband was mayor. Smaller town then, different demographic. Not much to do but break up the occasional millhunk fight born of too many boilermakers and not enough work. No serious poverty then, no one dramatically more affluent than anyone else, except for the handful of doctors and lawyers on Pill Hill, by the country club.

That all changed when the steel and aluminum mills started closing. After a while even the diehards gave up on an industrial renaissance. Small subsistence businesses popped up, locals selling things to their neighbors and buying in return. Money moved back and forth, no one getting rich so much as they were helping each other go under slower.

Pittsburgh rode medicine, finance, and education into the Twenty-First Century and parts of Penns River became a bedroom community for young professionals with more income than patience. The old Meadow Gold dairy farm was broken up into multi-acre lots for McMansions. The yuppies treated Stush’s cops like their personal security detail and spent their disposable income at Pittsburgh Mills, the Strip District, and Walnut Street, not in Penns River.

Only a matter of time before someone figured out it was easier to drop drug shipments off in a little town with forty cops and a lot of abandoned real estate by the river than run the risk of dealing with serious police downtown. Stush Napierkowski found himself the chief of a town with its demographics stretched both ways, and law enforcement problems he never signed on for. Knowing he was in over his head didn’t make it any easier to listen to endless rations of Willie Grabek telling him how to be a cop. Right now he needed Grabek more than Willie needed this job.

Worst Enemies is scheduled to be available for Kindle and Nook on March 1.

 

Worst Enemies Available March 1

Now that Wild Bill’s sales are comfortably into double digits, I am pleased to announce my next book, Worst Enemies, will be available for Kindle and Nook on March 1. (I hope. I’m awaiting permission to use a photograph for the cover. This is not Trestle Press.) Don’t think Worst Enemies is something I dashed off over the past few months because of the whelming success of Wild Bill. It took a full year and then some to write, slumbering on my hard drive while I got my act together deciding what I wanted to do with it.

Worst Enemies is the first of what I hope will be several books set in Penns River, a fictional town in Western Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh’s economic recovery never seems to make it as far up the Allegheny as Penns River, though some of the yuppies looking for good home prices have established a bedroom enclave. Worst Enemies is the story of a small town and its cops, pulled between conflicting economic forces. The population is aging, the tax base is shrinking, and the crime situation is becoming more than its police force can comfortable handle.

Oh, and there’s murder. More than one.

More on Worst Enemies will follow, including excerpts and a look at the cover when it’s ready. You have been warned.

The Best Part

What’s the best part about “publishing” a book? (I use the term advisedly, as putting one’s own work out as an e-book may strain some people’s definition.) Sure, the money’s nice. I’ve made over $80 from Wild Bill so far (that’s eight-oh, with a zero) and could crack triple digits. The fame is nice; this blog alone has nine followers. No book tour, so, alas, no groupies, though I do have a little something going on with the lady of the house.

Any of the above would have made Wild Bill a success for me. (Especially that last one.) What made it an unqualified success here at The Home Office was the attention the book received from writers whose work and opinions I had come to respect. Some I knew reasonably well, mostly online. Some I had only a nodding acquaintance with. There were even a couple I hadn’t known before who heard of the book one way or another and took the time to write enthusiastically about it.

I discovered Tim Hallinan when I was asked to review A Nail Through the Heart, his first Poke Rafferty novel. I’ve read everything he’s written since. Adrian McKinty became known to me when I reviewed The Dead Yard; I then kept up, and reached back to read Dead I Well May Be. (I’ve fallen a book behind, solely because no US publisher saw fit to print Falling Glass, which I believe won awards in more enlightened parts of the world. My copy is on its way as we speak.) I’d read a couple of Charlie Stella’s short stories and got my first exposure to his novels with I reviewed Shakedown. I’m about halfway through his complete oeuvre now. Tim Hallinan put Leighton Gage in touch with me; I’m working my way through the Inspector Silva series.

All of the above are writers I was but a fan boy of when I wrote Wild Bill. (Mike Dennis, Pat Browning, and Karen Treanor came to my attention after the fact, though their support is no less appreciated.) They were established writers who had achieved what I barely aspired to. Their compliments and willingness to extend themselves means, to me, that I’m not just jerking off when I lock myself in my office every day or evening and hammer out another page or two. Their comments have made my writing easier on those days when I feel stuck and go through the stage every writers has with every book, when he is convinced it’s a piece of shit and months have been wasted working on something no one will ever want to read, including the author. I can do this. I may not become rich—though $80 is nothing to sneeze at—but I have the satisfaction of knowing I can hold my own and not have people think, “He’s a nice guy, but a shitty writer.” (In truth, that never worries me much. I’m not that nice a guy.)

So, thanks to everyone who reviewed, commented on, or read Wild Bill. (For those who have not, it’s still available for $2.99 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.) And, in the name of being careful what you ask for, my next book, Worst Enemies, will be available March 1. Details and more shameless self-promotion to come.

Formatting Frustration

Now that sales of Wild Bill are firmly into double digits (36 and the last-minute Christmas shoppers haven’t been heard from yet), it’s time to turn my attention to what comes next. Sure, a lot of writers would see three dozen sales and kick back, figuring the mountain has been climbed. Not me. The public is fickle. Staying out of sight for too long can be death to a fledgling author. Sure, 36 is an impressive number, but drop off the radar and sales plummet. There’s no guarantee the next book would even break the prestigious 30 mark.

Fortunately, I have several novels on the hard drive (“in the drawer,” in traditional terms) that are ready to go, thanks to a myriad of gatekeepers who have for years been not just willing, but eager to tell me I was a fine writer, they liked the book a lot, and were sure I’d have no trouble finding someone (else) to publish it. The plan is to launch one every six months or so until the backlog has been worked down. Target date for Worst Enemies is March 1.

Of course, the book must be formatted for Kindle first. (I have learned the double O in Nook stands for total sales expected, at least in my case. Little time will be spent in that sales channel.) E-Book Architects did a great job with Wild Bill, and I’d go to them again in a heartbeat, but I wondered how hard it would be to do it myself. I work on computers all say. I’m no HTML programmer, but I was curious to see what was involved. I still had a plenty of time to involve E-Book Architects if I got in over my head.

Amazon has an easy to follow checklist with everything that needs to be done, including a free, downloadable program that will do the heavy lifting. I format Word documents well, having done several for POD books put out by my writers group in the past, and have learned to keep things tidy as I go.

I got the list, downloaded the software, and spent a few minutes each night for a week or so following the directions. I loaded what I had onto my Kindle and it looked great, with two exceptions. Chapters did not start on new pages, and all paragraphs had first-line indents, which I didn’t want.

The page breaks were easy. I’d fallen into the shorthand method of using Ctrl-Enter to start a new page. This doesn’t convert properly; I had to use the menu commands, Insert > Page Break. Easy fix. Took no more than fifteen minutes to correct all sixty-plus chapters.

The paragraph indents were made of sterner stuff. (I want the first paragraph of each chapter, as well as the acknowledgements, to be left aligned. The rest can be indented.) I tried a few things, even looked at the underlying HTML and experimented. No dice. Internet research showed those “we know what’s best for everyone” bastards at Amazon have Kindles set up to indent all new paragraphs by default.

(Note: I am using the slang definition of the term “bastard” to describe the powers that be at Amazon. Per Dictionary.com: a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person. I would never imply, and have no reason to suspect, that Jeff Bezos or any of his minions were conceived under other than honorable circumstances. I think the definition I have chosen is commonly accepted enough to negate any libel issues.)

More research turned me on to a procedure that should work, though it involved downloading two programs (both free), formatting the book in one, saving it as an EPUB file, then opening it in the other program to convert it to MOBI. It doesn’t strike me as being as hard as it looks here, and I have some time off coming up for the holidays.

I also have E-Book Architects’ address already entered in a draft email.

A Milestone, of Sorts

I finished the first draft of the work-in-progress last night. Took me almost three times as long as usual. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. There were a lot of plotting issues, including a misguided attempt to write this one by the seat of my pants. I won’t soon try that again. I have great regard for writers who can do that well, which includes most of my favorites, but I’m just not wired that way. I need to know what happens when I sit down to write it. My outlines are flexible, but I need some kind of map.

Enough of that. Events made this one take forever; so be it. That’s not the only unusual thing about this project. I usually get right back into the second draft, while some ideas are still fresh in my mind, but that’s not going to happen, either. Instead, this book will lie unattended for two or three months while I do a re-write on an older project that has come close a few times. I have an idea I hope will make the protagonist more compelling, and I’m changing the relationships he has with a couple of the primary supporting characters. I’m looking forward to doing it, and I’ve found an agent who said she’ll look at it when it’s done, so there’s no time like the present.

The book that’s being left on the hard drive will worry me a little. I’m not sure how much I like it, or how well it holds together. Friendly advice and personal experience tell me that’s as it should be; few books worth reading were written without any doubts during their creation. Still, I can usually get right back to work to address these doubts. Not this time.

What I am looking forward to is becoming re-acquainted with my PI. We haven’t had much to do with each other in over two years now, as I worked on other projects while the first book of his potential series circulated. As I’ve noted on the blog before, I think PI stories are potentially the highest form of crime fiction, and Nick Forte and his supporting cast are my favorites of all the characters I’ve come up with. It will be nice to see them again.

Wrestling the Sloth

Tomorrow is one month since I temporarily set aside the work in progress to re-evaluate the plot. Since then, I solved the problems that held me up (more remain, but they’ll be surmountable in context), gained a firmer grasp of my characters (thanks to some excellent advice on Robert Gregory Browne’s writing blog, specifically here), written a flash piece for Patti Abbott’s current challenge, watched a lot of playoff hockey, gone to several events leading up to my daughter’s impending high school graduation (congratulations, Bink), watched some baseball, spent a weekend in North Carolina, bought new windows for the house, and written a grand total of 1500 words.

Considering I like to write 500-1,000 words a day when drafting, 1500 isn’t much for a month. Usually pretty good about getting my ass in the seat, I have manufactured—er, I mean discovered—excuses—er, I mean reasons—to evade writing on all but a small handful of days.

I’m not sure why this is. I’ve been busy in the past and managed to compartmentalize everything so it didn’t interfere too much with writing time. It could be due to my continued ambivalence toward this project. It’s a good idea, and I think it has potential to be a good story. Of course, I thought all my previous efforts were good, too, and publishers have lined up in droves not to buy any of them.

I can also see where this book has potential to suck if it’s not done right. I don’t remember thinking this about the others. One maybe, and I’m still not sure about that one. This WIP is somewhat of a departure for me, as I’ll spend more time away from the actual primary plot than usual, developing a subplot or two, creating a more detailed fictional world, and going into more depth with my protagonist’s personal life. I’ve seen all of these things work in the hands of other writers. Unfortunately, they’re all better writers.

I’ll draft a page tonight. And tomorrow. Two each on Saturday and Sunday, Stanley Cup finals or not. By then I should be back in rhythm. As the Beloved Spousal Equivalent says, I’ll eat the elephant one bite at a time. The end result will either suck, or it won’t. If it does, no harm done. I’ll have learned something, even if it’s only not to let my ambition overreach my talent.