https://www.ina.fr/video/CPF86642006
I understand this may also be playing on the Criterion Channel which I do not have. Brush up your French with Pat! Honestly she’s about an advanced beginner level because I can understand most of it.
Don’t speak French? There’s also this interview over on Vimeo.
Over at ITW’s The Big Thrill I am profiled on my latest Fox Spirit release, Love is a Grift. Check it out!
Here’s a teaser:
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
That love is a loser’s game. I say that as a person who has loved often if not always wisely. I am cautiously optimistic about life at the moment, but the past gives me a lot of material to work with.
The Blood Red Experiment:
A Serial of Giallo-Inspired Novellas
Tom Leins
Didn’t Bleed Red
During my late 20s I worked for a now-defunct UK home entertainment magazine called DVD Monthly – a national publication which was improbably run out of a sub-let box-room on Marsh Barton industrial estate in Exeter. A grizzled old-timer known as ‘The Grifter’ quickly took me under his wing and introduced me to the dubious charms of what were dismissively termed the ‘back-end features’.
Among the regular back-enders were ‘5 Minute Film School’, which scrutinised various obscure sub-genres – the bulk of which weren’t even available on DVD. The Giallo film school piece captured my attention and prompted me to write about everything from Bruceploitation to Poliziotteschi to Hindi Horror in subsequent months. If it’s weird, violent and slightly shoddy I probably like it.
One of my favourite movies within the Giallo sub-genre is probably Dario Argento’s feverish, mind-boggling Suspiria, which comes highly recommended.
That said, a lot of the Giallo films I have watched over the years are at the trashier end of the scale and were released by the Shameless Screen Entertainment label – instantly recognisable in the UK by their lurid yellow (Giallo inspired!) covers and DVD boxes.
When DVD Monthly was abruptly shut down, we literally filled bin-bags with whatever was lying around our grotty little office, and I managed to grab a bunch of these. Weirdly, I found a handful of Shameless DVDs in my attic as recently as last year… Anyway, it’s these deranged, cheerfully exploitative movies that have inspired my story in The Blood Red Experiment, rather than the more sophisticated work of Argento.
Didn’t Bleed Red takes place in the Paignton Noir universe that I’ve painstakingly stitched together over the last decade. The story mashes up a number of familiar Giallo tropes – voyeurism and violence, sex and slaughter – with my warped world of shit pubs, grubby sex hotels and sleazy video shops. It sounds incongruous on paper, but I’m confident it works!
(And yeah, sure enough, there’s a deranged sex-killer in a motorcycle helmet running amok with a meat cleaver…)
I’m a pretty lousy plotter, so this little project has been a really interesting exercise in forward planning! I have really enjoyed working towards a major cliff-hanger every 2,000 words – so much so that I’m going to adopt the same approach for my next novella. This ‘restriction’ has given my story a frantic, twitchy kind of energy, and it has been a lot of fun to write.
I will have some very exciting 2018 publishing news to share very soon, but I’m keeping quiet until the contracts have been signed. Suffice to say, it involves one of my favourite independent crime fiction publishers. Watch this space!
Bio:
Tom Leins is a disgraced ex-film critic from Paignton, UK. His short stories have been published by the likes of Akashic Books, Shotgun Honey, Near to the Knuckle, Flash Fiction Offensive, Horror Sleaze Trash and Spelk Fiction. A novelette, Skull Meat, is available via Amazon.
https://thingstodoindevonwhenyouredead.wordpress.com/
Hey, that award-winning writer Linda Sands has grilled me with her 10 Questions. Drop by to see if you really should put haggis on your burger…
Connie Garrett knows that a trenchcoat and a fedora don’t make a detective. She’s the co-founder of Murder for Hire, an acting troupe that specializes in spoofing, not sleuthing. When MFH performs at a sleepy coastal community’s mystery gala, celebrating the works of a famous hard-boiled mystery writer, the bodies start stacking up, and Connie finds herself on the case whether she likes it or not. Now Connie is committed to solving the murders while trying to keep both the show-and her love life-afloat.
Was this story inspired by your own acting experiences?
Murder for Hire was definitely inspired by real life events. My best friend and I had a murder mystery oriented theater troupe in San Diego many years ago (I will not say how many, other than to admit that I had to actually add cell phones in by the time the book was first published). Many things in MFH actually happened, including a confrontation with a truly horrible woman who tried to get us fired from one of our jobs. She actually said that we’d ‘never work in this town again.’ She caused a lot of stress for us and our actors, so we decided to kill her. In a book, of course! So we wrote the first draft of MFH, which was rewritten several times over the years before actual publication fifteen years later.
God, I feel old now…
Is acting a good preparation for writing?
For those of us that like to write, I think it gives much experience to draw from. But I don’t think the crossover works for everyone because there are plenty of actors with no interest in writing and vice versa. Where I think acting experience really helps a writer is prepping them for public speaking and publicity. So many authors are introverts and find the whole process of promoting themselves and their works to be akin to torture. I personally love it, but when I first started acting I was a lot more self-conscious than I am now.
What skills are similar?
Hmmm… the ability and delight in stepping away from the real world for a while and making it as real as possible to the readers/audience.
So, are there any characters based on real experiences?
Well, see above for the woman who inspired MFH in the first place. Her name and appearance were changed to protect the innocent (that would be me), but at least one of her scenes pretty much followed the true to life version of it. A lot of the characters in MFH are based on real people. Some are conglomerations of two or more people. Some are completely made up. The two main characters, Connie and Daphne, were definitely inspired by me and Maureen (my best friend), but the difference between the first and final draft is very noticeable because I’d managed to achieve distance and perspective. Which made for a better book.
How would you compare writing this novel to writing the Ashley Parker novels?
Oh jeez… There’s no way to really compare because MFH was so closely based on real life events (and wish fulfillment ’cause killing off people who have been total asshats without fear of being arrested is AWESOME) that writing it was… well, it was easy. Mind you, it needed the rewrites it eventually got, but that first draft… I think it was a three-week process.
Come to think about it, I still kill off people who piss me off in real life in my novels… So as far as that goes, I enjoy it as much in my Ashley Parker novels as I did writing Murder for Hire.
Do you always start out with a clear plan or do you feel your way along with a story?
First draft of MFH was outlined. The murderer, though, did not cooperate and ended up being changed after the first draft was finished. That made for a better book because there were all these built in red herrings pointing to the character who was originally the villain. The first Ashley Parker book was not outlined beyond a page of ‘this happens and there are these characters and, and, and… zombies!’ Now that I’m working with Steve Saffel at Titan Books, everything has at least a basic outline. I still find some of the best ideas happen when I’m doing research and something will spark an idea that leads me down a completely different path than expected.
Will there be more novels in this vein?
I really want to finish the sequel to MFH. I started it quite a while ago and have three chapters waiting for me to get on with it.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on the first in new urban fantasy trilogy based on the Lilith mythos for Titan Books (which is, btw, a UK publisher), which is going to be released next year. I’m also working the first of a science fiction trilogy with my husband David Fitzgerald (an awesome writer!) that’s also being published by Titan Books. It’s called TimeShards. I’m stoked (that’s my Southern Cal surfer gal coming out there) about both series. Additionally I’ve got a story coming out in the latest V-Wars anthology, edited by Jonathan Maberry (he also writes the wraparound stories for the books), as well as a story in the upcoming Joe Ledger crossover anthology Joe Ledger: Unstoppable, which is being edited by Jonathan and Bryan Thomas Schmidt, and features characters from various authors’ universes interacting with characters in the world Joe Ledger.
What are some of your favourite crime stories or writers? Films that inspire?
Not so much into crime stories as I am mysteries, really. Favorite authors off the bat: Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels, Marlys Millhiser, Juliet Blackwell, Terry Shames, Susan Shea, Lisa Brackmann… that’s just a start. As far as films? Classic film noir for the win as far as inspiring MFH!
Is writing better than acting?
And yes, writing is MUCH better than acting. I can wear pajamas and don’t need a boob job to do it!!!
Dana Fredsti is a novelist and screenwriter, B-movie actress, zombie aficionado, exotic and domestic feline advocate, swordfighter, wine lover and beach glass junkie. She writes the best-selling Ashley Parker series: Plague World, the sequel to Plague Town and Plague Nation, is available now from Titan. Murder for Hire is out now from Fox Spirit Books.
Wow, great news! The Anthony awards are out and I’m quite pleased to find myself in two nominated anthologies. My story ‘Life Just Bounces’ is in Murder Under the Oaks edited by Art Taylor and my tale ‘Mesquite’ appears in Protectors 2: Heroes which Thomas Pluck edited. I owe Tom a double debt of gratitude because he reminded me about the deadline for the Bouchercon anthology and I hastily turned my short comic play into a story just in time. Great to see so many folks I know on the list of nominees — it’s going to be a tough ballot to decide on in New Orleans.
And hey! That Frank Duffy has an interview up with me on Facebook. It’s public so you should be able to see it here. Fun interview to do. You should check out the other interviews Frank has done with folks on his author page.
Hey, do you like some fine German-language noir? Look no further than PULPCORE! Now available and FREE! Kostenlos! Get stuck in. Practice your German or give it to you friends. As you can see it’s a stellar lineup.
The very artsy Ryan Bracha, who came up with all the promo for this anthology and its trailer, too, shares a few facts with us today.
Who’s your rogue?
He’s an unnamed dad, estranged from the kid’s mum, taking his son out for his birthday. What starts out as a bitter reminiscence turns into something altogether more sinister.
What crime would you really want to get away with?
Big time hustler stuff, like, in a team of grifters, pulling huge cheeky scores over any one of the crooked scumbag millionaires we’re overrun with. I’d be known as The Wizard’s Sleeve.
What author can’t you do without?
Irvine Welsh. No question. His inventiveness with bringing a tale to life knows no bounds. If we’re talking crime fiction, I think Elmore Leonard takes some beating.
What movie best captures the criminal life?
Requiem for a Dream, or Trainspotting. The extreme lengths that people will go to, to feed addiction. That’s crime for me. The highs and lows of resorting to petty crime for a short term buzz.
Criminal mastermind or mild mannered dreamer?
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Spelk Captain, Gary Duncan is our Rogue of the day; check out his site for fine flash fiction you can read when you only have a little time — and enjoy when you have a little more.
An Imperfect Arrangement is about bad people doing bad things. Bill: the once-feared but now fearful gang boss. Don: the hired muscle who may or may not know the whereabouts of Bill’s missing £10,000. Rick: Bill’s idiot son who has never let common sense get in the way of a stupid idea. And Frank: the fixer, enforcer and confidant whose loyalty to Bill is matched only by his own instinct for self-preservation. An Imperfect Arrangement is about doing whatever you have to do to get by and survive.
Whisper it softly, but I think I already have.
James Ellroy. If I could have more: Don Winslow, Lee Child, Dennis Lehane. Non-crime, Martin Amis.
I was going to say Carlito’s Way, but I see Aidan Thorn has already bagged that. I’ll go with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [Ed: an awesome film]
I’d like to say the former, but I’m afraid it’s the latter.
Gary Duncan – contacts:
Who’s your Rogue?
Diggsy in ‘Route 66 And All That’ is a small-town postman who occasionally dips his toes into the dirty and shallow waters of small-time crime.
What crime would you really want to get away with?
I’ve always thought that ‘crimes against humanity’ would sound impressive on a rap sheet. Better to be hung for a herd of sheep etc
What author can’t you do without?
Askey. Sorry, what was that, I’m a bit mutton …
What movie best captures the criminal life?
Wild Bill: Former tough guy Bill returns home to his dreary flat in a London tower block, after 11 years in the nick, only to find out that his wife has done a runner to Spain, leaving their two young sons to fend for themselves. Writer Danny King, director Dexter Fletcher and a collection of great performances turn what could have been merely grim social realism into a splendid, funny and moving film.
Are you a criminal mastermind or just a mild-mannered dreamer?
A criminally minded dreamer.
Find Brazill across all media:
Hi. My rogue is John Lee Dixon, a deserter from the US Army hiding in the Underworld of blitzed out and war beaten Britain. After his girl is murdered, he takes on the gangsters and spivs of the East End the only way he knows how, with ol’ fashioned Appalachian retribution and a LOT of bullets.
I’d like to ramraid the Bestseller list with a novel filled with furious anger…either that or rob a casino…preferably whilst wearing a tuxedo.
The early Hemingway is kind of a spiritual big brother of mine, and always will be (this is pre-Safari and millionaire lifestyle Hem)…but I’d give up all the Hemingway in the world rather than lose Cormac McCarthy….
The criminals I’ve known have been more along the lines of Trainspotting than Goodfellas: tracksuit wearing predators, haunting the dole queue and the off licence and, above all, avoiding the dentist. Sexy Beast , however, best approximated the lives of some retired ‘gentlemen’ I knew in Spain, particularly in the opening third of the movie. It was quite authentic.
Both probably, depending on who you asked.
Find Gareth on line:
Graham Wynd 