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Virtual Sitdown with Shreve Stockton

Shreve Stockton was an up-and-coming city girl, on a move from San Francisco to New York when she drove through Wyoming. Something about the state called to her. After a brief move, she found herself back in Wyoming. Not long after, someone brought a 10-day old coyote pup to her doorstep. Its parents had been shot, and it was not yet weaned. He was born wild, but today, Charlie is Stockton’s pet, mingling with her cat and others at her ranch. She blogs about her experiences - and that blog is now a book. Today Stockton sits down with Book Addict Editor Angela Wilson to talk about Charlie and the book.

Shreve, tell us about yourself.

I’m 31.  I spent my 20’s in San Francisco and NYC and loved every second of city life, but moved suddenly and unexpectedly to the middle-of-nowhere Wyoming after riding my Vespa through the area and finding it impossible to get it out of my mind & heart once I reached New York. 

The Daily Coyote is a book with posts from your blog about raising a coyote pup. How did the pup come to live with you?

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David J. Schow Talks Publishing

The Amazing Gun-o-Centric Adventure of How David J. Schow Was Dragged Kicking and Screaming Back into the New York Publishing Biz

I had given up on conventional publishing and in fact had been bitching about it to anyone who would listen for the better part of a year.
Actually, I foreswore what I call “real world publishing” — the kind where you send a manuscript to New York and hope it appears in a commercial bookstore a year or two later with your name spelled correctly someplace on the cover — in 1994.  I gave it up for several very logical reasons:

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Sneak Peek: Gun Work by David J. Schow

Life isn’t always cheap south of the border—some lives are worth a million dollars. That’s what the Mexican kidnapping cartel was demanding for Carl Ledbetter’s wife. So Carl reached out to the one person he knew with a chance in hell of saving her, a deadly man whose own life he’d saved in the sands of Iraq. It was time to call in some favors. Because some situations call for negotiation, but some…call for gun work.

Excerpt

How Barney came to occupy a room on the wrong side of management in a hostage hotel deep inside Mexico City had to do with his friend Carl Ledbetter and one of those scary phone calls that come not always in the middle of the night, but whenever you are most asleep and foggy.

“This is Carl, goddammit, Carl, are you there? Is that you, man? It’s you, right?” Hiss, crackle. “Look, I don’t have my cards, I don’t have my ID, I don’t have my passport, all I have is one of these shitty phone cards that runs out of time, they took Erica, they got her, man, grabbed her ass right out from under me, I haven’t got a piss to pot, I mean a pot to piss in—”

“Carl, slow down; I’m not even awake…”

The phone pad glowed at Barney while his slowly surfacing brain tried to process information. Anonymous Caller.

Carl Ledbetter worked for a specialty imprint of a New York publishing house that had recently been inspired to cherry-pick non-American talent, in this case, genre novelists—science fiction, detective, horror and romance writers—and provide the best of their work in translation to US paperback audiences. Erica, whom Barney had never met, was thumbnailed by Carl as a swoony bit of red-headed business working as an editorial assistant at Curve magazine. They had met at an American Booksellers Association conference, struck sparks, fell in love, cohabitated, and had recently begun referring to each other as fiancÈ and fiancÈe.

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Book Addict Novelcast Features Brett Abrams

Alternative lifestyles abound in Hollywood today, but did you know that they were the talk of the nation in the early 1900s? Stifled housewives scrambled to stores to get the latest celebrity gossip from society columns or glitzy Tinsel Town glossies similar to InTouch and USWeekly - but respected like People or Life. Movie stars were glamorous, sophisticated, and it did not matter that they thumbed the moral code of the day. In a way, it was exciting to those who felt too confined to experience it themselves. Today, Book Addict Editor Angela Wilson finds out more about this time of cross-dressers and scandalous affairs from noted historian Brett Abrams, author of Hollywood Bohemians, Transgressive Sexuality and the Selling of the Movieland Dream.

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Virtual Sitdown with David J. Schow

From splatterpunk to hardboiled pulp, David J. Schow has always forged ahead with stories while keeping them under tight control. But after a 13-year hiatus from the book world - when he was working Hollywood scripts - he decided to forge ahead again. Only this time, the publishers weren’t so easy to work with, the editors were fickle and cover art he loved was axed virtually overnight.

Not exactly what the award-winning novelist wanted for his work. Then, Schow reconnected with Charles Ardai, founder of Juno and the new pulp fiction house, Hard Case Crime. They knew each other for years, and Ardai signed Schow on for a novel he hadn’t written yet - one that had only a title. Gun Work is a fast, twisted, bloody journey of pulp at its finest. It makes you want to grab a gun, save a dame and make the bad guys bleed. This week, Schow sits down with Book Addict editor Angela Wilson to chat about his book, his publishing life and upcoming works. Sit back and enjoy the ride!

David, tell us about your latest, Gun Work.

Gun Work is my attempt at a straightforward hardboiled novel, pulp in execution and Gold Medal in intent, by which I mean a conscious evocation of the tropes — the femme fatale, the pile of cash, the tarnished warrior, the inevitable betrayals, and about a hundred and eighty thousand bullets.  By “pulp in execution” I mean what I say — I wrote Gun Work in six weeks flat.

You are well known for splatterpunk, with screenplays like Leatherface: TCM3, Critters and The Crow. I could see echoes of these in Gun Work. How does your time writing splatterpunk play a role in novel writing?

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Virtual Sitdown with L.J. Sellers

A former journalist turned novelist and now novel editor, L.J. Sellers is thrilling mystery fans with the release of The Sex Club. The novel features returning protagonist Detective Wade Jackson - and a plot that dovetails to real events today. Today Sellers sits down with Book Addict Editor Angela Wilson to chat about The Sex Club, her career and where she gets her inspiration.

Tell us about your latest, The Sex Club.

The Sex Club is a provocative mystery/thriller that readers say they can’t put down. The tag line is: A dead girl, a ticking bomb, a Bible study that’s not what it appears to be, and a detective who won’t give up. That sums it up well. For the record, it’s not an x-rated story. I’m a crime writer (who hates to write sex scenes). In this story, I wrote about teenage sex, the suppression of sexuality, and the consequences of both. But first and foremost, it’s fast-moving, suspense-filled whodunit.

This novel includes suspenseful thrills, political scheming, police procedures, social commentary with a dash of humanity. What was it like to bring all of this together into one tale?

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Sneak Peek: The Sex Club by L.J. Sellers

Today’s featured author, L.J. Sellers, offers Book Addict readers an inside look into her latest, The Sex Club, a Detective Wade Jackson mystery.

Excerpt One

Tuesday, October 19, 9:32 a.m.

“You can put your clothes back on, then we’ll talk some more.”

Kera gave the girl a quick smile and stepped out of the examining room. Jessie, if that was her real name, claimed to be sixteen. But Kera suspected she was younger, maybe all of thirteen or fourteen. The girl was slender, with the small breasts and flawless skin of someone who hadn’t grown into her adult body yet.

Kera lingered in the clinic hallway and jotted some notes on Jessie’s chart. Genital warts (HPV) on the inner labia treated with liquid nitrogen. Clearly, her client was sexually active, but there was no sign of bruising or abuse. Yet her tender age made Kera wonder if the sex was truly consensual. Sometimes she walked a fine line between respecting a client’s sexual privacy and ignoring a potentially abusive situation. She would ask a few probing questions just to make sure Jessie was in a mutually consenting relationship.

Kera gave the girl enough time to get dressed, then knocked lightly and stepped back into the windowless room. Crammed into the eight-by-ten space was an examining table, a cabinet-sink combination, a wheeled stool, and a simple black-cushioned chair. The pale cream walls failed to make the room seem bigger.

“How long have you been sexually active, Jessie?” Kera took a seat on the stool.

“For a while.” The girl flipped her waffle-iron-straight, blond hair off her shoulders and stared defiantly. “Why?”

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Trailer: Dying in a Winter Wonderland

At the 15th Annual Northern Virginia Christmas Market, the anthology Dying in a Winter Wonderland was a hot seller. The lead story is a new Hannibal Jones mystery from Austin Camacho. All profits from sales go to the Toys for Tots program. The book is a great gift idea for the mystery fan on your list - plus your purchase will help make some child’s Christmas a little bit better. Check out the trailer for Dying in a Winter Wonderland.

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Virtual Sitdown with Ed Lynskey

Ed Lynskey has always been a fan of the P.I. caper. In the ‘90s, he decided to sit down and write his own series featuring a tough private investigator for a series of short stories. But P.I. Frank Johnson could not be contained to short fiction. Soon, he sent Lynskey on the chase for his first full-length novel, Dirt-Brown Dirby. Frank hasn’t stopped sending Lynskey on the fictional chase. Now into Johnson’s third book - with the fourth due out soon - the author takes a break from chasing leads to chat it up with Book Addict Editor Angela Wilson.

Tell us about your latest novel, Pelham Fell Here.

Pelham Fell Here, published as the third book actually represents the first title in the P.I. Frank Johnson series. It provides some back story for the other three books (The Dirt-Brown Derby and The Blue Cheer already published with Troglodytes due out in 2009). Pelham is Frank’s hometown in Virginia. After a hitch in the Army MPs, he comes back and finds out things have changed during his absence, and not all for the better.

His cousin, Cody Chapman, is then murdered. Of course Frank feels an obligation to find out why. He soon becomes the target of the local authorities’ investigation and goes

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Virtual Sitdown with C.J. Lyons

No one is immune to murder in pediatric ER doc C.J. Lyon’s novels. This medical suspense thriller author is an up-and-comer in the genre made popular by Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen and Michael Palmer. Her first novel, Lifelines, netted a Romantic Times Bookreviews Top Pick, rave reviews from Publishers Weekly and a Perfect 10 from Romance Reviews Today, and made her an instant bestseller. Today, the author sits down with Book Addict Editor Angela Wilson to chat about Lifelines and the next book in the series, due out in January.

CJ, tell us about your debut novel, Lifelines.

Lifelines takes place on the most dangerous day of the year: July first, the day new interns come to work at hospitals across the US, no smarter than they were on June 3oth.

A new ER doctor at Pittsburgh’s Angels of Mercy Medical Center, Dr. Lydia Fiore, starts her job on July first.  And loses the wrong patient.

As she searches for the truth behind her patient’s death, she finds herself, her patients, her co-workers, and eventually most of the city placed in danger.  She races to avoid disaster with her new friendships at Angels her only lifeline.

What was it like to have this - your first - become a national bestseller? Does it raise the bar, or give you certain expectations for your next novel?

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