Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

David Sheff
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Reviewed by: Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff ’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic.

Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

My Review

I never understood the appeal of meth. It’s made in clandestine labs using an array of chemicals that are flammable and hazardous to your health. The drug is highly addictive and has dangerous side-effects. Your teeth fall out, your jaw collapses, you get those ghastly sores and ulcers, your cheeks become hollow, and your eyes are sunken in. And that’s only on the outside. On the inside, your brain looks like Swiss cheese, you become paranoid, irritable and even violent.

At one time, cocaine was my drug of choice. No fancy paraphernalia, no needles, and it’s a plant derivative. The high doesn’t last as long and if I want to stop, there are no physical withdrawal symptoms. Plus, it had the added benefits of keeping my weight down at its lowest, making me the life of the party, and acquiring more friends than I knew what to do with. So it has to be healthier for you, right? Who was I kidding?

My job performance suffered, I became paranoid, I was hardly eating at all, and I slept only sporadically. There were nosebleeds, jitters, dry mouth, running nose, and depression. There was the scary emergency room visit for an asthma attack during a party where drugs, alcohol and cats were rampant. My neglect to mention my drug use to the doctor treating me nearly caused me to have a heart attack.

One morning I woke up and decided enough is enough. My love affair with the drug was over as quickly as it started. Since that day, I never touched the stuff again.

I’ve read stories about drug addicts, but none told from a parent’s perspective. Nic Sheff, a college student in his early 20’s, continues to battle his addiction. This is a beautiful and painful story told by his dad. He’s not a perfect man and he’s made a lot of mistakes, but there was never a doubt in my mind that he loves his son dearly. Through the ups and down of Nic’s addiction, his dad’s constant worries and fears ultimately affected his health until eventually he sought the help he needed and learned to create healthy boundaries.

I’m looking forward to Nic’s story – what made him start using, his relationship with his parents and siblings, and the effects his parents’ divorce had on him.

All I can say is I’m glad I don’t have kids. 

Also posted at Goodreads.

Introducing a horror trilogy the right way

BROTHER'S KEEPER
Glen R. Krisch
Stray King Publishing
$2.99 Kindle only, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Growing up, Jason and Marcus Grant were close as only brothers can be. As they reached adolescence, they started to drift apart, taking opposite paths into adulthood. Jason went to college before getting a job at for the local newspaper. Marcus chose a path littered with drugs, violence, and self-destruction.

Now adults, Jason has cut Marcus from his life and considers himself an only child.

Clean and sober, Marcus finds his true calling when he joins the Arkadium, a secret society dating back millennia. They plan on setting history back ten thousand years by unleashing a world-wide calamity that will destroy modern man's domination of the planet. As the Arkadium set their plan in motion, Marcus reaches out to his brother, wanting him by his side to record the new prehistoric era. Jason is forced to make a choice, join his brother in the time of humanity's descent, or die like so many others.

A 16,000-word novella that introduces the forthcoming Brother's Keeper trilogy of novels. Book 1 is due Winter 2012.

My Review: Jason and Marcus are dysfunctional brothers from a dysfunctional family. Mom's a cold fish, borderline sociopath; dad's a dishrag, cries easily, and clearly dissociates from his life with a cold woman whose affections he simply can't engage. Neither "parent" spares much time for their sons, and Jason, the elder and the family fixer/achiever, tries to make it all work...until the day Marcus basically kills himself with a heroin overdose the same time as Jason's full scholarship to Washington University is announced.

So Marcus sinks into a self-destructive spiral, Jason struggles with his emotional scars, and the story opens with Jason reconnecting with one of Marcus's few good efforts: His girlfriend Delaney, an ex-goth chick and cutie who convinces Jason to go with her in a search for a new, improved Marcus, who has found God.

Boy howdy, has he found God. God has told Marcus what to do, and he's setting out to do it: End the world, one dam at a time. Jason is unwillingly roped into Marcus's millennarian plans, with a secret and unorthodox role to play in the Brave New World that Marcus is calling into being. Whether he wants to play that role or not.

This novella is a very quick read, and it's far more assured and well-made than much of its competition. It's clearly only a small piece of a larger mythos, which the author's promotional materials suggest will be coming online soon.

The pace is brisk; the characters are quickly and efficiently limned; the plot is firmly and boldly erected.

This is a solid effort from a writer to watch. Get your Kindle edition and pass a pleasant hour in the company of Krisch's creation.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A Soldier's Tale of Cowardice and Bravery

If I Die in a Combat Zone (Box Me Up and Ship Me Home)

by Tim O'Brien

Published by Broadway

4 Out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Amanda

For me, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is the most powerful book that I have every read and it's the standard against which I judge all things O'Brien. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien utilizes a nonlinear and fragmented narrative structure, magical realism, and the power of storytelling to capture the visceral truth that telling the real story can't quite capture. For O'Brien, we must sometimes turn to fiction to capture what is "emotionally true" and, in doing so, be less concerned with an objective reality. In a way, If I Die in a Combat Zone makes this point for him. Written 15 years before Things, If I Die is a memoir of Tim O'Brien's experience in the Vietnam War. There is no metafiction razzle-dazzle, but rather a straight-forward, linear narrative that begins when O'Brien is drafted and ends as he boards the Freedom Bird headed toward home. It's powerful stuff, but not nearly as powerful as his fiction work. Despite that, anything by Tim O'Brien is better than almost anything else out there--fiction or non-fiction.

Having grown up in the post-World War II glow of American military might, O'Brien was raised in the ask-no-questions patriotic culture of the Midwest. Real men were expected to fight. Real men were supposed to look forward to war. Real men craved the opportunity to serve their country and protect their families. O'Brien doesn't reject these values, but these views are complicated by his own philosophical inclinations. He questions the nature of bravery, as well as how American intervention in Vietnam is protecting the average American's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the aftermath, he's left with no certain answers: "Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry . . . Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme? . . . Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."

And that's what O'Brien does in the novel--he tells war stories. He tells of the tedious days of repetition, punctuated by brief bursts of action; he tells of military incompetence and the frustration of not knowing who the enemy is in a land where farmers by day picked up guns at night; he tells of how cruel being sent on R&R was, knowing the brief return to normality would not last. And he does all of this without being preachy; he simply shows us what life was like for the average soldier and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. His language is at once poetic and precise, getting to the heart of all things. No one can capture the peculiar mix of fear, adrenaline fed excitement, and remorse of a soldier's most introspective moments like O'Brien.

At one point, O'Brien ruminates on Ernest Hemingway's fascination with war: "Some say Ernest Hemingway was obsessed by the need to show bravery in battle. It started, they say, somewhere in World War I and ended when he passed his final test in Idaho. If the man was obsessed with the notion of courage, that was a fault. But, reading Hemingway's war journalism and his war stories, you get the sense that he was simply concerned about bravery, hence about cowardice, and that seems a virtue, a sublime and profound concern that few men have." It's a concern that permeates all of O'Brien's work and his treatment of it is indeed sublime.

A Fistful of Meth

Donnybrook
Frank Bill
FSG Originals (2012)
Anthony Vacca's rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Is this book about the horrors of  crystal meth and how a drug such as this, one that is synthetic in nature, acts as an analogy for the growing resentment as well as and dependency of the industrialization of corporatization and the effects therein on rural communities, that, in turn,  are more or less becoming the raw resources for the next financial high of some select group of men and women with fifty dollar haircuts and the killer suits to match, the elite group of  tha less than 1 % of tycoon royalty in the United States, those white men and women who have never set foot in one patch of these aforementioned rural communities—like the drug dealer and the lives of the people he ruins with his mind-rotting wares—because they live in towers made of glass ivy where they  count finger by finger every dollar made, every dollar saved, and frown at every finger/dollar lost?

No, this book isn’t about that.

Then, is it about poverty and the way it pushes people—people who have been no further than twenty miles down the road from the house where they was born; boys and girls who grew up short-sighted in dreams and do by rote the same as their daddies and mommies did before; people who fell in love or made those easy mistakes early on, thinking about love and now they got themselves a little one to have to think about, but don’t worry ‘cause a man is gonna do what a man has gotta do, just like his daddy taught him, and where’s the girl gonna go anyhow with a little mouth to feed, and she sure as shit can’t finish high school what with tending to the baby and all, and the boy tells her don’t worry he’s gonna drop out hisself and get that job at the company mine and make eleven hunnerd dollar a week easy, as long he’s strong and able; people who  pretty soon see that that kid’s getting older with more and more costs tagging along with each inch they grow, and also, what do you know the boy and girl who ain’t looking much like their own age these days because trying at being an adult ages you fast, what do you know when there’s childs two and three and four and it’s like they never seemed to quite figure it out how it is that these kids keep popping out, but daddy can’t even say don’t worry about it on account, I got work, because the mine’s getting shut down and they’re looking at a mountain they can rearrange like a face with a pair of fists and won’t even need as near many backs to break to fet that coal they want, and besides, that leg of daddy’s aint ever been what it once was since that you can barely even call it a cave-in happened and damn near sent him straight to God;  and God, God, God, who’s gonna hire me now and how am I gonna feed these little ones, and how am I gonna make sure not a one of my sons looks in the mirror one day and sees me—and that’s the way it pushes people to commit acts of violence, all for the desperate dream on having enough, having more, having something they were promised called America and there’s no way to get around it without heavy hands; and is this book about that dream and what any man or woman you meet is willing to do, acts that most men and women never knew they were capable of committing, to seize hold of it?

No. It isn’t about that.

Then what?

Well, plain and simple, Donnybrook is about is people fucking up other people. And there all doing it in southern Indiana.

There doing it at Donnybrook, an annual bare-fisted brawl with a thousand dollar entry fee and a 100,000 cash payout if you’re still alive and standing. But the men and women of this novel—each with their own hankering for that prize—have to manage to get themselves there first. And that means they’re going to have to fuck up a lot of people along the way.

Have I been crass so far in this review? Cynical? Careless in grammar and dialect? Well, guess what: that’s exactly the way Frank Bill writes out this fast-moving hick lit of apocalyptic proportions. On nearly every page of the book there is an act of violence. Someone getting a bone shattered. A body part severed. In general, a lot of blood spilt out of their insides.

And Frank Bill gives it all to us with the hypnotic glee of some madman ringside announcer. He gives each opponent that steps onto his pages have as much personality as one of those steroid-crazed freaks in a TV wrestling match. There’s a guy who used to have a face before a chainsaw took care of that. There is a Chinese kung-fu expert of some super-secret and super-deadly school of fighting. There is a woman with a body made of and for sinning. There is brawler with as much love for violence as meth. There is a cop with a lot of dirty secrets and the notion to put people in the ground as a means of coping with them. There is a shotgun-wielding prophet with visions of the apocalypse, of those bad, bad days to come to Indiana, and maybe even the world? And there is the underdog, our good enough for a hero, our fighter who is just trying to do what he has to do to get that cash prize so he can feed his family.

And that last character is as much of a moral compass as you’re going to find in the story. Also, that’s about all the depth you’ll find in these characters. There is no time for introspection or subtlety. Fuck restraint. There’s no time for shit like that with the amount of mayhem that Frank Bill crams onto the page. Hell, it’s all the characters can do to fight off one person, before the next threat’s coming their way. So what we end up having here is a book that, most of the time, feels like an extended fight scene.

Not that this isn’t awesome in its own thrill-a-minute way; and it’s not like Frank Bill doesn’t know what he is doing: there’s a lot of writing pyrotechnics going on that’ll jar your eyes right out of your skull.

But there was a reason I made such a gratuitous mess of those two introductory sentences. Because, unlike most books that are being categorized as “hick lit” these days, this book does not really deal with the human travails of low income lives of desperation. This book does not deal with the potentials of ecological despair and how that reflects the very psyche of an increasingly commoditized human race. And this book is not about violence as a result of external or existential factors. No, this book is purely about pure violence; in a way, it as if the author is experimenting in making a novel that is nothing but violence—a book as an act of violence. Which is interesting in and of its self, but if you are come here looking for much more than that, then look elsewhere.

But if you want to speed-read your way through a blood-sharp knife of a book about grotesque, drug-fueled rednecks, then here’s your book.

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Tanith Lee

a shout-out to Tanith Lee! now this is one of those authors who holds a special place in many fantasy-lovers minds. some love her for all of the boundaries she seemed comfortable in ignoring, the ruthlessness, the vivid imagination, the perversity, the srange sexual situations, the often-lush prose, her chameleonic ability to write in many different genres. others loathe her for her often self-annhiliatingly passive heroines and her despicable heroes, prose that moves beyond purple into Ultra-Purple, a cold-blooded disdain in providing happiness for either her characters or her readers, etc. i understand the divisiveness, but i fall squarely into the former camp - at least when i was much younger. Tanith Lee & Jack Vance & Michael Moorcock & Roger Zelazny were my go-to fantasy and scifi authors for a long while, until i gave up on fantasy for a shameful period of at least 10 years or so. but i'm back to my favorite genre and plan on catching up with all of my old favorites, to see if the magic is still there.

***

LYCANTHIA

this is a tale of an insanely self-absorbed little twit of a pianist who returns to his recently re-acquired ancestral chateau. he's apparently dying and all he wants is a place to run to and hide, one where he can do his slow dance with death while moodily contemplating his sad life with all of the poisonous self-loathing typical to a Tanith Lee "hero". fortunately for him, he gets a new lease on life due to a pair of threatening yet strangely life-affirming were-cousins. unfortunately, some predictably ignorant peasants decide to get inbetween our sexy goth trio and their Lifelong Happiness At Last. damn, peasants are a real drag! especially if you are self-absorbed twit/pianist.

the above description does a profound disservice to this intriguing and rather gorgeously written bit of fantasia set in semi-modern times. but i couldn't restrain myself from the snark - it was almsot like i wanted to have some petty revenge on the confounding and infuriating hero. i'll try to do better later in the review.

i'm glad i started off my Tanith Lee rediscovery by reading Lycanthia. this is a slim story and i read it all in one evening. it is a bewitching one as well. i was entranced from beginning to end because it has literally everything my blackened little un-heart wants in my fantasy... Weird Ambiguity, a ton of it. Characterization that does not attempt to pull the reader's heartstrings and protagonists that are often stunningly unsympathetic and capable of doing terribly wrong things. Luscious, almost overripe prose, with frequent bits of dry gallows humor and sardonic self-awareness. Monstrous things that are not eye-rolling or corny. Cruelty & Tragedy & Despair that is not facile or there to check off boxes on the Gothic List of Necessary Things, but is carefully layered within the narrative and the characterization. a winding but not confusing plotline. a gothic atmosphere of mystery and potential violence.

"Atmosphere"... my gosh, Lee knows how to create it! her descriptions of the sinister forest, the eerie little village, the off-kilter and enigmatic supporting characters, and especially the chateau itself... wonderfully baroque detail-porn that i totally ate up. the whole rich stew is swooningly romantic - not so much because of romance between the characters (although there is a feverish yet childlike version of that), but rather because of the swooningly romantic atmosphere. a classic kind of "Romantic" - of the Byron, Shelley, and Shelley school.

the central theme of the novel is fascinating: the idea of Self-Aborption and its impact, how it ruins any attempt to truly understand one's surroundings, the people in those surroundings, the context of an entire place. Lycanthia's aristocratic asshole of a hero, and what befalls him and his lovers, is a perfect encapsulation of the deleterious effect of such a trait. some may howl at the moon and live only to consume life, like beasts - and those around them can tremble with fear or anger or even lust; others may howl and rage only at themselves and their lot in life - and those around them will find themselves betrayed by that all-consuming narcissism, destroyed by that terminal inability to connect with anything outside of themselves.

***

ELEPHANTASM

oh the beguiling wonders of the Exotic East, the Ancient Orient, of heat and spice and jungle, of India!

oh the enchanting lures of Gold and Status!

oh the captivating charm of Power Over Women, to bend them to your will, to make of them your puppets!

oh the bewitching promise of Revenge, bold & bloody!

there is a family in Victorian England. the patriarch made his wealth in questionable ways, in India, at the cost of many lives. the matriarch is from the stage, now trapped in her body as she is trapped in her country estate. one son is piggish and priggish; the other son a self-pitying sadomasochist. the daughter is mad, stark raving mad - but the quiet kind of mad, the kind that has the bones of tiny animals sewn within her petticoats, shhh, no one need know. there is a fallen child, fallen from upper to lower, now from the slums, her sister a murdered murderess. she joins this family as a kitchen maid, and then more, a victim and a victimizer, an instrument of unearthly revenge.

Tanith Lee weaves a strange and brilliant tale out of disparate parts. colonial India, made dark and eerie and threatening, the stereotypical wonders of the Exotic East turned inside out, made into an Other that no mere englishman can hope to understand. victorian life in a country manor, all the upstairs-downstairs melodrama tarnished and not-so-charming, made malevolent, turned brittle until ready to crumble into pieces. sexual sadism, stripped of its romantic veneer, made ugly and sickening - there is no victim embracing her victimhood here, there is just a girl trying to survive. phantasmagoria, slowly creeping, lurking in the shadows of the narrative, longing to take over the tale, and finally doing so in the end, destroying that narrative and transforming its characters.

i appreciated much about this novel. its refusal to make a particular sexual scenario 'sexy', its anger at exploitation in all of its forms, and its disinterest in explaining its magic. but i especially appreciated the level of its writing. the author writes like a dream, a dark and gorgeous dream. such beautiful prose! Tanith Lee, you cruel and perfect lady.

there is a scene with trained monkeys at a formal dinner. they are dressed and are able to act just like their upper class dining companions. a brilliant scene, hallucinatory and full of malice. and, happily, full of compassion for those clever monkeys.

death follies on the foxhunt: sweet justice!

there is an elephant, of sorts. it is from the past. it is coming to get you, upper class, it will rear and roar and trumpet and destroy. there will be a massacre in the manor. huzzah!

Exhibit A - Wounded Prey

Wounded Prey: Introducing Detectives Farrell and Kearns by Sean Lynch
Dan's rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher: Exhibit A/Angry Robot
Available: May 28th
Price: 14.99

Rookie cop Kevin Kearns witnesses a child abduction and gets his ass handed to him by the perp, one Vernon Slocum. The girl winds up dead a short time later and Kearns finds himself the scapegoat. When a retired cop with a history of his own with Slocum, Bob Farrell, shows up offering him a chance at redemption, Kearns jumps at the chance. But will even two lawmen be enough to bring in a remorseless killing machine like Slocum?

First off, the official stuff: I got this ARC from Exhibit A in exchange for reviewing it. I'm a huge Angry Robot fan so when I heard they were launching a crime line, I sprung into action and nabbed print ARCs of their first two books.

Wounded Prey is the tale of a deranged psychopathic ex-marine and the two men bent on stopping his killing spree... permanently!

Sean Lynch's debut effort is quite something. This is one brutal book. The good guys don't walk out smelling like roses and the bad guy winds up smelling like something else altogether. Damn near every member of the cast goes through the meat grinder, some multiple times.

The two protagonists, rookie cop Kevin Kearns, and retired cop Bob Farrell are at opposite ends of their respective careers and complement one another nicely. I thought Kearns was a little light on personality but Farrell won me over after only a couple pages. Farrell was part mentor, part bad influence, making for an enjoyable read whenever the two were on stage at the same time.

And the villain, oh, the villain. Vern Slocum was one scary bastard and the idea of someone like him freely wandering around instead of being locked up was pretty chilling. He was rotten to the core but, given his background, didn't have much of a chance to be otherwise. On my all time list of deranged killing machines, he has to be near the top. It's pretty easy to hate a guy that's tougher than the heroes, a better shot, and a child rapist/killer to boot.

The FBI are caught in the middle. Scanlon's an asshole but he's trying to do his job. I was kind of hoping he'd join Kearns and Farrell in putting down Slocum but it wasn't in the cards.

The writing was pretty good, especially when Lynch was writing Farrell. Can you tell Farrell was my favorite character? I'll be interested in further books about Farrell and Kearns.

I do have a minor gripe. If A Farrell and Kearns thriller wasn't displayed above the title, there would have been a lot more suspense. Since Wounded Prey is the first book in a series, I knew neither of the leads would be taking the dirt nap. Other than that, not a gripe to be had. Four stars!

View all my reviews

Let this be a lesson to you: Go to confession often!

Penance: A Chicago Thriller by Dan O'Shea
Dan's rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher: Angry Robot/Exhibit A
Available: Now
Price: 14.99


When an old woman is shot by a sniper just after leaving confession at Sacred Heart church, Chicago cop John Lynch is on the case. But what does the case have to do with one in 1971 that saw his father murdered? And what will the shadowy government organization that has also been tapped to bring in the sniper do if Lynch gets in the way?

First off, the official stuff: I got this ARC from Exhibit A in exchange for reviewing it. I'm a huge Angry Robot fan so when I heard they were launching a crime line, I sprung into action and nabbed print ARCs of their first two books.

Penance is a hard animal to classify, kind of like a dinosaur. In this case, it's not bird vs. reptile but hard-boiled detective vs. police procedural vs. espionage thriller. It's an exciting chimera to behold.

The protagonist, John Lynch, was the biggest selling point for me. A second generation cop, Lynch has been living in the shadow of his father, murdered when he was a kid, most of his life. He doggedly pursues the sniper despite being shot at, stonewalled, and eventually blackballed. He's no superhero, either, getting wounded over the course of the book and not being comfortable with taking a life. His relationship with Liz was a little abrupt but not outside the realm of believability once it got going.

When the book first jumped to Weaver and his black ops crew, I rolled my eyes a bit, military fiction not being one of my favorite genres. While Weaver's segments had a few too many tactics and weapons descriptions for my taste, it managed to steer clear from gun porn territory and actually meshed pretty well with the more detective-y sections featuring Lynch. It also didn't give me Brad Thor flashbacks, something else I am thankful for. Weaver, Ferguson, and the rest were believable antagonists, adhering to the rule that the best villains are the ones that think their actions are right and justified.

The sniper, while not getting a lot of solo time, was pretty believable and made a chilling threat. I found myself avoiding windows when walking to the bathroom to keep from getting shot by an unseen assailant a few times. I also really liked his reasoning behind shooting people just after they left confession.

The two plot threads, the one in the past with Lynch's father and Lynch's tale in the present day, intersected where I thought they would. There were some twists near the end that brought this above the level of most thrillers.

One thing that I thought was really odd was this bit from Lynch's point of view:

Colleen Lynch-Ketteridge stepped out of the car in a Hillary Clinton-type pant suit, except Hillary didn't have Collie's ass.
The phrasing is a little creepy to me but I don't have a sister. Maybe if they have nice asses you say things like this?

3.5 stars. I'll read another Dan O'Shea (or Exibit A) book after this.

View all my reviews

An Interview with Wounded Prey's Sean Lynch

Today's guest is Sean Lynch, author of Exhibit A's Wounded Prey.

How long was Wounded Prey gestating in your head before you put pen to paper?
I conceived WOUNDED PREY on Halloween night in 1987.  I was finishing a pre-shift workout and running on a jogging path along the eastern waterline of the San Francisco Bay.  I saw a group of small children trick-or-treating.  They were being herded by a harried mom, and as I jogged past I couldn’t help but imagine, “What if I were a bad guy?  What if I weren’t an off-duty cop, but instead a monster? Who would stop me, if I decided to snatch a child?”

The extension of that chilling thought got my creative juices flowing.  Though I’d only been a cop a couple of years, I’d already been exposed to a few people who shared some of the qualities embodied in Vernon Slocum.

How did you hook up with Angry Robot/Exhibit A?
I was lucky enough to have my work taken on by the top thriller agent on the planet, Scott Miller, of Trident Media Group.  Scott recognized my stuff as a little ‘harder-edged’ than your average crime-thriller, and connected me with Exhibit A Books, and its helmsman, bestselling author Emlyn Rees.  Exhibit A is a division of Angry Robot Books, the crew which turned the Sci-Fi world end-up with their gonzo, go-for-broke style and stable of rock-star authors. I was honored Exhibit A gave me an opportunity to be a part of their posse.


Which of the leads most resembles you, Farrell or Kearns?
There’s doubtless a bit of me in both Farrell and Kearns.  But I would have to say, since I was such a green cop when I wrote WOUNDED Prey, that Kearns more closely reflects me at the time of the book’s writing.

Where did Vernon Slocum come from?  He was one scary bastard.
Vernon Slocum is a mish-mash of a number of people I knew, from my upbringing in Iowa, military service, and my early days as a cop.  I cobbled him together like the Frankenstein monster, from a menu of evil qualities I’d seen or experienced.  I added a heavy dose of historical fact in his backstory, especially the stuff about the mental health funds being cut by the Reagan administration during the 80’s.  That event created the Petri dish for a being like Vernon to gestate in. Vernon Slocum is definitely a man of his times.

What can we expect in the future from Farrell and Kearns?
I’m currently sketching out a Farrell and Kearns sequel where the duo goes to the Arizona desert and tries to snare a flightless bird with an elaborate collection of ACME products. 

Kidding aside, I’m brewing a sequel, and don’t have anything definitive I can describe yet.

Who would you cast in a Farrell and Kearns TV series?
In a perfect world, I would cast Ed Harris as Farrell, Ryan Gosling as Kearns, and Vin Diesel as Vernon Slocum.  I envision Vin with a crew-cut, gnarly teeth, and his body covered in Vietnam-era military tattoos in much the way Robert DeNiro’s Max Cady was covered in biblical ink. 

What are you reading now?
I’m re-reading an AMERICAN GUNFIGHT, by Stephen Hunter; he’s worth the second perusal.  My next reads are en route; I’m waiting anxiously for my copy of Richard Parker’s SCARE ME and Dan O’Shea’s PENANCE, which are on order. 

What is your favorite book of all time?
Tough call.  Pushed hard, it would have to be Anthony Hope’s A PRISONER OF ZENDA.  Hope was truly a thriller pioneer.

Is there a particular book that made you want to be a writer?
There are a lot of works which influenced my writing, but if I were to point to one, it would be Robert Parker’s LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE.  It is such a smooth, efficient work.  Parker made it seem effortless.

What is your favorite dirty joke of all time?
Q:  What’s the hardest part of having sex with an underage girl?
A:  Getting the blood out of the clown suit afterwards.  (Old Sex Crimes detective joke.)

Any non-Farrell and Kearns books in the works?
I’m working on a stand-alone, as well as a character-based series.  With any luck, you’ll be hearing more from me in the future.  I hope.  Really I do.  Cross my heart.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring writers?
Do it.  Write. Quit making excuses.  You’ve done enough damned research.  Put your boogersticks on the keyboard and throw down.  You can always edit later.  The crappiest finished work ever written trumps, “It was a dark and stormy night…” at the top of a blank page.