As I mentioned a few months ago, I sold a western story to Crimson Streets Magazine. Originally scheduled for July, it's been published in this week's issue.

Please click here to read (or click the image below) and let me know what you think. It's a story I'm quite proud of, and I hope to do more with Marshal Ernie Farrar at some point in the future!

I have a friend who, for years off and on, has tried to get me to read the works of Charles Willeford, a writer who got started in the peak years of the early 50s paperback original boom, but didn't find his fame as a writer, really, until the mid-80s (shortly before he passed, sadly). The stuff described to me didn't really seem like it was anything I was interested in, but, upon seeing a used copy of Black Lizard Books' edition of Willeford's first novel Pick-Up, I bought, read and absolutely hated it.

I wrote Willeford off after that. That was a mistake.

A couple of weeks ago, during a visit to my favorite used bookstore, another customer asked the clerk if they had any Willeford. The clerk said they only rarely got any and the books didn't stay on the shelf long when they did. "People love their Willeford," he said. I interrupted, related my experience with Willeford and asked what these two guys would recommend. They shared a look and the clerk said, "Yeah, Pick-Up isn't good," to which the other customer agreed. They talked back and forth, then agreed Willeford's best work was Cockfighter. 

Having only read two Willeford novels, I'm not prepared to swear Cockfighter is the best - but it is good. It's not the kind of novel I normally read nor at all what I expected. Willeford is widely considered a crime novelist, based on his Hoke Mosely, P.I., series but his early work--including Pick-Up--are not crime novels. Rather, they are more like blue-collar literary novels, for lack of a better term. While Pick-Up was slow, depressing and frankly boring in its description of the minutia of a character we know very little about's life,  Cockfighter is swift-paced (despite covering a much greater period of time) and lacks a lot of details, while telling us quite a bit more about Frank Mansfield, the protagonist.

Frank, you see, is a professional cockfighter (raising and fighting roosters, of course) with a dream: to be the very best cockfighter in the world - by the standards of his chosen crowd, of course. To do this, he wants to win the coveted Cockfighter of the Year medal, handed out at the whim of the owner of the Southern Cockfighting Tournament. As a sacrifice to his own hard work and sense of honor while he works towards accomplishing his dream, Frank has sworn not to speak a word until he earns that medal. At the start of the novel, he hasn't spoken in two years and seven months. 

Essentially, Cockfighter is a southern-fried sports road-trip novel (loosely patterned after Homer's Odyssey, according to Willeford himself), jam-packed with a tremendous amount of technical information on the raising and care of gamecocks, the history and etiquette of the sport, and the brutality of the lives the men involved lead. They aren't necessarily bad people (some of them are), but the sense of simmering violence, unleashed through the birds they raise and train was actually kind of disturbing.

At the same time, the novel has a kind of rough beauty, giving the reader insight into a world and its denizens most of us probably will never be exposed to (thankfully; I have zero interest in seeing a real cock-fight. I agree with the SPCA on this one wholeheartedly), and the personal meaning behind what they do. Frank Mansfield, and maybe Willeford himself, identifies people by the they hold and their relationships to them over and over and over again. A truck-driver who hates it is is a whiny slob because he wants a desk-job, but Omar Baradinsky, Frank's friend who was once an extremely successful New York City advertising executive who retired at the top of his field, is a sort of awe-inspiring figure because he not only succeeded at his original chosen field, he made a decisive change when he realized he was unhappy. Frank's brother Randall trains as a lawyer, but never applies himself to the profession, sporadically supporting himself by writing, so he is a failure in Frank's eyes. Throughout all of these people and professions, Frank knows exactly who he is: a cockfighter. To Frank, knowing who you are is one of the most important things there is.

My major complaint with the novel is one of timing: originally published as a paperback original in 1962, much of the background information about characters harkens back to, for 1962, relatively recent times: World War II and the 1950s, and works just fine. However, the "definitive" edition of the novel, published in 1972 as a hardcover, was somewhat re-written by Willeford, but only sporadically takes into account the ten year time difference, leading to a few jarring instances that took me out of the story, such as the eight years Frank has been out of army, taking him back to the 50s, but the truck-driver having served in Vietnam.

Overall, it was a good novel. It's not a crime novel as I expected, not a sports novel (although that's vaguely close to a good description), only sort-of a road-trip novel, but I enjoyed it and it was definitely a nice change of pace.

Now, of course, I have to reconsider my opinion of Willeford and maybe try out some more of his work.

​Any recommendations?

Fore note: these haven't truly been nightly in a long time, but I need something to call these, so enjoy some Nightly Noir (season II).

Now! Unlike last week's PLEASE MURDER ME!, THE LADY IN THE LAKE is something I intentionally tracked down. Based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, I wanted to see how the two compared. As friends, fans, readers know, I am a big fan of Chandler (although I am not without my criticisms, as well, of course).

Anyway, let's see how Phillip Marlowe's fourth novel-length case translates to the silver screen.

The fourth Marlowe novel and fifth film adapted from Chandler's Marlowe works, this one is a great novel that was turned into an, uh... interesting experiment by star/director Robert Montgomery. Montgomery was already a film star by this point, but this film was his directorial debut and he was clearly looking to make a big splash for himself right out of the gate. The property was certainly a winner: with a string of successful books and film adaptations to the character's name, Marlowe was a known commodity that audiences would have looked forward to the same way audiences today look forward to James Bond or Jason Bourne movies: they knew what they were getting and they liked that. Montgomery wanted to shake things up, though: he tried to capture the first-person perspective narration of the novels by shooting the film from Marlowe's POV. Except for a few places where he addresses the camera directly, we never see him and see only what he does. There's a lot of possibilities here, but they aren't really used. Frankly, it gets old quickly and begins to get annoying.

Additionally, the script diverges from the novel considerably, turning Marlowe into an aspiring writer trying to leave his private detective career behind and... they made it a Christmas movie. The writing thing doesn't affect the plot considerably, but it felt kind of shoehorned in. The Christmas thing is mostly cosmetic, too, although it's used as a plot-point eventually. 

So, is it a good movie? No. It's really not. I give Montgomery credit for trying something new and different, but he basically failed.

I haven't done one of these in ages (and never here at the site, so far as I remember), but while looking for something else, I stumbled on this probably-forgotten noir gem, starring two of the greatest TV actors of all time (according to TV Guide's 1996 rankings), Angela Lansbury and Raymond Burr: 1956's ​Please Murder Me!

The set-up is classic noir: it beings with Craig, a lawyer, as he records his confession for crimes he's semi-unwittingly helped a client get away with and how he expects she will murder him within the hour.

Long story short:

Craig (Burr) is having an affair with Myra (Lansbury), his best friend Joe's wife. Unable to stand the guilt, and wanting to be with Myra free and clear, Craig tells Joe and asks him to divorce Myra. Joe doesn't refuse, but asks for time.

While other doings occur, Joe confronts Myra and, behind a closed door (blocking the action), a gun is fired, leaving Joe dead. Myra claims self-defense, Craig bolsters this by telling the court (at Myra's murder trial) that he and Myra are lovers and he knows Joe well enough to know he might have gone crazy and tried to attack her. Myra is found not guilty.

Later, Craig finds a letter Joe had addressed to him, but never got to send, stating Myra has been in love with an artist named Holt for years and Myra is using both Craig and Joe. After finding evidence of this, Craig confronts Myra and tells her he'll trick her into killing him, alleviating his guilt and so she'll go to prison the way she should have. In the end, he does trick her into killing him, more or less in the presence of the district attorney.

The film has all the sweaty, manic guilt you'd expect of noir, as well as a few great shots. Is it good, though? No, not really. There's not much suspense in the story since you know Craig is going to die and who will do it. The journey from points A to B is decent and both Burr and Lansbury show off more acting chops than a B movie like this deserves. That's probably why both went on to greater things while this was director Peter Godfrey's final film.

Recommended? Not really, unless you're a big Lansbury or Burr fan, but it is free to watch on the Internet Archive if you're interested.

I wanted to take a moment to share a Kickstarter currently running for an anthology called DRABBLEDARK.

Edited by Eric Fomley, who accepted one of my stories for the book, DRABBLEDARK will feature 100 flash fiction horror stories. Currently, Eric is running a Kickstarter to help defray the publishing costs and the goals are quite reasonable.

Check it out here, see what it's all about, and snag yourself a pre-order!

It's been a while since I've done a manga Stuff I Like, but then, it's been a while since I've read one I really wanted to talk about. So, without further ado, let's talk about MY BOY.

I almost didn't buy this manga. I don't read a lot of josei (women's) manga, though some of the series I have, I've really, really loved (THE HOUSE OF FIVE LEAVES; DESCENDING STORIES). This series, though, MY BOY, I was attracted to only because of the art--which is gorgeous--while the story itself, and the cover art, left me with the impression this might not be a story for me. 

I was wrong. It's fantastic.

MY BOY is the story of Satoko, a 30-year-old office lady, single and without friends (or, apparently, family) living a very quiet, soul-crushingly mundane and lonely existence. At 30 years old, she's only had one romantic relationship in her life, a very brief one at that, her last year of college, eight years earlier. At the time, it didn't bother her, but now she suspects it's the moment her life went off the rails, though she couldn't say why.

MY BOY is also the story of Mashuu, an ostracized, bullied 12-year-old boy who suffers from family neglect (including lack of new clothing and haircuts; no really, it's why he's wearing clothes a young elementary student would and hasn't had a haircut in a couple years, leading people to think he's a girl), who spends most of his time outside of school alone, practicing soccer, which he isn't very good at.

The two's lives intersect when Satoko, reeling from a particularly unpleasant interaction with her boss (who, through an unlikely stroke off fate, is the same man who briefly dated then dumped her in college), sees Mashuu practicing soccer alone in the park and, on a whim, decides to give him some pointers. Mashuu is thrilled to have anyone, especially an adult, pay attention to him and share in his passion. From there, a very unlikely relationship builds between the two.

The author, Hitomi Takano, says in her afterwards that this manga is intentionally a gender-reversal of the typical onee-san/shota (young miss/boy) manga trope, in which a young girl finds an companion in an older boy or man. In fact, the story started out that way, but, she says, she lost interest in it right way until she decided to flip the switch. I'm glad she did because I've enjoyed it a lot so far.

Not only is the manga beautiful, but the interactions between the characters very realistic, which you often don't find in this types of comics. Both Satoko and Mashuu are hesitant, unsure of themselves and how they can/should interact with one another. Satoko, because she has no experience with children and isn't sure what's appropriate; Mashuu because he has no friends to speak of and no real parental figure. Both are extremely lonely, extremely vulnerable people and watching them find each other is powerful and moving as Satoko's motherly instinct and desire to matter to someone brings out aspects of herself she didn't realize existed and Mashuu finds that he can be himself and have value, rather than simply trying to keep his head down and stay out of everyone's way. Together, they compliment each other's weaknesses and build each other's strengths.

Only the first volume is out in English, but it's a tremendous read. As I said, I almost didn't buy this (and in fact almost cancelled my order once I had after having second thoughts), but I'm very, very glad I did. I truly enjoyed reading something outside of my normal reading wheelhouse and I'm looking forward to the next volume very much.

On a recent used bookstore trip, I intentionally collected a number of paperbacks from authors I'd only read a few books from (as well, of course, as favorites). One of those was Stuart Kaminski's MURDER ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD, featuring P.I. Toby Peters. I think I'll have to read more of these.

​Read on for why.

Previously, I'd read some of Kaminski's Inspector Rostnikov novels, featuring a Soviet police detective behind the Iron Curtain, as well as his Kolchak the Nightstalker tie-in works. I wasn't familiar with the Toby Peters series (Kaminski's longest) until I saw this.

The Toby Peters novels predate the Rostnikov novels by several years (Kaminski's first two novels, I now know, Kaminski continued to write about the character until his passing in 2009). Written in a very different style than I'm used to from Kaminski, this work is both lighter and in a way, more entertaining as far as I'm concerned.

The year is 1940, the place is Los Angeles, and Toby Peters is both a  former cop and former trouble-shooter for Warner Brothers, now turned private eye. Called to MGM (Metro Goldwyn-Meyer) by none other than Judy Garland, Peters is tasked with investigating the murder of one of the little people who played a Munchkin in the film adaptation of Oz, over a year after the film has wrapped, all while being charged with keeping it quiet to avoid damaging the studio's reputation.

As I mentioned, the tone of the book is very light and the pace brisk. Toby Peters is a typical wisecracking, underpaid P.I., and both he and the book remind me of a lighter version of Max Allan Collins's Nate Heller mysteries, as both are filled with real locations and people (including Clark Gable, Raymond Chandler and others), though of course the events in this novel are entirely fictional. 

I don't need to go too much into the plot, as it's more functional than anything else, but as I said, the tone is light, the pace is brisk, the dialogue is often funny and I enjoyed it a great deal. There's something like two-dozen of these mysteries and I plan to read more at some point in the future. It'll be interesting to see how the books evolve over the 30 plus years Kaminski was writing.

​Recommended if you see copies!

JACK HAMMER: PAPER HERO is in stores TODAY!
Ask at your local comic shop or order online!

Jack McGriskin, cranky, super-strong private eye, is back in an all-new one-shot!

One of Jack's oldest foes, Monkey Business, has finally been caught red-handed, but when his trial turns into a circus, Monkey Business goes on a murderous rampage! It's up to Jack to bring the sinister simian to heel - but when things go from bad to horrific, is Jack up to the challenge posed by a super-human with nothing to lose?

Feast your eyes, folks, it's mail-day:

After months of distributor-level delays (please be assured that no fault lies with the publisher or any member of the creative team), JACK HAMMER: PAPER HERO, the first new Jack Hammer book since 2015 will be in comic book shops and your hot little hands on Wednesday, April 11th.

Jack McGriskin, cranky, super-strong private eye, is back in an all-new one-shot!

One of Jack's oldest foes, Monkey Business, has finally been caught red-handed, but when his trial turns into a circus, Monkey Business goes on a murderous rampage! It's up to Jack to bring the sinister simian to heel - but when things go from bad to horrific, is Jack up to the challenge posed by a super-human with nothing to lose?

Click here to read a preview and if your comic shop didn't get any copies, click here to order online!

Like a lot of people, I remember OUTLAW STAR from the late 90s/early 00s as a seminal sci-fi anime - one of the series everyone had to watch. Unlike many, however, I somehow never got around to watching it (I never finished COWBOY BEBOP, either, but that's another story). The DVD collection was in my Amazon wishlist for the last several years, and then, by luck, Toonami re-ran the series. Huzzah!

I'm glad I got a chance to watch this series finally. It won't make my all-time-favorites list, but I enjoyed it.

The series follows the crew of the Outlaw Star, a cutting-edge space-ship built by a mysterious criminal organization for unknown purposes, and then stolen by an outlaw (those who are neither outright criminals, but also don't adhere strictly to the law) named Hilda and later given over to Gene Starwind and his friends after her death. Nominally, the series is about trying to find the legendary Galactic Leyline, the nexus point of the galaxy (and possibly the universe), where literally anything is possible. Melfina, the beautiful amnesiac girl who is somehow part and parcel with the Outlaw Star's navigational system, is also somehow connected to the Galactic Leyline and, like the hero he aspires to be, Gene has promised to find this legendary place and solve the mystery of Melfina's past. That is almost immediately pushed aside, however, and doesn't really pick back up until the last few episodes of the series.

I enjoyed OUTLAW STAR quite a lot and it reminded me of simpler times. The characters are delightfully 90s-nostalgic anime stereotypes (the maverick who's often in over his head; the boy-genius; the beautiful-intruder who doesn't have any memories of her own past; the cool beauty who can kick your ass; even a cat-girl), and the individual story-lines range from epic space opera to goofy fan-service. One of the complaints people often have of the series is that there's little originality to it, and that's true - it really doesn't do anything a dozen (or more) other series haven't. But that doesn't mean it isn't a fun time, and really, that's all I was looking for from this series. I'd like to mention, too, that the stunning job (presumably) Funimation did in upscaling the 20-year-old animation to high-def. It just looks gorgeous, especially the space-scapes.

Recommended if it's a series you enjoyed the first time around or if you are simply a fan of 90s anime.