Krauss Haus

Review: Hands in the Dark by Maxwell Grant
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I loved the opening of this classic pulp fiction yarn: a single line of cryptic marks written on a scrap of paper. A secret message that could be worth a fortune—and so a murderous trail of deceit begins with intercepting the note and the quest to learn its meaning.

Not only does the master of disguise, the Shadow, use impersonation to gain the upper

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If there are any small press/indie comics fans out there, check out my recap of this year's Stumptown event here.

If you're a fan of the old pulp magazines, check out the excellent Coming Attractions blog written by Bill Thom. Every Friday night he publishes an update with the latest news in the world of classic pulp reprints (Shadow, Spider, Doc Savage, Detective, SciFi, Adventure, G8, etc), modern day works, conventions, pulp creators, action/hero-oriented movies, and small press publications dedicated to pulps.

I've been a big fan of Elmore Leonard ever since I read his novel Mr. Paradise. I read his 10 Rules for Writers. Here's my review:

If you read customer's reviews of this hardcover book on Amazon.com you will quickly see that some people feel they were hoodwinked. In truth this "book" is really an article reprinted from The New York Times on the thickest paper I've ever seen between two covers. However, the book version

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In my creative writing class my teacher uses various kinds of prompts to start our freewrites. Here's an example of one:

I was tired but otherwise fine. (a line pulled randomly from a novel)

I was tired but otherwise fine. It had been a rough night. The fire was out and only the smoldering coals remained. The firemen left only one man on site to stir the embers and extinguish them to prevent any further possible flair-ups. If I had any sense I'd make it a point to get some rest now, but I was… Continue