Muse on Rodeo will explore the world or L.A. crime, mystery, noir and pulp in our next series and are honored to announce and welcome bestselling author Miles Corwinas our guest.

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‘Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.’ – Dalai Lama

HOW TO SAY NO – TO NO ME IS TO LOVE ME

Recently, I tuned into an excellent podcast produced by Amy Porterfield called, “How to Set Goals and Create a Plan for the New Year.”

In the podcast, she…

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I will be signing copies of my mystery/Satire Deathryde: Rebel Without a Corpse at the LA Times Festival of Books on Sat. April 24th, 2010 from 4-6 pm.
http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/
Look forward to seeing everyone there.

I have an article featured in this month's issue of Mystery Readers International:

I am pleased to announce that actor Michael Madsen, of Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Donnie Brasco fame has agreed to play the lead character of James DeRossa in Deathryde: Rebel Without a Corpse. Madsen has always been a first choice for this role, but I was not sure he would would accept.

On to pre-production....

Remember the Stanley Kramer classic: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with Spencer Tracy and all those crazy motorist chasing the Smiler's money buried under the "Big W?" Well, it's still a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World... I came across a recent article by the Associated Press that read: Buried Loot, A Mystery for Authorities. The article centered around a suspect, Franz Felhaber, who strolled into the Treasury Department with $5.2 million stuffed into a briefcase -- technically… Continue

An excellent mystery novel for fans of the genre, August 6, 2008



The natural jump from undertaking to crime? "Deathryde: Rebel without a Corpse" is a gripping mystery about James DeRossa, who leaves his father's funeral home business to embark on a scam that could net him upwards of twenty-five million. Detective Hank Gladwin is on DeRossa's tail about his unsavory endeavors, and their cat-and-mouse chase has twists and turns throughout. An excellent mystery novel for fans of… Continue

If you have a taste for slambang satire that plays games with the names of dead celebrities from James Dean to Barbara Stanwyck and a hearse driver with the marvelous name of Coffin Joe, Michael P. Naughton's Deathryde: Rebel without a Corpse (Gilded Hearse Press, $12.95, 183 pages), is your kind of book. It's the story of a gang of criminal undertakers engaged in a caper known as "Harold and Maude" involving a group of Hollywood funeral homes and an ancient but unforgotten mafia… Continue

In Stephen King’s book, On Writing – A Memoir of the Craft, he talks about filtering out distractions and creating your own universe while writing. King said he likes to work to loud music -- hard-rock stuff like AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses and Metallica and how music is another way of “shutting the door.” Quentin Tarantino also spoke about creating the atmosphere – how he’ll write for a while and then find the appropriate song to keep him in the mood. For me, music has always been part… Continue

Question: You said you wrote this story originally as a script before HBO’s Six Feet Under and pitched the idea around Hollywood. Explain what happened and why you shelved the story?



Michael P. Naughton: Call it Jungian synchronicity, collective unconsciousness or just plain old coincidence— or maybe not. I was working on the general story and wrote up a treatment for Deathryde and also read Jessica Mitford’s classic The American Way of Death Revisited. I was working with Jorge… Continue