Craig McDonald's Blog (54)

T&T BACKSTORY #5: HEMINGWAY & HOMICIDE

You can make a good case for Ernest Hemingway having left a profound mark on hardboiled crime fiction.



Graduate students and crime fiction aficionados have murdered trees arguing whether Hemingway influenced Dashiell Hammett or whether inspiration ran the other direction.



Raymond Chandler incorporated Hemingway in his fiction, wrote an astonishingly inept parody of Hemingway prose and staunchly defended Hem’s much-pilloried novel Across the River and Into the… Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on September 14, 2008 at 11:17pm — No Comments

T&T BACKSTORY #4: HEMINGWAY & DOS PASSOS

A portion of Toros & Torsos takes place in Spain early in 1937 as Hector Lassiter joins Ernest Hemingway and novelist John Dos Passos in Madrid during the early days of the Spanish Civil War.



In T&T, Hector has gone to Spain as a favor to Pauline Hemingway — agreeing to watch over a sometimes erratic Ernest, while at the same time doing what he can to contain Hem’s growing preoccupation with journalist Martha Gellhorn, the woman destined to become the third of four Mrs.… Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on September 8, 2008 at 10:34am — No Comments

T&T BACKSTORY #3: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

In the first Hector Lassiter novel, Head Games, Hector visited his old friend Orson Welles on the set of Welles’ noir classic Touch of Evil. It was noted in Head Games (set in 1957) that Hector owed Orson a favor connected to… Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on August 31, 2008 at 9:53pm — No Comments

T&T BACKSTORY #2: SURREALIST ART AND MURDER

The Hector Lassiter series is all about secret history — a blending of fact and fiction that aims to get at something like the hidden truth.



Toros & Torsos (aka, Hector Lassiter #2), spins on the premise that surrealist art and theory may have informed or inspired several bloody, unsolved crimes of the 20th Century — most notably the murder of Elizabeth Short, the so-called “Black Dahlia” as she was dubbed by panting L.A. journalists circa January 1947.



The… Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on August 25, 2008 at 10:49am — No Comments

T&T BACKSTORY: THE GREAT KEYS STORM OF ’35

The coming Labor Day weekend marks the 73rd anniversary of the Great Florida Keys Storm of 1935 — still the most powerful hurricane to strike the United States. At this writing, another hurricane is threatening the Keys — a tropical storm named Fay.



The ’35 hurricane occurred at a time before tropical storms were given names. Storm forecasting was an uncertain science. And officials charged with the responsibility of informing and evacuating citizenry in the storm’s path were more… Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on August 18, 2008 at 12:42am — 1 Comment

82 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

Ah, February: Valentine’s Day…President’s Day…the month for sneaking across borders, plundering graves and stealing the heads of national icons….



That’s right hombres, 82 years ago this month, some skulking types broke into Pancho Villa’s grave and made off with the magnificent bastard's head, the MacGuffin that drives the plot of HEAD GAMES.



So raise a glass (mescal, tequila…pick your poison) and make a toast south (if you think the head stayed down there), or maybe… Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on February 16, 2008 at 9:20pm — 1 Comment

San Francisco Chronicle reviews HEAD GAMES

Eddie Muller writes:

"Craig McDonald, a genuine expert on the history of crime fiction (with a wonderful book of author interviews, Art in the Blood, to prove it), gives free reign to all of his crime fiction obsessions in a debut novel that's a berserk 1957-based caper running roughshod through the politics and pop culture of the latter half of the 20th century. His hero, Hec Lassiter, a pulp fiction writer, gets caught up in a…

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Added by Craig McDonald on November 18, 2007 at 6:15am — 1 Comment

CHUD Interview

Cameron Hughes of CHUD.COM offers a new interview and review tied to Head Games.

The…

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Added by Craig McDonald on November 14, 2007 at 1:03pm — No Comments

New story at Thug Lit

Thug Lit's newest issue contains a short story, "These Two Guys," about a couple of Ohio working men, dieting, and the end of a long and storied relationship.

The new story rounds off a cycle of shorts that have appeared in various venues around the web, each one advancing a slightly larger story that climaxes in the Thug Lit short.

The cycle begins with…

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Added by Craig McDonald on November 10, 2007 at 10:17pm — No Comments

New Interview Posted

The great John Kenyon turns his Monday Interview eye on me over at Things I'd Rather Be Doing. The interview centers on my debut novel, HEAD GAMES, as well as my forthcoming interview book ROGUE MALES (featuring interviews with Daniel Woodrell, James Sallis, Pete Dexter and Elmore Leonard, among many others). Read the interview at: … Continue

Added by Craig McDonald on October 30, 2007 at 7:42am — 2 Comments

Chicago Tribune praises HEAD GAMES



Saturday’s Chicago Tribune Book Section contains a wonderful review of HEAD GAMES by Paul Goat…

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Added by Craig McDonald on October 27, 2007 at 9:26am — No Comments

New Essay, Short Story

PULP PUSHER has launched a new feature dubbed "Pushed for Answers" that debuts with an essay about Hector Lassiter, narrator of my debut novel "Head Games." A new short story, "Seeing Red," is also featured. Check them both out at http://www.pulppusher.com/.

Added by Craig McDonald on October 22, 2007 at 10:51pm — No Comments

Graphic novel of HEAD GAMES coming

From Publisher's Marketplace: "Graphic novel script rights for Craig McDonald's highly praise Head Games, historical thriller and 1950s-era road novel based on the factual theft of Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa's head (available from Bleak House Books, Sept. 2007), to Mark Siegel of First Second Books (Eisner Award-winning imprint of Henry Holt & Co), by Svetlana Pironko at Author Rights Agency."

Head Games has also been selected by Poisoned Pen's…

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Added by Craig McDonald on October 6, 2007 at 9:58pm — No Comments

CONTEST ANNOUNCED

To celebrate the release of HEAD GAMES, the good people at Bleak House Books have provided three signed copies of the trade paperback edition of my debut novel, as well as one of 250 rare, limited edition signed, dated, numbered and fingerprinted editions of the novel from Bleak House's new "Evidence Collection" for a special contest.

Also, five copies of a special chapbook containing the short story "The Last Interview," the story that introduced HEAD GAME'S narrator, Hector…

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Added by Craig McDonald on September 13, 2007 at 11:00pm — No Comments

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