Noir fiction for the modern reader.

Today’s blogpost by Joe Konrath, titled Exploited Writers in an Unfair Industry, is perhaps the most compelling piece ever written on the subject, and Joe alone has written about it on innumerable occasions. I’m not going to rehash it for you here. You’re better off clicking the link and reading it yourself.

I will, however, show you these two paragraphs (regarding the Big 6 publishers in New York), which lay at the heart of his argument. This is about as concise as it gets, folks. It hits the bullseye from 500 yards.

The Big 6 fear (rightfully) that Amazon is using ebooks to sell Kindles and Prime memberships. This is scary because people are becoming conditioned to buy directly from Amazon using their devices. 

That doesn’t give the Big 6 a reason to collude. It gives them a reason to compete. But they can’t compete, because they treat authors poorly, treat readers poorly, don’t innovate, and are only familiar with an archaic business model.

Do yourself a big favor and go read this whole post.

The third entry in my Key West Nocturnes Series, Man-Slaughter, is now available. It’s a very noir tale of a man on the run with few choices open to him. Here’s a brief description:

It’s hot in the Florida Keys in August. For Teddy Myles, it’s even hotter as he tries to outrun both the law and his partners in crime. He flees to Key West to set up a new identity and an escape to the Caribbean. But he meets up with Gail, a sexy local, who has other things in mind for him.

Soon he finds himself trapped into pulling one more job, this one for over a million. His former partners are tracking him, the cops are onto him, and a hurricane is coming.

Time is running out, but will it be on his side?

As you can see, the front cover is sensational, another knockout punch from designer Jeroen ten Berge. And as you can also see, it carries a blurb from Max Allan Collins. Needless to say, I’m thrilled at this.

For those of you who are familiar with this series, this novel takes place in the present, and features some of the same secondary characters and locales as the first two books in the series. Of course, like the others, it’s set in the shadows of Key West, where the tourists never go, and like each of the others, it features a different central character.

Next up is the fourth installment in this series, The Guns Of Miami, which probably won’t be released until sometime in 2013.

Man-Slaughter is available as an eBook. The paperback version can be found here.

No less an author than Jeffery Deaver has seen fit to give a blurb to The Ghosts Of Havana. What he said was:

“The Ghosts Of Havana will keep you riveted. Author Dennis nails both noir tone and thriller plotting perfectly!”

I mean to tell you, it doesn’t get much better than that. A blurb like that from Deaver, who ranks as the #1 thriller author in America, and maybe the world, means a lot to a struggling writer like myself. His credentials would take forever to unfurl, but his latest novel is Carte Blanche (007 James Bond), written at the behest of Ian Fleming Publications. He has over 25 novels to his credit and numerous short stories, as well as a slew of awards.

If you want to read books you can’t put down, buy a couple of his. And while you’re at it, pick up a copy of The Ghosts Of Havana.

Thanks, Jeff.

Personally, I prefer real books over ebooks, but that should come as no surprise, since I was born before 1995. I do, however, realize ebooks are poised to take over the book business, and, sooner than we might like, virtually all reading will be done on digital media. In the pursuit of that end, and for my friends who, like me, were slow in crossing over into the digital age, I want to say this: You don’t have to run out and buy a Kindle. You can get a free Kindle app for your computer, tablet, smartphone, or iPod. Just go here, and you can figure it out quite easily. It takes all of 60 seconds, if that. Once it’s installed, you can start downloading ebooks (which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are considerably cheaper than their print counterparts) immediately.

And when you get your new Kindle app, go here to download my new short story, The Session. I mean, it’s only 99¢. There’s, like, no downside. Not only that, it’s a great story. Once you’ve read it and left a brief review on Amazon, then you can go here and download the first novel of my Key West Nocturnes series, Setup On Front Street. It’s a novel, so it’ll take you a little longer to read, but again, time well spent. Following that indoctrination, you then might be tempted to go for the second novel in that series, a little opus called The Ghosts Of Havana. That one can be found here.

The rest of my books await you, all sterling examples of the cream of noir fiction. You just have to get that free Kindle app. Do it now.

My new short story, The Session, just went live on Kindle. Here’s a brief description:

Jeff Dryden is a top recording session guitarist in LA. Makes big money. Has a beautiful wife and a big house. Life is good.

But one night, he’s awakened by a phone call from a record producer who needs him for a session right away. The money is good, so he agrees, but this late-night session will dredge up long-buried memories and dreams, and wind up changing his life forever.

THE SESSION calls together Mike Dennis’ past as a professional musician and his present as a noir fiction author in a harrowing portrayal of a man who can’t quite grab the brass ring.

This is a good story, if I do say so myself. And it’s only 99¢. Come on, what are you waiting for. Go here and pick it up.

Michael Lipkin has done me the honor of featuring me and several of my titles very prominently on his terrific website, Noir Journal. It begins with a piece I wrote summarizing my introduction to noir fiction, to even the term itself, and continues with excellent reviews of The Ghosts Of Havana and Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Eyes. Please go here and check it out. And dig into their archives. They featured Reed Farrel Coleman in a similar fashion two months ago.

And while you’re there, please leave a brief comment. It’s a great site, worthy of your attention.

This year, Sleuthfest was held in Orlando, breaking its long ties with Deerfield Beach, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. My advice: go back to Deerfield Beach.

Orlando is a pretty dreadful place. Utterly lacking in any character or any indigenous local culture beyond the plastic Disney attractions, it’s a morass of freeway traffic and retail chains. What I like to call a gathering ground for people from somewhere else to get together and exploit one another.

The event was held at the Royal Plaza Hotel, which appeared to have been preserved in its original 1980s format, right down to the smallest detail. The first major tipoff was the RCA analog TV, circa 1985, that sat in my room. No HBO, Showtime, or any decent channels, but at least the TV was color.

The carpeting looked like heavily-woven indoor-outdoor stuff, and there were no pens, paper, or envelopes in the room. Another red flag was the presence of “conditioning shampoo” in the bathroom instead of separate little bottles of shampoo AND conditioner.

Where do we go from there? Well, the restaurant was not up to the task, neither with their food nor the service. Only one bartender manned the bar (for a writer’s conference!), with no waitstaff, and the bartender had to recruit someone from somewhere else in the hotel to do barbacking chores for her. Unfortunately, she had to stop what she was doing and explain each chore to the new recruit each time she wanted her to do something, delaying matters even more.

Okay, so what about the conference?

Well, they got off to a rocky start, with registration beginning about 45 minutes late. Also, I looked inside the goodie bag each of us received and saw a copy of the conference program,  an issue of Mystery Scene magazine, and three items that could have been lifted from the card rack in the hotel lobby: two tourist guides to Orlando and a trolley map. Pretty exciting stuff!

Once the conference actually got underway, though, it was clear sailing. The first day, there were no panels, only talks given by individual speakers.  I heard Daniel Palmer, John Gilstrap, and Reed Farrel Coleman, all of whom were excellent, entertaining, and worthwhile. The next day, the panels began.

I was eager to contrast this year’s panels to last year’s, when every single panel, regardless of topic, swerved into a discussion of the digital/self-publishing revolution. At that time, none of the panelists–who were all traditionalists–was willing to admit that the flood of self-pubbed ebooks was anything to worry about. By this year, however, their eyes had been opened, if only a little. The panels talked about self-publishing, ebooks, and the big changes in the publishing business, and even accorded these changes a little respect. I was on a panel called “The Virtues of a Small Publisher”, since I had been with a small publisher. When I started talking about how I could do what my publisher did and do it better (and make more money at it, by the way), I wasn’t shouted down. The audience didn’t throw stones at me. The moderator seemed interested in what I had to say. Chalk up a little progress.

One day at lunch, Jeffery Deaver gave an informative talk about thrillers and was very accessible throughout his stay.

Everyone seemed in good spirits and the whole thing had a very friendly, welcoming tone. Now, if they’ll only go back to Deerfield Beach.

Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of wrath directed toward Amazon.

They’re too big. They’re impersonal. They’re aiming for a monopoly of the book business. They’ve emasculated the sacred world of New York publishing and agenting. And their worst crime of all, they force indie bookstores to close their doors.

Well, I’m going to use this space today to give a little love to Amazon, the Great Corporate Satan of 21st-century America.

Back in 1994, they put up a lot of money to start and grow their business. They didn’t even go online till a year later, when they sold their first book:  Douglas Hofstadter‘s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Not exactly a rip-snorter, but on the day it sold, it was ranked number one, at least for a little while (ironically, it was first released as an e-book, and is currently ranked #213,493). Of course, Amazon went on to become the world’s largest book retailer.

Then in 2007, they launched the Kindle, betting they could get people to read ebooks instead of “real” books. Again, a costly endeavor. And again, it paid off. They sold 1,000,000 Kindles a week in the months leading up to Christmas, 2011, and in doing so, cemented the role of e-readers in the fabric of our lives.

Basically, what they did was find a need and fill it. The very bedrock principle of the free enterprise system. I for one applaud them.

But I can hear the grumbling now. “What about all those indie bookstores they forced to close?”

Well, the fact is, nobody forced anybody to do anything. Some of those stores probably deserved to close, due to lack of selection, poor management, or some other shortcoming. I would guess, though, that most of the now-defunct stores found themselves completely outplayed by Amazon in the competitive marketplace. Remember, Amazon invested big money in their chancy concept, that people would stop going to bookstores and order from the comfort of their home. In order for that to happen, however, Amazon had to offer their books at a lower price and be able to deliver them to their customers’ doorsteps quickly. If those criteria weren’t met, it’s quite likely Amazon would’ve been the ones to go under and the indie bookstores would be cackling to this day.

Let’s not forget, too, that the undoing of the indies didn’t begin in 1995 when Amazon sold that “Fluid Concepts” book. It started long before that with the rise of Barnes & Noble and Borders and all the other big chain operations, who merely sold the same books at a way lower price. Amazon just took that model and added home delivery to the equation.

Not all indie bookstores wilted in the face of the Amazon juggernaut, however. Books & Books in Miami, long secure as one of the premier indies in the nation, refused to lie down. They added a coffee shop, a full bar, upped their number of in-store events, along with many other innovations, and as a result, they have thrived in the past few years. Their deep, dark secret: bring people into the store any way we can.

Now, it turns out that Amazon itself is opening a brick & mortar store in Seattle. Who knows what it will look like, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the Kindle line will be prominently featured. Once again, they’re risking a huge amount of money on one of their ideas. It’s ironic that they’re doing this, but hey, it’s their money. If they fail, they lose it. If they succeed, more power to them.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on in the writer community these days concerning the closing of beloved indie bookstores versus the undeniable convenience Amazon provides. Many people are claiming to feel great guilt for sitting at home ordering stuff on Amazon when their little neighborhood bookstore has closed. My opinion: no one should feel “guilty” for buying items on Amazon. They’re providing you the products you want at a very competitive price, all without having to leave your home, gas up your car, and go stand in line at a big-box store to be checked out by a 21-year-old for whom “customer service” is a foreign phrase.

And this is not even to mention the boundless opportunities they have provided authors by opening up the world of publishing to people like me, who were long snubbed by New York agents and publishers who couldn’t be bothered.

Make no mistake, Jeroen ten Berge, my cover designer, is well worth the wait. I contacted him over a month ago to do the cover for my new novelette, Temptation Town, and he said it would take awhile before he could get around to it. He did the covers for Setup On Front Street and The Ghosts Of Havana, which I consider masterpieces of book cover design, so I agreed to wait. In the interim, I designed a makeshift cover myself so I could upload it to Kindle. But the real deal has arrived. I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s sensational.

It’s a novelette, about 12,000 words, and the first in my hardboiled Jack Barnett / Las Vegas series. He’s a reluctant ex-private investigator who … oh, never mind. Buy the book. It’s only $2.99 on Kindle and the print version goes live on CreateSpace some time next week. It’s priced at a modest $9.95. It also comes with an exclusive preview of the next Barnett installment, a short story called Hard Cash.

Here’s a look at today’s bestseller list of hardboiled books on Amazon. Granted, Temptation Town is free and the Ed McBain book is probably selling 100,000 copies a minute at $4.99, but hey, they’re both in the #1 position. I hope you forgive me for this little bit of chest-thumping, but I don’t often get to see my name at the top of a ranked list with “#1″ next to it, and I wanted to immortalize the moment (a brief moment it will be, I’m sure).