|  |  |  | | | | | Mystery Fanfare | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The National Post reports that Bell Media, which owns CTV as well as 29 other specialty channels, is working to adapt novels by William Deverell, Giles Blunt and Robert Rotenberg for a TV audience.
1. William Deverell's series about lawyer Arthur Beauchamp (Kill All the Judges, April Fool, and Mind Games. Set in BC's Gulf Islands, the series is a comedic twist on crime fiction, and features Beauchamp trying to balance his personal life with courtroom drama. Deverell won the Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in North America for Crime Writing in 1997. Deverell created the popular CBC series Street Legal. Andrew Wreggitt, the Canadian screenwriter responsible for One Dead Indian, Shades of Black, and Mayerthorpe has signed on to write the script.
2. Toronto author Giles Blunt's Detective John Cardinal series (Crime Machine, Black Fly Season, and Forty Words for Sorrow). Blunt's series is grittier, and follows both a serial killer and the tormented policeman tasked with finding him. Blunt, who won Britain's Silver Dagger Award for Fiction in 2001, will adapt his own work for TV.
3. In partnership with production company Shaftesbury, Bell Media will adapt Toronto writer Robert Rotenberg's debut novel Old City Hall, which tells the story of a popular radio host who is arrested for murdering his wife. Open and shut or more nuanced than it looks? Shaftesbury is on the lookout for a screenwriter up to the challenge of adapting the novel. Rotenberg's second novel, The Guilty Plea, came out in May.
Hat Tip: Suspense Sirens | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Today I welcome guest blogger Steve Brewer.
Steve Brewer is the author of more than 20 books, including the recent crime novels CALABAMA, FIREPOWER and CUTTHROAT. His first novel, LONELY STREET, was recently made into an independent Hollywood comedy starring Robert Patrick, Jay Mohr and Joe Mantegna. BOOST currently is under film/TV option. Brewer's short fiction appeared in the anthologies DAMN NEAR DEAD, THE LAST NOEL and CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT, and he's published articles in magazines such as Mystery Scene, Crimespree and Mystery Readers Journal.
A writing coach, Brewer has taught at the University of New Mexico, the Midwest Writers Workshop and the Tony Hillerman Writers Seminar. He regularly speaks at mystery conventions, and was toastmaster at Left Coast Crime in Santa Fe, NM, in 2011.
Brewer worked as journalist for 22 years, then wrote a weekly syndicated column for another decade. The column, called The Home Front, produced the raw material for the humor book TROPHY HUSBAND.
Steve Brewer:
Sometimes, it starts with the title.
You need certain key ingredients to get going on a new novel -- a setting, a notion of the plot, a good opening line, a protagonist that speaks to you. I also like to have a title in mind before I start writing, though we all know they sometimes change.
Occasionally, the title is the spark that sets an idea on fire. That was certainly the case with my 18th crime novel, CALABAMA.
I first heard the term from a friend in Redding, California, where I lived from 2003 to 2010. Redding is an isolated city of ninety thousand people, way up north near Lake Shasta, and it's the setting for one of my other novels, BANK JOB.
Soon as I heard the word "Calabama," I knew I must write a novel to go under it. It was the perfect description for life in inland California.
When most people think of California, what comes to mind is Los Angeles or San Francisco or beach towns like Santa Cruz, where I live now. But the state's vast interior is rural and socially traditional and politically conservative and prone to pickup trucks. It resembles Arkansas (where I grew up), but with palm trees.
I've bucked that redneck mentality my whole life, so it was easy to create a character who'd do the same. Eric Newlin is a dope-smoking slacker who landed in Redding by accident. He's unhappily married, works for his father-in-law and dreams of escaping Calabama.
Eric survives a traffic accident, one of those near-misses that feel like an omen, and he decides his life is going to change. It does. It goes straight to hell. Jobless and broke, Eric gets mixed up in a kidnapping scheme with a local crimelord named Rydell Vance, and things go very wrong.
The novel's a hillbilly noir, full of violence and greed and backwoods bitterness, but leavened with dark humor.
Kind of like Calabama itself.
Steve Brewer's new novel CALABAMA debuts June 15 via Kindle, Smashwords and other e-book platforms. Only $2.99. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Craig Johnson will be our guest at a Literary Salon this Sunday, June 19, at 7 p.m. in Berkeley. I'm thrilled that his latest Walt Longmire mystery, Hell is Empty, just hit the NYT Best Seller List. Craig sent out a note this morning about it to all his fans, and I was among them. I asked Craig if I could post this here on Mystery Fanfare. Of course, he said!
Please join us on June 19 in Berkeley, CA. RSVP for directions.
CRAIG JOHNSON:
Go figure.
When I was writing Hell is Empty, the latest Walt Longmire mystery, an allegorical thriller fraught with Dante and Indian mysticism, it dawned on me that this might not be the most sales-successful book of the series… Don't get me wrong, I don't write these novels with the idea of them becoming bestsellers (well, a little, of course, because I love writing them and wouldn't be able to if they didn't sell at all). My trusting publisher adds to my enjoyment by granting me freedoms that I don't think many other authors have; my contract boils down to one sentence--It must be a mystery novel and have Walt Longmire in it. Well, that pretty much leaves things up for grabs, doesn't it?
The other freedom comes from you—the reader. I've always said that I'd rather anger you folks by doing something different with each novel rather than insult your intelligence by writing the same book over and over again, a syndrome not unknown in genre fiction. Again, I'm not completely altruistic in the sense that I'm pretty sure I'd get bored writing formulaic books, too.
There have only been a couple of soreheads who wrote me back and gave me questionable, on-line reviews over the years, the curious thing being that they keep reading and reviewing me—what's up with that? Most of you, especially if you're on this newsletter mailing list, have ridden along with the sheriff and put up with my shenanigans with enthusiasm. Every once in a while we'd look back and see that there appeared to be more of us in the saddle, which was fine because we enjoy company and the more the merrier. Well, it would appear that there's a passel to the posse these days.
Go figure.
When I started a string of novels that took place in the least populated county in the least populated state in the U.S., I kind of figured the following for such a series might be relatively limited. But I always remember a piece of advice Tony Hillerman gave me when I first met him, "Follow your heart and write what you enjoy."
So I continued to write about a sadder but wiser sheriff, a detective for the disenfranchised, a little over-aged, a little over-weight, but with a considerable amount of miles left in him. It would appear that there are a lot of us out there like that, folks who look at themselves in the mirror every morning and aren't completely satisfied with what they see—but we try, and in that there's a certain, worn-to-perfection dignity.
People ask me sometimes if I suspected, with the awards, foreign sales and TV stuff, if I ever thought the books would be as popular as they've become—and the honest answer is no, I didn't. But there's a group of people that seemed to have held an absolute certainty that they would be a success. You.
This Post-It is a little different from all the others, a thank you note to the thousands of people who thought that a beat-up ol' sheriff with a sense of humor, his Cheyenne buddy, and a smart-mouthed deputy up on the high plains might be worth giving a read.
Hell is Empty hit #24 this week on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Go figure.
See you on the trail (see below)
PS: Hell may be empty, but the shelves are full; if you haven't gotten out there and grabbed your copy, jump on it!
June 14, Booked for Murder, Madison, WI, 6 PM
June 15, Once Upon a Crime, Minneapolis, MN, 7 PM
June 16, Book People, Austin, TX, 7 PM
June 17, Poisoned Pen, Phoenix, AZ, 7 PM
June 18, M is for Mystery, San Mateo, CA, 2 PM
June 19, Literary Salon, Berkeley, CA 7 p.m. Private Location. RSVP: for more information and directions
June 20, Viking Rep Dinner (private event)
June 21, Boulder Bookstore, 12:30 PM, lunch stock signing
June 21, Tattered Cover (Colfax), Denver, CO, 7:30 PM
June 22, Murder by the Book, Denver, CO, Noon
June 22, High Crimes, Longmont, CO, 7 PM
June 23-26, Jackson Writer's Conference, Jackson, WY
June 28, Red Lodge Books, Red Lodge, MT, 4:00 PM
June 29, Fact and Fiction, Missoula, MT, 7:00 PM
July 1, Seattle Mystery Book Shop, Seattle, WA, Noon
July 1, Whodunit Books, Olympia, WA, 7 PM
July 2, Murder by the Book, Portland, OR, Noon
July 2, Powell's Books (Cedar Hills Crossing), Beaverton, OR, 4 PM
July 3, Sun River Books, Sun River, OR, 5 PM
July 4, Sun River Books, Sun River, OR, private party
July 5, Paulina Springs Books, Sisters, OR, 4 PM
July 5, Paulina Springs Books, Redmond, OR, 7 PM
July 6, Rediscovered Books, Boise, ID, 7 PM
July 7, The King's English Books, Salt Lake City, UT, 7 PM
July 8, Main Street Books, Lander, WY, 6 PM
July 9, Powell Library, Powell, WY, Noon
July 9, Cody Newstand, Cody, WY, 2 PM
July 9, Cowboy Bar, Meeteetse, WY, 7 PM
July 10, Cody Library, Cody, WY, 1:30 PM
What, you want more..? Gettaoutahere. | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
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