Keeping Up the Promised Pace

This year I committed myself to putting out a piece of fiction every month. At the very least, a short story, more than likely a novella, and on occasion, a full-length novel. I've also produced another Chase Baker Boxed Set, but that doesn't count. And of course, all this is separate from the novels my traditional publishers put out on my behalf. Which means I've been a busy little bee, and so has my editorial/art team.

On Friday, the 6th Jack Marconi PI story, in this case, a novella will be released. It's called Arbor Hill and came to me in the form of a story a buddy of mine told me last month over a beer. A poor soul went on a date with a woman, a dentist mind you, who took him for $10K on his credit card. Oh, and she would not have sex with him with a condom on. Naturally she pulled the, "I think I'm pregnant" thing on him a week or two later.

Jeeze, I'm not sure if I should feel sorry for the poor sap, or slap some sense into him. Such is the dilemma Jack Marconi PI faces now that said poor soul has hired him to get his money back.

You can still pro-order this one at a very special price (on Amazon that is):

Amazon US

Amazon UK

But you can buy it now at

iBooks

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

It's a killer story and you can read it one sitting or over the course of a couple of nights.
BTW: As a hybrid writer, I can now confidently report, that I am making double and in some cases triple/quadruple the sales on my indie books than I am my traditionally published efforts. Which leaves me feeling conflicted. Do I pursue more independent opportunities with my own label, Bear Media, or stay true to hybrid authorship?

Time will tell.    
 
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Coming Up for Air: Notes from a Hybrid Author (Part ???)

I think it was late August of 2016 when I was informed that my services would no longer be required at the one trade journalism gig I maintained outside of my fiction career. It was a sweet gig that ran for ten years, an absolute lifetime in the fickle world of freelance journalism. I wrote architecture and construction related pieces, and it paid well and I won a bunch of awards along the way.

But after the new owners came in and cleaned house, I searched for another similar job, but my heart wasn't in it, so I abandoned the search almost as soon as it began. Which lead me to the realization that I should be putting that extra time towards creating more fiction in the form of serial novels, stand-alone novels, short stories, and novellas. Material that would provide passive income for years and years, as opposed to journalism in which you get paid for your time.

That said, since September '16, I've written and completed two novels. The Ashes and the forthcoming The Embalmer, the pilot novel in what will be the new Steve Jobz PI series. I've written the pilot episode in a new CIA-inspired series called Assignment Rendition, and completed two new Chase Baker pulp thrillers, Chase Baker and the Dutch Diamonds and Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny. At present, I'm closing in on the half-way point with another stand-alone thriller, The Girl Who Wasn't There.

Also completed are several short stories, including Moonlight Gets Served which appeared in Pulp Metal Magazine and Dressed to Kill (A Jack "Keeper" Marconi PI Short Shot), among them. The latter was also serialized in Pulp Metal and will be published in its entirety under my own label, Bear Pulp next week sometime. Add in maybe half a dozen essays for the Vox, and several guest posts and pieces, and it's been one hell of a busy six months.

In the midst of all the new work, I also managed to rewrite The Corruptions several times in preparation for its late January '17 publication (Polis Books), along with a new stand alone, The Detonator, which will appear in January '18 in hardcover (also Polis Books). Amazing when you stop to think that I consider this part-time work.

So, with all this material needing homes, kind of like lost, wayward orphans, I will have to make the decision on who will publish what and when. In the old days, you wrote maybe one book per year, and hoped your publisher would push the crap out of it (which they usually don't). But now you have options. You can maintain your own list of titles of which you control the writing and the marketing.

But I'm a strong believer in having your books in the bookstores as well, and that's where the traditional market comes in. I enjoy seeing my novels come out in hardcover and reviewed by the major trade journals and papers. It gives me professional satisfaction and the respect of my peers. But there's nothing like having total control over your books as well, and that's where the beauty of indie publishing becomes self-evident.

I guess some authors choose to go hybrid because they feel it's smart to take advantage of all the publishing options out there in this, the new golden age of genre fiction writing. I do it because I really have no choice. Just make a quick count of all those books and stories I mentioned above. No way a publisher is going to take on all that work. They wouldn't be able to keep up, nor would they want to. I'm curious to see how the next six months goes, and how many more stories and novels I can produce. At 2,000 words per day (good words), I suspect it will be quite a few.

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True Lies: Real Life Prison Break Makes for Good Fiction

Is there anything more inspiring than the local news headlines when seeking out an idea for your fiction? Who doesn't like true lies? This is not to be confused with "fake news," which seems to be all the rage these days, because this ain't about politics. It's about where ideas come from. After all, if only I had a nickel for the many fans and/or interested parties who ask me, seemingly on a daily basis, "Where do you get your ideas, Vin?" 

The answers is, some shit I make up, others I rob from the headlines.

The Corruptions, now out in hardcover, eBook, and audio (Polis Books) is one of those stories I robbed from the headlines. It all began when two cons made a daring Hollywood-like escape from Dannemora Maximum Security Prison, or what's officially known in New York State Department of Corrections circles as the Clinton County Correctional Facility. It's also known as "Little Siberia" to its 3,000 or so inmates due to its location very close to the Canadian border. I've been up there and it's pretty much a castle surrounded by thick forest. Like the real Siberia, it's super freaking cold in the winter and super hot in the summer, and no one...not a soul...has escaped the joint in its 150 or so years of existence.

That is, until June of 2015 when two inmates, David Sweat and Reginald Moss, crawled their way through a steam pipe out into the Dannemora sewers. From there they popped a manhole cover, and waited for an escape vehicle that never arrived. What to do then?

Head for the woods.

What followed was a massive manhunt that lasted for days upon days, involved more law enforcement agencies, both federal and state (and Canadian), than you can shake a prison guard's baton at, and that reduced the governor of the Empire State to fits of rage and perhaps even tears...Hey, it's entirely possible. 

The story was covered on nationally and perhaps even internationally. The residents of the little town of Dannemora which surrounds the prison took up arms, and it all made for some great television and Internet watching. It was like a Hollywood picture playing out in real time. Of course, what we were all waiting for was the inevitable showdown between the cons and the police, which came weeks later during a shootout that left one of them dead, and the other wounded.

We all wondered how this kind of thing could happen in this day and age of hyper security, but deep down, despite the crimes of the perps (and they are significant), we were all sort of rooting for the bad guys. So this is the story that fascinated me enough to wrap a big fiction around it, much like I did with the first Keeper Marconi PI novel, The Innocent (Delactore and Thomas &Mercer). In this case, The Corruptions is based on the true story of the Dannemora escape, but my imagination takes over and hopefully I was able to make a fascinating story even more fascinating by imagining, what if? The Innocent has sold hundreds of thousands of units. Let's see what The Corruptions can do. Let's see if it captures the frantic spirit of two cons on the run.

Speaking of escaped cons, here's a quick joke. Two escaped cons are running down the road, when one of them spots some roadkill. "I'm freakin' starving," he says. "I'm gonna eat that." "I think I'll wait," the second con says. The first con fills his face with the roadkill, but immediately pukes. That's when the second con drops to his knees and eats the puke up off the pavement. When he's done, he stands, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I was waiting for a hot meal," he says. 

If you like a cool, relentless, cat-and-mouse thriller, you'll want to check out the newly released The Corruptions (A Keeper Marconi Thriller No. 4). Think Fargo meets The Shawshank Redemption. My thanks to the cons who dared escape those prison walls. I know they hoped to make it to the border. It didn't work out that way, but at least they gave it one hell of a shot. In doing so, they captured the imaginations of thousands of people. The Corruptions will too.

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La Dolce Vita

Henry Miller in his Paris apartment in the 1930s

Ahhhhh, the good life....

I'm the last one to bitch, because I can't think of any writer...and I mean any writer worth his or her salt-of-the-earth...who doesn't start out in this racket dreaming of one day moving to Europe for a while to write the Great American Novel.

You start writing because there's something inside you that needs to do it. You hero worship a whole bunch of the writers who came before you. Hemingway writing in Paris, comes to mind. Henry Miller doing the same thing as a middle-aged man. Martha Gelhorn in London and Rome. Even Mark Twain, for as broke as he sometimes was, wrote in Florence.
 
There's something about writers not being able to stay in any one place for very long, or else the earth will suddenly open up under their feet and swallow them whole. I guess I feel that way when I'm in the 'burbs for too long. All those sharks swimming around me taking bites out of me. Okay, I'm mixing my metaphors here. But then, even an accountant can't wait to get out of the house for a while. A girlfriend of mine once called me unstable. Not because I was a threat in any way, but because she knew I could never be happy standing still. "You always have to stir things up."
Right now, I'm stirring the pot.

Standing still, now there's a concept.

Norman Mailer was in his mid to late sixties when he was woken up at dark-thirty in the morning when his then wife's water broke for what would become his 8th or 9th kid. Story goes, he sat for a while on the edge of the bed, in his wife beater, his head in his hands, lamenting, "All I ever wanted was to live in Paris for a year while I wrote a great novel." Well, old Norman wrote some great books, but did so while trying his damndest to stay one step ahead of the creditors, the wives, the girlfriends, and the kids.

Anyway, back round to my original thesis, which is, I'm not one to bitch. Because here I am, living in Italy for a while, while I work on the Great American Novel (or three). Okay, some of you snotty writing school prof types...you English Department elitists, you know how you are... will automatically scoff at this by convincing yourself that Zandri writes only genre fiction. Certainly nothing that can be confused for the Great American Novel. Well, how's it feel waking up on a Monday morning and heading to work? Sure, in writing school there were more than a handful of profs who chuckled at my romantic vision of what a writer and the writing life could be. But then, these were the same people who would, no doubt, feel the fine hairs on the back of their necks stand up at the thought of my dream actually becoming a reality someday.

So this thesis, I've been on about. Like I keep saying, I'm not one to bitch, but in the near two weeks since I've been in Italy on my three month extended writing retreat, I've completed the first good draft of what will be the eleventh Chase Baker novel. I'm presently completing the galley proofs of The Corruptions which will be out in January in hardcover from Polis Books, and soon I will start on a new stand-alone psychological suspense novel I'm calling, The Girl Who Wasn't There (sometimes it helps to have a title in mind). The bitching part comes into play because since I've been here it seems the world is falling apart back in NY. I never realized how many fires I'm required to put out on a daily basis. But then, those fires are perfectly normal, and it's what some people are referring to when they say, "Life happens." In any case, I'm here to work on my version of the Great American Novel(s), and that's what I plan on doing. Heat or no heat.

I think the best bet, is to shut the phone off, turn off the internet, and isolate myself. Henry Miller wasn't bothered by instant digital communication, and neither should I be.

The good life...it's what you make of it. 

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