Signing first editions at The Mysterious Bookshop last month.
It's been way too long since I've blogged. But starting now, or in the new year at least, I'll try and get back to a much more regular schedule. Suffice to say I've been busy finishing up the biggest novel of my life, American Crimes, and at the same time, freelancing, and promoting my newest thriller, The Girl Who Wasn't There.
There's been some signings, and radio, but for the most part Covid has kept a appearances at a bare minimum. Distribution was a little wonky at first too. Later on I found out that this pandemic has caused three of the world's major printers to go belly up. Taken along with the consolidation of yet another two major publishing houses and I see the rapid destruction of traditional publishing happening right before our very eyes.
My recent visit to NYC to sign books at the Mysterious Bookshop took my breath away. Nothing but, For Sale and For Rent signs, boarded up buildings, and lots of vagrants in the street. When it takes you only about 7 minutes to get from 34th and 7th to the Battery (or close to it anyway), you know something is drastically wrong.
But I still have hope we will all bounce back from this thing one way or another. But the world, the publishing world for certain, will be very different. I think it will become much more of a writer sells directly to consumer kind of thing. One bookstore per week is going out of business on average. At this rate, there won't be any left if congress doesn't step in an do something.
This week, the New York Times published this namby pamby piece that was, in part, about how terrible it is boys always seem to be expected to swallow their emotions, bottle them up until it either hardens their hearts or maybe they go off and do something terrible like climb a tower and start shooting random passersby. Lucky for us, the former is more often the case and the latter is the result of batshit crazy mental illness.
But as for boys being boys, I believe that being emotionally tough is what makes us men. Masculine men. Men who are brave, and chivalric, and ruggedly handsome. Big chested, big bicep-touting men who aren't afraid of a fight, and men who can be looked up to as heroes. The precise kind of man who plays the lead in some of Hollywood's most classic action pictures.
Speaking of Hollywood. Hollywood not only loves macho leading men, they also love guns, and violence, and shoot'em ups of all varieties because bullets are good business. That's a good thing for people like me who loves him some Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Vid (I rarely go to the movies because a hellish movie watching experience is other people). Some of my favorites movies are action thrillers. You know, one brooding man up against it all, and he's got to find a way to blast his way out of it. I'm talking Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, and of course, Arnold. The big three of the action-one-liner-anti-politically-correct flick. Entertainment for entertainment's sake, fuck you if you don't like a little tits and ass to go along with it, thank you very much (My guess is I'll never be invited to appear on The View).
So, I thought I'd share with you five favorite rugged individualist macho action hero movies:
1. Die Hard. I already mentioned this beauty in a previous piece, but Bruce Willis is at his best here.
2. Die Hard II. Just as good if not better than the first.
3. The Terminator. "I'll be back." Fucking classic. Arnold rocks.
4. Predator. "I ain't got time to bleed." And oh my Gawd, that scene where Arnold is the sole survivor, and he's backwards crabbing away from the monster? Fughetaboutit. Oddly enough I couldn't find the trailer to the original 1989 picture, so here's something about the Predator remake (No Arnold won't be in it, but he is in a new action flick called Aftermath)
5. The Expendables I. The first of these 21st century action flicks brings all the 1980s heroes together in a kind of super group that shoots, scoots, and slips their way in and out of danger zones. A bunch of middle-aged guys who don't do soy, and who still hit the weight room on a daily basis. Just like me. Think of it as getting your high school football team back together.
So these are just five of my faves. They are, in part, the reason why I wrote a novel like The Detonator which was released this week by Polis Books. It's non-stop action from the start. It's got brains but it's also got brawn, and men who are masculine, women who are feminine (and tough), and some of the most bad ass action scenes I've ever penned. If the book doesn't make you sweat, it ain't doing its job. In terms of food, the heat in this novel is three alarm and it most definitely ain't gluten free.
In NYC this Thursday? Stop by the Mysterious Bookshop, grab a glass of wine or a cold beer, and I'll sign you a first edition hard-cover of The Detonator.
I know I do. Who can forget Bruce Willis, aka John McClain, fighting the bad guys in his bare feet after they'd hijacked the Nakatomi (sp) Towers in LA? Or in Die Hard 2 (Die Harderer, or something like that), being blown out of a fighter jet after pulling the eject lever? You just couldn't kill the guy no matter what you did to him.
I wanted to write a book like that. Something explosive and pyromania-like. But I also wanted my main character, Ike Singer, to be human, with a nice family, who had the will to live when evil unexpectedly arrived at their doorstep. In this case the evil takes the form of an attractive young blonde scientist, Dr. Allison Darling, who builds nanothermite bombs, knows how to use them as a weapon of terror, and has one very major grudge against Singer.
With that I give you The Detonatorwhich is released today in hardcover and eBook from Polis Books. If you start reading it and find you can't stop, I will have done my job. It was constructed as a page turner and an attention grabber. These days, writers have to compete with everything from Twitter posts to Netflix. We have our work cut out for us.
"Only
author Vincent Zandri can make readers understand the meaning of
revenge, hate, greed, betrayal and the dangers of getting involved with
bombs, pipe bombs, and being a Master Blaster. This book would really
hit high ratings on the WIDE SCREEN!" --Sam Freene
