Short Story -- Grow House

This story was originally published in Demolition Magazine online and now I've made it available through Smashwords.




It can be read online or downloaded for Kindle, Sony e-reader and a lot more devices, just click here.

The description I used at Smashwords is:

Stand-off in a suburban grow op. Freddie is robbing the place, Victor has come to kill him, Steve is caught in the middle and Holly is looking for a quiet evening at home. Any house in any neighbourhood could be a grow house...

Here's the first paragraph:

Steve Barrett had been back from Afghanistan two weeks when he got back to stealing cars, this one a brand new BMW X5, leather interior, V8. What he did was, he stood around the parking lot of the Vaughn Mills Mall in north Toronto until some woman pulled in driving it and he followed her inside. Then he gave a couple of teenagers fifty bucks to steal her purse and while she was giving the mall security guard shit for half an hour, Steve drove the car to a garage on Dufferin owned by a biker named Danny Mac who gave him ten grand cash.

CBS Cancels The Bridge

Or so I've heard. Too bad, this Saturday was sceduled to be an episode I co-wrote with Dannis Koromilas.

Still, it looks like there will be a Season Two on CTV next year.

short story - Barbotte

A couple of years ago a short story I wrote appeared in an issue of Dave Zeltserman's webzine, Hard Luck Stories, edited by Ed Gorman.

The story is called Barbotte and takes place in Montreal in 1946.

Now that Smashwords has made it so easy to make stories available, that's what I'm doing.

Barbotte is available here for free.

At the time Hard Luck Stories used this illustration by Jean-Pierre Jacquet and he's given me permission to make it the cover image of the e-book.



Jean-Pierre Jacquet's website is here.

Parnell Hall Signing in the Waldenbooks

This is really good:



There's a blurb from Parnell Hall on the back of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Canadian hardcover). When I found out that he had agreed to read the book I was thrilled. I had just finished reading his novel Hitman and liked it a lot. It's one of his private eye novels, not one of his "puzzle mysteries," which I haven't read yet.

So, when I saw the video above I laughed and cried. Mostly I cried. Then I laughed.

Free e-book - East Coast

After working on The Bridge I began to develop a TV show I called East Coast. I decided to adapt the pilot episode into a short story and make it available for free download (or online reading).

Click here.

The Kindle edition will be available soon.

I've been calling East Coast, The Wire in a rural setting because it's also about cops fighting the seemingly unwinnable war on drugs. I'm not sure if I'm going to write more episodes of this series, but I do like the format and the length. This e-book is about the same length as a one-hour TV show.


All feedback is appreciated.

Needle, the mag

My Do Some Damage buddies Steve Weddle and Scott Parker and a bunch of other cool people (inlcuding Naomi Johnson, Daniel O'Shea and John Horner Jacobs) have published a terrific magazine of noir stories called Needle, which you can buy right here for seven bucks.




Seven bucks?!?! No wonder they're having a big discussion about how to pay the writers.

Which would be great, because the stories are all great.

They're also having a contest to give away a free copy of issue #2, a t-shirt, a mug - they aren't exactly sure yet (if I win I want the t-shirt - I want to subscribe to the magazine) but to win all you have to do is take a picture of yourself reading the magazine, like this:




And then go post a comment with the link here.


You don't even have to buy the magazine, you can come over to my house and borrow my copy, but really, seven bucks? Even with shipping that's better than having to deal with Canadian border guards. You know us Canadians, we're so nice. Maybe too nice...

This Week's Bridge - April 23

The episode is called Painted Ladies. We used song titles for episode titles and as this one is about cops running an escort service it was either Painted Ladies or Roxanne and I like the shout out to Ian Thomas.

CTV describe the episode as:

Answering a call for "officer down," Frank (Aaron Douglas) discovers the victim is not a cop but a prostitute dressed as a cop. Investigating further, Frank uncovers an escort ring run by a ruthless vice cop.



Like many storylines on The Bridge, this one was inspired by events in Toronto.

There's more info on the true story here.

East Coast

For the next few Wednesdays on the Do Some Damage blog I'm going to be serializing a story I first wrote as a TV script, a pilot for a series I proposed called East Coast.

Part One is here.

And Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.



.

Canadian Crime Fiction

In Ireland right now there's a bit of a discussion going on about whether Irish writers are engaging with modern Ireland and one thing that's come out of it is this idea that crime fiction, despite being very contemporary, is entirely left out of the discussion.

Of course, we have this discussion all the time in Canada, beating ourselves up all the time because so much CanLit is stuck in an earlier time. It's not true, of course, there are plenty of contemporary Canadian novels fully engaged with "modern Canada," but like Ireland, crime fiction is entirely left out of the discussion.

An article in the Irish Times put it like this:

THE ASSASSINATION in 1986 of the Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme sent shockwaves through Sweden in particular and Scandinavia in general. One consequence was the emergence of an indigenous crime fiction, a phenomenon taken very seriously by cultural commentators in Sweden and Norway. Today, writers such as Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbø are household names across the world.

(the full article is here)

So, what about Canada? We've had quite a few crimes send shockwaves through our country, from Paul and Karla Bernardo to the Picton murders to the latest arrest of a high ranking military man for two murders and a number of rapes. These are the kinds of crimes that might make us question ourselves in a way that literature could address - or a least start start the discussion.

Have we?

It's Really All About the Story

Cheap e-books!

E-books have certainly been in the news a lot lately and one of the biggest discussion points has been price.

I've been working with ECW to try and have my e-books priced as cheaply as possible and I'm happy to say that Dirty Sweet is now available for download from Kobo in Canada for $2.29.

Available here.

E-books from Kobo are available as ePub and can be read on smartphones (there's a good iPod app I use), on computers and on almost all e-reades, including Sony.

Hey, $2.29, that's a deal. We're still working on getting Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere on Kobo for the same price and both books on Kindle for less than three dollars.

This Week's Bridge - The Unguarded Moment

Air Date: Friday, March 19th, 2010 @ 10pm on CTV (Canada)
Written By: Dannis Koromilas and John McFetridge
Director: Stuart Margolin

Episode Synopsis: A cop is badly wounded during a robbery at a restaurant and is held hostage along with the other customers. Frank is determined to get the cop out alive. But when the Chief orders the undermanned SWAT team to stand down, Frank has to convince the Sergeant in charge to go against the Chief’s orders. Frank quickly takes over as negotiator but when the thieves refuse to make any demands for money, the situation becomes even more bizarre. If the thieves don’t want money, what do they want? As Frank races against the clock, the wounded cop’s chances of survival are quickly diminishing right before his eyes.


All that is from CTV (although I got it - and the picture - from a very well-run Aaron Douglas fansite The Chief's Deck - where I get most of the information about The Bridge).

I was hoping to include the commercial for the episode, I caught it briefly on the TV in McDonalds while I was there with my kids but I haven't seen it again and it doesn't appear to be online anywhere.

Oh well, as it says, I co-wrote the episode with Dannis Koromilas, who developed the show. This episode in which a couple of cops are taken hostage during a robbery and one of them killed is, like many of The Bridge episodes, based on something that happened in Toronto.

It's a timely episode because just this week the killer has been granted, "temporary unescorted prison absences."

When we researched the story it was very emotional and complicated from a storytelling point of view. There were internal problems in the police department between the rank and file and the officers (which is what the whole series is about), there was a shift change during the hostage taking, there were personalities involved, inexperience, unknown elements inside the restaurant. And drugs were a very big factor.

It was a mess.

I wasn't in on all the details about the creation of The Bridge (well, I wasn't in on any of them, of course) but almost all the material we discussed in the beginning was complicated and difficult. We're all influenced by The Wire (and in my case by writing multiple POV novels) and we were eager to dive into the material.

But it's a network show, not cable, so it's more episodic. The kind of character development you see over a season of The Wire - where tensions between characters builds, where consequences take time to play out but you know they will - were played down in favour of 'crime of the week' stories.

Some people really like The Bridge, and I'm glad about that. Some people really don't. The National Post called it the first, "right-wing pro-union show."

And this review is worth reading: http://the-legion-of-decency.blogspot.com/2010/03/guy-with-movie-in-his-head.html

This Week's Bridge

Friday at 10:00 on CTV:



In this trailer you get a couple of quick shots of the fantastic main set, the union HQ.

And a hint of the complications that will ensue, of course.

And the Bald-Faced Lie, er, Creative Writing Is...

Last week I took part in one of those internet things where you're supposed to tell some outrageous lies about yourself and slip in one true thing.

In my case the true thing would have stuck out too easily because I've never had anything really outrageous happen to me in my life so instead I listed six things that have happened in my books -- five which were based on actual incidents and one I completely made up.

In case you missed them, here they are:

1) Eight members of a motorcycle gang were murdered in one night on a farm northwest of Toronto.

2) An out of commission brewery just north of Toronto was turned into one of the world's biggest indoor marijuana grow ops with fifteen people working in it.

3) There is one golf course in Afghanistan and when the Taliban were driven out and it reopened a local shephard walked his flock on it for two weeks to make sure the land mines had all been removed before play resumed.

4) A Great Lakes freighter was turned into a giant, floating grow op and meth lab.

5) Eight senior members of the Toronto Police narcotics division were arrested on charges of corruption, drug dealing and violating witnesses' rights by RCMP officers brought in by the chief and after years of legal manouvering none were convicted of anything.

6) There really is a "Hobbyist Review Board" site online where men who visit prostitutes (which they refer to as "the hobby") review the women's services like restaurant reviews.


And the one that I completely made up is....



4) A Great Lakes freighter was turned into a giant, floating grow op and meth lab.

Although I shold say that while I was doing the research and finding out how much it would cost to leas a freighter, hire a captain and crew, get contracts to haul ore or salt around the lakes and fit out the cargo holds I started to wonder, is this a novel or a business plan?

I don't suppose if someone actually turns a freighter into a giant floating frow op and meth lab I could sue them, but if they get busted I might get some publicity.

Bald-Faced Liar - er, Creative Writer

Mike Dennis has pegged me to take part in the Bald-Faced Liar (no wait, “Creative Writer”) Blogger Award.

So, here it is:

• Thanks, Mike, for asking.
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth – or – switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. (See below.)
• Nominate some more “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)
• Post links to the blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you have nominated them.


All right, but I'm going to change things up a little. The thing is, I live an uneventful, boring, very happy life so anything I wrote that was "outrageous" would be a lie and everyone who knows me would know that.

I've always been that way. When I was a kid I liked sports but I was never good enough to get in the game much so I spent a lot of time on the bench, honing my keen observational skills. It may be like that for a lot of writers, what we're good at is watching things, figuring them out and explaining them to other people.

So, what I'm going to do is list six things that happen in my books. Five of them will be based on true stories I got from the newspaper and one will be something I completely made up. Okay? Here we go:

1) Eight members of a motorcycle gang were murdered in one night on a farm northwest of Toronto.

2) An out of commission brewery just north of Toronto was turned into one of the world's biggest indoor marijuana grow ops with fifteen people working in it.

3) There is one golf course in Afghanistan and when the Taliban were driven out and it reopened a local shephard walked his flock on it for two weeks to make sure the land mines had all been removed before play resumed.

4) A Great Lakes freighter was turned into a giant, floating grow op and meth lab.

5) Eight senior members of the Toronto Police narcotics division were arrested on charges of corruption, drug dealing and violating witnesses' rights by RCMP officers brought in by the chief and after years of legal manouvering none were convicted of anything.

6) There really is a "Hobbyist Review Board" site online where men who visit prostitutes (which they refer to as "the hobby") review the women's services like restaurant reviews.


Okay, there you go. If even one of those was true I'd say we live in a bizarre world, but really five of them are true.

Now I'm going to tag:
Jay Stringer, Dana King, Scott Parker, Bryon Quertermous, Steve Weddle and Keith Rawson.

Let It Ride - Available Today in the USA

My third novel, Let It Ride (which is called Swap in Canada) is published today in the USA by St. Martins Press and I want to thank everyone who helped make it possible. My family, my friends, the folks at St. Martins and ECW - it really takes a lot of peope to get a book from vague idea to finished product.

As I've said before, if I listed everyone who helped on an acknowledgements "page" it would be as long as the book.

I posted a little from the first chapter on Do Some Damage today.

The Bridge - March 5th - 9:00

CTV announced yesterday that the two-hour premiere of The Bridge will air Friday, March 5th at 9:00 and the show will then run Fridays at 10:00.




From the CTV website:

The Bridge peels away the veneer of a big-city police force to reveal the political machinations underneath. After the rank and file unanimously vote street cop Frank Leo (Battlestar Galactica's Aaron Douglas) into office as union head, he begins his quest to put street cops first and clean up the force from the ground up. But the old boys' network running the police force and the city's self-serving politicians are not about to sit idly by while a former street cop makes up his own rules. Frank walks a thin blue line as he battles wiretaps and a concerted campaign to bring him down, letting nothing stop him from fulfilling his unwavering vow that when cops are in trouble, he will be there.


The show looks great. I think the episode that I co-wrote with Dannis Koromilas will be episode number 4 or 5 and the episode I wrote (crooked cops running hookers - it was ripped from the headlines, or like my stuff usually is, ripped from the weird news on page six) will be number eight or nine.

Still no news on USA air dates. Maybe this summer.

Hamilton Spectator Review

This review by Don Graves appeared in the Hamilton Spectator last week:

The raw rhythm of the dialogue is unpredictable; rapid fired and shaping Let It Ride's characters from their outer persona to their inner fears and reflections.

It's relentless, at times almost too much so, but it pushes you from character to character, cop to hooker, drug dealer to lesbian spa -- from dream to nightmare.

There's a pot at the end of the rainbow--the Saints of Hell biker gang's gold bars. The road to get there is littered with flawed redemption, and painful, self-serving arrogance.

The pacing is hell on wheels -- sharp and bloody, with dialogue to match.

I wanted to come up for air at times, couldn't find a spot and was swept up again by the undercurrent of the writing. The ending made me smile.

Authentic and riveting.

Here's the link.

I feel like I need to keep pointing out, though, that Swap and Let It Ride are the same book.

Book Trailers

It seems we like talking about book trailers more than we'll ever actually like book trailers.

For Swap/Let It Ride I was fortunate to have some very talented writers say some very nice things about it so I put those quotes on this bit of video driving over the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario and I'm calling it a book trailer.



And I want to thank, again, all the people who have helped me so much in writing my books.

A Crime Novel

This is the cover for Swap in the USA where it's called Let It Ride.

This one says, "a crime novel," instead of, "a mystery," which I think is more accurate as there are no mysteries in my books for the reader.

There are a lot of characters in the book and maybe there could've been a woman on the cover, too, but otherwise I like this a lot.

The publication date is set for February 16th, 2010.