The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

Lizzie Hood and Evie Verver are two inseparable 13 year-old best friends who share in everything from field hockey to picnics at the lake. Evie’s older beautiful sister Dusty is sophisticated and loved from afar by all the schoolboys, a dynamic but damaged young woman who offers the girls an exciting view of what’s to come in their own near-future. Evie’s father is a handsome, strong, and giving man who has replaced Lizzie’s own distant father.

So when Evie goes missing one afternoon after school Lizzie is left feeling not only frightened for her friend but incomplete in herself. As the Verver family stumbles along day by day with a fruitless police investigation, it’s up to Lizzie to pull together fleeting impressions and half-remembered comments made by Evie that might hold the answer to where she’s gone or who may have taken her.

Did she have a secret boyfriend? Were there troubles with classmates? Problems at home? As Lizzie’s pubescent crush on Mr. Verver grows, he entertains her with stories of his own adolescence and dazzles her with visions of what she can look forward to where heartache and true love are concerned. As dark intentions and veiled ambitions are slowly revealed, Lizzie is forced to come to a decision on exactly how much she should keep hidden and what she should acknowledge.

Author Megan Abbott’s narrative is exquisite, atmospheric, muscular yet subtle, exploring the mythic essence of truth as much as developing the story by parceling out clues and observations on characters and the secret spheres they inhabit. The plot is naturally and intricately built upon Lizzie’s memories, dreams, and sometimes imperfect understanding of the Verver family and the larger world around her. Like in life, small gestures take on greater significance: A hesitation, a glimpse, a half-spoken whisper, a touch on the wrist become powerful earmarks and signs for a pubescent girl.

Abbott puts as much emphasis on the pained human condition as the whos and whys of the tense mystery. The often cruel and confused motives of the human heart underscore a grand and involving maze of conflict, giving the story a broad and gripping canvas. This is mainstream literature by way of noir anguish and page-turning suspense. Dramatic, complex, poignant, and gut-plucking, The End of Everything is the kind of realistic yet dark-hearted coming-of-age story that’s likely to reintroduce you to the skeletons in your own bricked-over family closet.

The Conclusion, LKW Launches, and How Brian Keene Almost Blew Up the World

Lots of updating to do, so here goes.

I received word that my next novel due out from Bantam in hardcover THE LAST KIND WORDS officially launched to the sales force a few days back. After a couple of painful delays this means that the novel will now definitely be coming out in spring of '12. That gives me a year to create as much mega-buzz as I can, beginning with my proposed sex scandal. I fully intend to send hundreds of strippers, porn stars, and prostitutes into laughing fits by showing them pictwitpics of my pee-pee. Headlines will be forthcoming.

Speaking of headlines, my tribute to my pal Brian Keene, “How Brian Keene Nearly Caused the Nuclear Apocalypse and Yes, Every Word of This is True, Mostly,” taken from this year's World Horror Convention Program Book, has been posted on Brian's site. Don't just read it, my friends, learn from it. For God's sake, learn from it!

An all-new original story of mine "The Conclusion" has been posted over on Horror World. Check it out for free.

The 4th issue of NEEDLE magazine has just hit, including work by Ray Banks, Todd Robinson, Patti Abbott, Scott Morse, Don Lafferty, and many others, including my own contribution "Osteoporosis."

Not sure when it will hit, but be on the lookout for my lengthy tale "The Void It Often brings With It" in an upcoming issue of ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.

Also keep your eyes open for "Riding the Bus" in Warren Lapine's new anthology FANTASTIC STORIES.

Several more terrific reviews have come in for my little slice of noir hell EVERY SHALLOW CUT, including one by Paul Goat Allen over at the B&N Bookclubs, who says, in part: "This was a fascinating – and fast – read. Every Shallow Cut isn’t quite crime fiction or horror, but a story that deftly treads the boundaries between both genres. If I had to categorize it as anything, I’d call it a darkly nuanced thriller since it’s essentially an exploration into what happens when the stresses of modern day life become too much to handle for one man. And there’s a real sense of authenticity and timeliness here – Every Shallow Cut does a brilliant job of reflecting the feelings of economic and existential hopelessness that so many people are experiencing in today’s society. This powerful little noirella will surely delight – and disturb."

Also, a Milwaukee Public Library blog that compares Every Shallow Cut to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. Finally, I can hold my head high!

Jessica Blanchard of The Hipster Book Club had these generous words to say: "While he may not become a tween girl favorite, Tom Piccirilli's ability to relate the maddening but human experiences of unfulfilled hope or fear of failure through an evocative and exhilarating story makes EVERY SHALLOW CUT a standout. The story will resonate long after the short time it takes to read."

Since our May $.99 sale for NIGHTJACK was such a hit, we're doing another one in June. Get my SHORT RIDE TO NOWHERE noirella for under a buck on Kindle, Nook, Smashwords or just about anywhere!

SUPERNATURAL NOIR ed. by recent Bram Stoker winner Ellen Datlow is due out next week, including a tale from me. If you don't mind a little horror or fantasy mixed with your crime and noir, check it out. Here's the TOC:

"The Dingus" by Gregory Frost
"The Getaway" by Paul G. Tremblay
"Mortal Bait" by Richard Bowes
"Little Shit" by Melanie Tem
"Ditch Witch" by Lucius Shepard
"The Last Triangle" by Jeffrey Ford
"The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven" by Laird Barron
"The Romance" by Elizabeth Bear
"Dead Sister" by Joe R. Lansdale
"Comfortable in Her Skin" by Lee Thomas
"But For Scars" by Tom Piccirilli
"The Blisters on My Heart" by Nate Southard
"The Absent Eye" by Brian Evenson
"The Maltese Unicorn" by Caitlín R. Kiernan
"Dreamer of the Day" by Nick Mamatas
"In Paris, In the Mouth of Kronos" by John Langan

One last thing. For anyone interested, I'm still offering critiques. $50 for a story 4k words long or under, 2-3 pages of comments. $50/hr, minimum 6 hours for a full-length novel manuscript, 8-10 pages of comments, pointing out strengths/weaknesses/trouble areas with characterization, plot, style, narrative voice, momentum, etc. Just drop me a line here or at PicSelf1@aol.com.

And how's everybody else doing?

Headstone by Ken Bruen

I just finished HEADSTONE, the latest Jack Taylor novel from Ken Bruen, and my friends it's a serious rip-snorter. In this one JT goes up against a group of youths who are devoted to the idea of killing off "misfits," including homosexuals, alcholics, the mentally handicapped, and pretty much anybody they just don't like. And, as you might guess, they really don't like Jack. After he and his two companions--Garda Ridge and the erstwhile ex-con Stewart--all receive miniature headstones in the mail, they know they're on the list of undesirables. Meanwhile, the cold and calculating Father Gabriel hires Jack to chase down another priest who absconded with certain church funds set aside for a satellite group of priests called the Brethren who are apparently up to no good.

Jack trudges through his cases even while he makes plans to meet with his current lady love, an American he had a whirlwind affair with in Paris and who might just be able to lift the darkness from Jack's heart, at least for a while. He's at the whim of his own history, constantly thinking about his sins and his life's small graces. The lessons of his late father spur him on, and friends and enemies from the past seemingly come out of every piece of woodwork.

All the JT books are savage reads but HEADSTONE goes to very wild, deep crevices. Bruen almost gleefully tortures his protagonist, giving him a ray of hope and happiness before quashing it. He falls into the clutches and traps of his enemies time and time again, only to survive with greater scars. It's a tremendously brutal and bleak read, but you're not reading Ken Bruen for butterflies and giggles. You want him to take you to that stinging knife-edge, and he does so with skill, poetry, and honesty, and without reservation.

THE KILLER IS DYING by James Sallis

If you don’t already know who James Sallis is, then shame on your ass. Just keep your eyes open for the film version of his brilliant harboiled noir actioner DRIVE, coming to theaters everywhere with the mega-cast that the story so richly deserves. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan Gosling, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks, and...well, I’m stuck on the gorgeous Christina Hendricks and can’t think beyond her, but lots of other cool people are in the flick too. Get your tickets early. But what you should do right now, this minute, people, is run out and pick up the novel DRIVE and any other Sallis book you can get your hands on, including the very hip Lew Griffin series that takes place in New Orleans.

Also, it’s time for you to pre-order his next novel THE KILLER IS DYING. A taut, cerebral, quirky, and punchy tale of a, well, no spoilers here, a killer who is dying. As the hitter, named Christian, faces the grand mystery, he also reflects on his own life and the various choices he’s made along the way. He’s not a whiner or a coward, not a sadist (unless you cross him in a bad way) or an animal. He’s an insightful, thoughtful, curious person about to take the first and final step beyond the veil, almost with a curious and hopeful air about him.

On his heels is a cop named Sayles, whose dying wife has withdrawn from him to face her own losing battle alone, a situation he can’t fully accept but must acknowledge. He hunts for Christian, called the Dollman thanks to the code words clients use to garner his services, but he’s not one of those brutally obsessed detectives burning with self-righteousness and a crazed need for justice. He too is more circumspect, doing his best to accept the world on its own terms.

The final thread of the narrative belongs to Jimmie, a teenager whose parents have simply abandoned him and their home in order to go their own way. Jimmie, a very enterprising kid, is amazingly adept at accepting adult responsibilities. He works a full-time job via eBay, buying and selling antique and offbeat products, especially toys. He’s an extremely capable lad, in control of his own fate, except for the fact that he’s having bizarre dreams. They turn out to be Christian’s dreams. Somehow he’s apparently attuned to the dying killer, and is drawn into nightmares and memories not his own.

Let me tell you, only James Sallis has the kind of cojones and skill it takes to throw these sorts of disparate elements into a story and make it all work. He’s a craftsman almost completely disinterested with the usual forms and techniques of crime fiction, choosing instead to center on minimalist meditations on life, dying, and death. This is an intricate, complex and poignant examination of three disconnected souls who somehow find consolation in each other despite remaining separate throughout the novel. It’s a wildly courageous gambit, but Sallis is a sharp and proficient artisan who makes it all work. Nab THE KILLER IS DYING asap and see for yourself.

Remaining Strange

I’ve talked about my father a lot, in this blog and across most of my fiction. Which remains strange because I barely knew him and all that I really discuss is this man’s shadow and myth and the Oedipal trauma under which I continue to labor. He was a handsome slim Sicilian kid who lied about his age to join the Navy during the tail end of WWII. He was a jock and engineer and the foreman of his crew at Gruman. He helped build the Apollo 11 space module. He spent the last year of his life taking me to a ton of horror movies. He left a deep impression on me.

I didn’t know he was sick. I was seven. Most seven year olds are apparently sharper than I was.

I don’t fully understand why I didn’t quite get it, except that my mother, knowing I was a sensitive kid, apparently fought to keep me in the dark. We borrowed a barker lounger from my uncle to give my father some comfort. I recall leaping up onto his lap and hearing him groan loudly. It scared me. I faced him and spotted a long, inflamed biopsy scar across his throat. I remember being shocked into silence while he tried to soothe me, saying, "Don’t be scared, it’s okay, Tommy."

He was dead a short time later. I didn’t know about it. They didn’t tell me until after the funeral. I was shuttled to my aunt’s place where the family took turns looking after me while they sneaked out to attend services and wakes. It probably isn’t so easy to fool most seven year old’s but I was blithely unaware. I was a dumb shit. They took advantage of that fact. They decided it would be easier to break the news to me after first pumping me up full of laughter. My 18 year old brother and my cousins took me down in the basement to teach me how to play Monopoly. They rigged the game so I’d win all the property and money. I was overjoyed and giggling like a hopped up pothead when my brother brought the sledge down. He was a dumb shit himself. He said, "I’m your new father. Dad died."

I tore ass up the stairs and made an Olympiad standing jump into my mother’s arms. She was waiting alone on the couch.

Later on the anger hit. I felt betrayed and empty that I hadn’t been able to mourn with everyone else. I felt abused and hyper-assinine because they’d all been in the know, creeping around me in my ignorance. Somewhere down the line I found my brother’s journal. I wasn’t interested in his anything about it except one day. Nov. 4, the funeral. I read the couple of pages over and over. It had stormed horribly and my brother drew a few gravestones with slashes of rain.

The next day I went to read the journal again and it was gone. I found it torn to pieces in the trashcan. I questioned him about it and he told me I’d violated him by reading his secret thoughts. Like I said, he was a dumbshit kid too. He didn’t pick up on my need to share in the mourning. He wasn’t wise enough to understand the need for a closure I could never entirely have.

So my old man was gone at 46, and the number took on a greater meaning the closer I came to it. Writers live and die by these kinds of symbols. They lend meaning and purpose to the craft and the intent. We’re all painfully self-aware of our own need for drama. And so I give you my upcoming birthday on May 27th. On that day I turn 46. I match the extent of my father’s life, if not his testament. No matter what I accomplish in this life I feel like I can never match him. I know that at least a part of this is wild insecurity on my part. The rest has something to do with living in the looming shadow of the dead.

All of this has added to my incessant struggle and pursuit for identity. Taken as a body of work, I would say that my fiction deals mostly about the search for identity. And nowhere else is this more clear or obvious than in my original-to-digital novel NIGHTJACK. The symbolism is clear. So’s the theater and the drama. So’s the fear.

In an effort to do some damn thing to semi-celebrate my b-day, to note this watershed year, I decided to reduce the price on NIGHTJACK to .99 all across the board. On Amazon, B&N, the Crossroad website, everyplace. Go, enjoy. And find yourself.

Here's the info:

On the day of his release from a mental institution Pace is taken "hostage" by Faust, Pia, and Hayden, three escapees from the hospital who disappeared after the presumed rape and beating of Cassandra Kaltzas, daughter of the Greek munitions tycoon Alexandra Kaltzas. Each suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder, experiencing complex delusions and sometimes fantastical identities. Pace tries to piece together what happened when apparently one of their alternate personalities tried to kill Cassandra.

Pace himself is an alternate of William Pacella, a man whose wife died in a restaurant fire set by a local mobster for insurance money. William Pacella "dies" so that Nightjack can be born-a new personality who may or may not be Jack the Ripper.

For unknown reasons, Pace is able to see others' delusions-when alternates take over members of the group, Pace alone is able to interact with each persona. Included among them is Princess Eirrin, a ten thousand year old sorceress and heir to the Atlantean throne; Smoker, a half-breed gunman from 1880s Arizona; Thaddeus, friend and companion to St. Paul; and the ancient Greek architect Daedalus, who soared among the clouds with his home-made wax wings and watched his son perish in the sea.

Now the four find themselves under attack from assassins sent by Kaltzas to punish the person who attacked his daughter. Conflicting stories abound about Cassandra-whether she was raped, if she was perhaps murdered, or if she and Pace somehow crossed paths even before the hospital. In fact, she may not even exist.

As the attacks persist, the group is forced to face their own personal traumas and terrors, and go in search of Kaltzas in Greece. There, on an island where fantasy, myth, and truth are all entangled, Pace and his many alternates must sift through madness and deceit to unlock the mystery. And everyone may wind up dead unless Pace willingly unleashes the most brutal killer of all: Nightjack.

PRAISE FOR TOM PICCIRILLI & NIGHTJACK

"Tom Piccirilli straddles genres with the boldness of the best writers today, blending suspense and crime fiction into tight, brutal masterpieces."-JAMES ROLLINS, New York Times bestselling author of The Judas Strain

"You're in for a treat. Tom Piccirilli is one of the most exciting authors around. He writes vivid action that is gripping and smart, with characters you believe and care about. I always pay attention when I see his name."-David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of FIRST BLOOD and THE NAKED EDGE"

Tom Piccirilli is at the forefront of the new breed of crime writers, welding his sense of history to a modern sensibility, creating a strong new voice."-Max Allan Collins, author of ROAD TO PERDITION

"Tom Piccirilli writes like a crazed banshee. I love his work."-KEN BRUEN

Are you reading Gifune?

Well you damn well ought to be. It’s no secret (I say so here, here, and here) that I’ve been writing and reading less horror in recent years, but one author who can always make me dive back into black waters is Greg F. Gifune. He’s got a gripping, literate sensibility soaked in atmosphere with a narrative momentum built on seriously muscular prose. He cooks up a flavorful stew full of characters out of myth, serial killers, acts of violence, and the ever fucked-up reality as nightmare, nightmare as reality theme that many attempt but few can pull off with any real style or meaning. Gary Braunbeck can do it. TM Wright can do it. And Greg is another stylistic master of the motif.

Greg was kind enough to send me a package of his latest releases, and in the past five days I’ve finished up both GARDENS OF NIGHT and DREAMS THE RAGMAN.

GARDENS OF NIGHT follows the sordid story of Marcus Banyon, who after suffering an unspeakable trauma vacations with his wife and best friend to a chalet in the deep woods where his apparently newfound capabilities to see and communicate with animals and the very forces of nature lead him to a farmhouse that’s been taken over by the three fates.

DREAMS OF THE RAGMAN focuses on two long-time friends, one now a junkie locked away by a small-minded, sadistic sheriff, who have been haunted by the Ragman, a serial killer who’s been on the prowl for decades, using the trains to enter towns and escape without a trace. The Ragman may or may not be a mythic boogieman, but his very presence has corrupted the lives of the protagonists and torn their friendship apart.

But don't stop there. Keep reading all the books and stories by Greg Gifune that you can get your hands on. I still haven't had enough and will be starting LONG AFTER DARK tonight. Go, now.

Special shoutout to Robert Dunbar of UNINVITED BOOKS for making his new publishing company's debut novel release Greg's own GARDENS OF NIGHT. Is this man wise or what? Hell yeah.

Having Fun with Duane Swierczynski

Just finished an advance copy of Duane Swierczynski's next novel FUN & GAMES, the first in a trilogy from Mulholland Books. Book 2: HELL & GONE and Book 3: POINT & SHOOT will come out in short order, just four or five months apart. It's a rocket of a read, about Lane Madden, a noted actress who's being hunted by "the Accident People," a shadowy organization connected to the Hollywood establishment that seems to have all-powerful connections. They clean up Hollywood's power elite's messes, and if you happen to be a part of that mess, as Lane is, they clean you up too.

Into this set-up wanders Charlie Hardie, a house-sitter/kinda-ex-cop who winds up running afoul of the Accident People and trying to protect Lane from near-omnipotent foes. He’s threatened, beaten, stabbed, tasered, poisoned, bushwhacked, and shot. But Charlie's already survived a couple of serious syndicate hits, and he's just too stubborn to die.

Duane takes no prisoners here (not that he ever does). It's a speed demon narrative that doesn't slow down for a second, not even while taking vicious and violent hairpin turns. Some of these scenes are bound to tie you in knots. The story bounces and whip-cracks and peels out, but instead of shaking the reader loose it just manages to grab hold of you that much tighter. Make sure you have a day set aside when you start FUN & GAMES because once you turn to page 1 you're strapped in for the full wild ride.