Random Readings, Vol. 4

This installment of Random Readings is from Clive Barker's new novel MISTER B. GONE. Truer words ...

It was love that moved all things. Or rather, it was love and its theft, its demise, its silence, that moved all things. From a great fullness - a sense that all was well with things, and could be kept so, with just a little love - to an emptiness so profound that your bones whined when the wind blew through them: the coming and going between these states was the engine of all things.

Pontificating about Page 99

Out of town the next two weeks, with only intermittent internet access, so blogging will be minimal. However, in the meantime, the very busy Marshal Zeringue asked me to submit THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE to his patented Page 99 test (not to be confused with his Page 69 test). The results can be found here. It also also gave me a chance to go public about my hitherto-unspoken debt to writer/director James Gray's haunting LITTLE ODESSA.

Norman Mailer 1923-2007

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

And I think that says it all.

However, if you want more on Mailer (with whom I share a hometown, Long Branch, N.J.) be sure to visit here, which has maybe the best collection of links on the net, including this one, to a great Entertainment Weekly interview that was one of the last Mailer gave. We'll never see his like again.

'Torch' passing & 'Deadly Secrets' giveaway

This week I was invited to participate in a collaborative web-only "serial short story" over at Barnes and Noble's Crime Club. Conceived by Edgar-winning author and Hard Case Crime mastermind Charles Ardai (aka Richard Aleas), the story is titled, fittingly, "Passing the Torch." Charles kicked it off with the first installment Oct. 26, and succeeding chapters have been written by the likes of Jason Starr, Ken Bruen, Karen Olson, J.D. Rhoades and others, each picking up where the other left off.

+ Also, as mentioned in an earlier post, The Star-Ledger's three-CD set of its "Deadly Secrets" podcast - narrated by me - is now available. It collects all 15 chapters of the paper's groundbreaking series about Robert Zarinsky, a convicted killer serving time for murder who has since been linked to a series of unsolved slayings of young girls in Central New Jersey. The series was written and reported by Star-Ledger staffers Robin Gaby Fisher and Judith Lucas, who conducted more than 100 interviews between them. The story continues to unfold, and details can be found here.

The CDs and reprints of the series can be ordered here, but in the meantime, I'll send a free copy of the CD set to the first four people who message me at my site. It's true crime writing at its best.