Crime Novels | GERRY BOYLE

Posts Tagged ‘crime novels’

August 20th, 2011

Keeping up Appearances

I’ll be getting out and about in coming weeks for PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE. Last week it was the Wells (Maine) Public Library where we all had a good time, I think (photo at right). More events are coming in, and I’ll be updating this list so keep checking back in:

Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011, 7 p.m., book launch event! Longfellow Books, Portland, Maine.

Come and partake in the festivities. Or just sit in the back and listen was we chat, read from PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, generally have a good time celebrating Brandon Blake No. 2.

Sept. 17, 1-3 p.m., Children’s Book Cellar, Waterville, Maine. Signing and chat. And don’t let the name fool you. Store owner Ellen Richmond is a big mystery fan and very knowledgeable.

Oct. 4, 7 p.m., Water Street Books, Exeter, N.H. Reading/signing/chatting with author Toby Ball (SCORCHED CITY). Toby’s a good guy, good writer. I’m looking forward to it.

Oct 20, 6:30 p.m., Lithgow Library, Augusta, Maine. One of my favorite stops. Great reading room with handsome period stained glass. And nice people.

Tags: Brandon Blake, crime novels, Down East Books, Gerry Boyle, Maine Crime Writers, mystery novels, Port City Black and White
Posted in Brandon Blake, Events | 2 Comments »

August 15th, 2011

And the winner of the PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN giveaway is …

… Pamela Oberg of Stone Coast Writers Conference. Her name was picked randomly (entries written on small pieces of paper, placed in a beat-up Red Sox hat ((Manny Ramirez special edition)), shuffled around, and voila!) Thanks for all who took the time to enter. Keep stopping by. We’ll be doing a PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE giveaway very soon.

Lastly, a reminder that I’ll be at the Wells, Maine, Public Library tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug. 16. The event starts at 6:30 p.m. My plan is to have a good general chat and, because this is the first event for PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, I may read from that one a bit. Hope that if you’re in the area, you can stop by. It’s a handsome library with good people. More events are coming in. I’ll be posting them asap.

Tags: Brandon Blake, crime novels, Down East Books, Gerry Boyle, Maine Crime Writers, Maine mysteries, Port City Black and White, Port City Shakedown
Posted in Brandon Blake, Events | 2 Comments »

August 8th, 2011

Hey, a crime novel isn’t about PR

I’ve been thinking this of late as the release of PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE looms. (Sept. 16). Port City is Portland, Maine, where I nearly always have a good time. Last weekend I went to dinner (the restaurant Grace), a concert (Emmy Lou Harris), visited my daughter, and got up at 5 a.m. to take a bike ride around the downtown. The city was quiet but for the gulls calling overhead. The bay was covered in rising mist. I had the downtown to myself, except for the people picking bottles from trashcans and the homeless guys still asleep on benches in the park across from the Courthouse. I rode down Congress Street to Longfellow Square, not as far down as where the guy was shot in the chest and killed the other morning. You read about that? No arrests yet. He died in the parking lot of a convenience store at 4 a.m.

And there I go again.

When you write these books (in my case set in Portland or Waldo County, Maine, or even Boston or New York), you take a perfectly nice place and put it through the wringer of your imagination. It’s not that you’re inventing the bad things that happen. People are murdered in these places most days. There are drug dealers and drug buyers, thieves and gropers, people who are just generally rotten. But there are thousands of good people, too, and most of them go about their business and only read about murder and mayhem in the newspaper. Those people don’t play prominently in books like these.

It’s an odd thing. I had a reader show up at a book signing for PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, listen to my reading, and say, “But I thought Portland was such a nice place.” Well, it is. Very nice. You’d be hard pressed to find a nicer place to live. But that’s not the side of the city I write about.

It’s an odd thing, this need to insert evildoers into a story, only so you (or your heroes) can vanquish them. I find it hard to write any other way.

I was driving through Waldo County on Sunday, coming back from a weekend away. We drove from Belfast west, up over Knox Ridge, and it was a beautiful view from the top. Rolling hills, and woods, and pastures. We remarked on how lovely it was, and then I said, ‘This is McMorrow country.” The lovely setting in those books is populated by some good people, but a lot of people you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark country road.

I love what I do. I love writing about people who do bad things. I love the push and pull of good and evil. I write about a Maine that you won’t read about in travel magazines. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I’m not going to be the darling of the Chamber of Commerce. I once had an idea to have a book signing for passengers getting off cruise ships in Portland. I proposed it but it never happened. Go figure.

Tags: Brandon Blake, crime novels, Down East Books, Gerry Boyle, Grace restaurant, Jack McMorrow, Maine Crime Writers, mystery novels, Port City Black and White, Robert B. Parker
Posted in Brandon Blake, Writing | 2 Comments »

August 2nd, 2011

Me and Emmy Lou

A quick post today to catch up on a couple of things:

One, want to read how McMorrow No. 10 may be inspired by Emmy Lou Harris? Go to mainecrimewriters.com for the details. I kid you not. lt’s true.

Two, I’m going to let the PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN giveway go until Aug. 15. That gives the lucky recipient a month or to read Brandon Blake No. 1 before moving on to PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, Brandon Blake No. 2. Just comment. Or send in your name and email and let me know you’d like to enter.

Three, I’m going to be at the Wells, Maine, Public Library Aug. 16 at 6:30 p.m. Rumor has it that we may have a few advanced copies of PC B&W on hand. I can’t wait to hold it in my hand.

Four, we’ve had some disturbing crime in my neck of the Maine woods of late. I’m still processing it. There are days when I wish I’d become a cop. More on that at the end of the week.

Take care and stay in touch.

Tags: Brandon Blake, crime novels, Down East Books, Emmy Lou Harris, Gerry Boyle, Maine Crime Writers, Maine mysteries, mystery novels, mystery writing, Port City Black and White, Port City Shakedown
Posted in Brandon Blake, Jack McMorrow | 2 Comments »

July 25th, 2011

Getting to Know Brandon Blake

Hey all. I spent part of Saturday chatting up Brandon Blake, both in his debut (PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, 2009) and his upcoming outing in PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, due out in September. Some people had read SHAKEDOWN. Some were new to my young friend on the Portland waterfront. I have to say I’m excited to introduce Brandon to new readers, many of whom have read about Jack McMorrow for years. One reader predicted that the two of them will meet one of these books.

Could be, but in the meantime I’m pretty psyched about BLACK AND WHITE. I’m looking forward to getting Brandon and Mia, Brandon’s police partner Kat Malone, and the rest of the crew out into the public eye in just a few weeks. In fact, I’d like to get Brandon out there right now. So I’m going to send out signed copies of PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN to two commenters who tell me they want to get to know this guy. I’ll have one of my associates here pick the winners randomly. Blindfolded. Sworn to secrecy.

I’ve got to tell you. Brandon’s cut from a different cloth. In some ways I’m still trying to get a handle of the guy. It’s fun when you create a character who surprises you at many turns.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Tags: Brandon Blake, crime novels, Gerry Boyle, Jack McMorrow, Maine Crime Writers, mystery novels, Port City Black and White, Port City Shakedown
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

July 18th, 2011

Down on the Waterfront

It’s been a nautical few days. Took the boat down the Kennebec River and across to Boothbay Harbor, a favorite run. Gorgeous weather. Eagles, ospreys, seals. Merrymeeting Bay and Hell’s Gate. Townsend Gut and Sheepscot Bay. Paradise.

On Saturday, July 23, it’s back to the mid-coast, though I’ll probably have to go by car. The event: Book signing at the Maine Lighthouse Museum in Rockland, a very cool place right by Harbor Park. There are 10 authors on hand from noon to 4 p.m. I’m signing PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake novel. Blue-water sailors, Brandon living on his vintage Chris Craft, the Portland Waterfront, boats and criminals galore.

It’s part of a whole weekend of festivities in a great city on Penobscot Bay. Here are directions. Come by, stop and chat. No better place to be on a summer day in Maine.

Tags: crime novels, Gerry Boyle, Maine Crime Writers, Maine Lighthouse Museum, mystery novels, Port City Black and White, Port City Shakedown, Rockland
Posted in Brandon Blake | No Comments »

July 12th, 2011

Galley ho!

I know I’m supposed to be sort of cool about all this but I have to say that when galleys for PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE arrived in the mail yesterday I felt that little jump, that skip of the heartbeat that comes when you see your words in print.

I’ve been doing this for 18 years now and PC B&W, out in September, is my 11th book. No small number, but not up there in the ranks for somebody like the late Robert B. Parker, for example (whose endorsement I still wear with pride). But you’d think that after nearly a dozen books a bit of the thrill would be gone. No way. I picked up the package at the post office, saw the Down East Books label. I tore it open in the car outside and held the galleys up. Flipped through the pages. Read a passage or two or six. Recalled when all of this was just a few scrawled notes on a legal pad. And it wasn’t all that long ago.

Something there is about the printed word. I got that jolt daily when I was newspaper columnist. Now I get it in Colby magazine, where I write stories. I have to wait a bit longer for the bigger bang, the delayed gratification of an actual book.

I have a friend named Earl Smith who just sold his first mystery novel, THE DAM COMMITTEE. I’m going to remind Earl (and the same goes for any writer just setting out) to savor every success because each one follow a lot of very hard work. When the book is sold. When you see page proofs for the first time. A cover design. Galleys. Your first good review (Negative ones we dismiss). That first carton of books. Pulling them out and seeing your name on the cover. Opening it up and seeing the words you wrote.

This craft can very quickly become a business. There’s the money side of it. The marketing side. The slog of copy editing (OK, it’s a slog to me, maybe not to everybody). But I always tell myself not to become numb to the pure joy of doing this, the absolute privilege that it is. You invent characters, draw a place on a blank page, tell a story. And once published, the book has a life of its own. That’s very cool.

If you’re a published writer, you know what I mean. If you’re still working toward that goal, let this be an incentive, something to encourage you on one of those dark days. Opening that box—it’s a blast.

Tags: crime novels, Down East Books, Gerry Boyle, Maine Crime Writers, Maine writers, mystery novels, Port City Black and White, Robert B. Parker, Writing
Posted in Brandon Blake, Writing | No Comments »