SMFS Member Publishing News: Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers by Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips reported today that his short story collection, Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers, is out. Published by Level Best Books-Level Short, the read is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. 

Barnes and Noble Description:

In this collection, you'll find double crossers getting crossed, two-bit hucksters out to make that one last con, a long-gone revolutionary's fraught homecoming, a heist gone sideways, a dying hitman with explosive secrets, a square john taking a big step out of line, and...zombies crawling from the grave lusting for cocaine.

SMFS Member Publishing News: Half Crime by Rusty Barnes

 

Today is publication day for SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ new book, Half Crime. Published by Redneck Press, the short story collection is available at Amazon and other vendors.

SMFS Member Publishing News: Cold Hard Cash #1: A Martha Chainey Escapade by Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ new book, Cold Hard Cash #1: A Martha Chainey Escapade was released earlier this week. Published by West of Seguin, it is a Comixology Original for the kindle. You can pick it up here on Amazon. You can also read the “COLD HARD CASH Exclusive Preview” at ScreenRant.Com.

 

Amazon Description:

Martha Chainey gets looped into the assignment and sets out into Los Angeles to chase her early leads.

SMFS Member Publishing News: My Aim is True by Gary Phillips

 

Today is publication day for the new anthology, Brutal & Strange: Stories Inspired by the Songs of Elvis Costello. Published by Down & Out Books, the read includes SMFS list member Gary Phillips’s short story, My Aim is True. The read is available from the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors. 

 

Publisher Description:

One of popular music’s most prolific and creative composers, Elvis Costello has written songs in every conceivable genre: pop, reggae, rock, country, funk, soul and jazz, but also for full orchestras and string quartets. What you may not have noticed is that a surprising number of these songs are crime stories—not mere nods toward unsavory events featuring questionable characters, but complete tales of murder and violence told in verse.

Costello’s song titles alone confirm one of his preferred themes: “Accidents will Happen,” “American Gangster Time,” “Bullets for the Newborn King,” “Coal-Train Robberies,” “The Final Mrs. Curtain,” “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” “Kinder Murder,” “My Thief,” “Shabby Doll,” “Shot with His Own Gun,” “That’s How You Got Killed Before” and “Watching the Detectives,” among them. His album titles include “Blood & Chocolate,” “Brutal Youth,” “National Ransom” and “When I Was Cruel.” You can just imagine the so-called pulp mysteries of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s bearing identical titles accompanied by lurid, evocative cover art.

In “Brutal & Strange,” contemporary masters of crime fiction dig into Costello’s catalogue for inspiration. The marriage of Costello’s themes and these award-winning authors’ creativity will seem an inevitable match when you experience the results. Whether it’s Meg Gardiner and “Complicated Shadows,” Catriona McPherson and “Tramp the Dirt Down,” Alex Segura and “I Want You” Mark Billingham and “Our Little Angel” or many other virtuoso interpretations, the stories match the composer’s high standards and suggest there’s even more stirring beneath the surface of his songs.

In his “Everyday I Write the Book”—explored here by Gar Anthony Hayward—Costello portrays an author as sinister, controlling and vengeful. That’s not to say the authors who contributed to “Brutal & Strange” are anything of the kind. But you will find their questionable characters engaged in unsavory events. One imagines Costello himself would approve.

SMFS Member Publishing News: The Unvarnished Gary Phillips: A Mondo Pulp Collection by Gary Phillips

Today is publication day for SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ new book, The Unvarnished Gary Phillips: A Mondo Pulp Collection. Published by Three Rooms Press, the read is available in digital and print at the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors.

 

Publisher Description:

Award-winning author, screenwriter, and editor Gary Phillips gathers his most thrilling, outlandish, and madcap pulp fiction in an 17-story collection that straddles the line between bizarro, science fiction, noir, and superhero classics. Aztec vampires, astral projecting killers, oxygen stealing bombs, undercover space rangers, aliens occupying Los Angeles, right wing specters haunting the ’hood, masked vigilantes and mad scientists in their underground lairs plotting world domination populate the stories in this rip-snorting collection. In these pages grindhouse melds with blaxploitation along with strong doses of B movie hardcore drive-in fare. Phillips, editor of the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, and author of One-Shot Harry, and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, said this about pulp. “The most common definition of pulp is it’s fast-paced, a story containing out there characters and a wild plot. There is that. But certainly, as we’ve now arrived at the era of retro-pulp, these stories have elements of characterization…not just action but a glimpse behind the steely eyes of these doers of incredible deeds.” As an added bonus, Phillips resurrects Phantasmo, a Golden Age comics character created by Black artist-writer E.C. Stoner in an all-new outing of ethereal doings.

SMFS Member Publishing News: One Night in Brownsville by Gary Phillips

  

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ short story, One Night in Brownsville, appears in the recently released anthology, A Sampling of Sleuths: Short Stories from Bingeworthy Mystery Authors. Published by Thalia Press, the read is available in both print and eBook formats at Amazon and other vendors.

 

Amazon Description:

A Sampling of Award-Winning Mystery Authors For You To Try

Is there anything better than discovering a new crime fiction author you like — then finding out that they have plenty of books in their series for you to enjoy? 

From cozies to contemporaries, with a crime caper or two thrown in for good measure, A Sampling of Sleuths features short stories from 10 proven mystery authors, each one with strong backlists. It's a great, risk-free way to quickly explore authors you may not have heard of yet — and find the ones that you deem bingeworthy. After that, the rest is up to you... 

Featuring short mystery stories by:

Anne R. Allen

Michelle Bennington

Kate Flora

Lise McClendon

Katy Munger

Gary Phillips

J.M. Poole

Sarah Shaber

Connie Shelton

Susan Slater

 

SMFS Members Published in Get Up Offa That Thing: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of James Brown

SMFS list members are published in the new anthology, Get Up Offa That Thing: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of James Brown. Edited by SMFS list member Gary Phillips, the anthology is published by Down & Out Books. The read is available from the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors.  The SMFS list members in the book are:

 

John M. Floyd with “Shadygrove.”

 

Editor Gary Phillips with "In a Cold Sweat."

James Ziskin with “Prisoner of Love.”

 

Publisher Description:

“Mr. Dynamite,” “Soul Brother No. 1,” “The Godfather of Soul,” deadbeat dad, convicted spousal abuser…

James Brown was all those things and so much more. Yet it can’t be denied his music impacted a generation of fans and influenced a grip of musicians who came after him—from David Bowie, Janelle Monae to Usher just to name three. In the tradition then of other Down & Out Books music-themed anthologies such as Murder-A-Go-Go’s: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Go-Go’s and The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett, this all-original set of fourteen stories follows in that stead.

The idea expressed to the writers was not literal interpretations of any given song by Mr. Brown. Rather to use that title or lyric and the ofttimes edginess behind such efforts as “King Heroin” and “The Payback,” or the fun in “Make it Funky,” as a prompt, a starting point for the story the contributor wanted to tell. Covers the Godfather of Soul did of others’ songs could have also been tapped. While the majority of stories in the collection are prose, there is a comics style one and more than one of the text versions have an illustration or two to accompany the story.

The collection includes stories by six-time Bram Stoker Award winner Lisa Morton; Anthony, Barry and Macavity Awards winner James Ziskin; Jim Fusilli, former Rock & Pop critic for the Wall Street Journal; and HBO Max Doom Patrol staff writer and comics creator Ezra Claytan Daniels.

Other contributors include Shamus Award winner Gar Anthony Haywood; Mysti Berry, creator and editor of the Low Down Dirty Vote anthologies; five-time Derringer and Golden Derringer Award winner John M. Floyd; Lise McClendon, writer of the Bennett Sisters mysteries; cultural critic and short story writer Michael Gonzales; novelist and former Miami Vice showrunner and writer-producer on Hill Street Blues Robert Ward; Fabrice Sapolsky, comics creator of FairSquare Comics’ Intertwined and Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man Noir; filmmaker and pioneer of Hip Hop horror Jeff Carroll; crime fiction novelist and Dark Yonder editor Katy Munger; and hardboiled novelist and co-producer on Snowfall, Gary Phillips.

Little Big Crimes: Spiders and Fly, by Gary Phillips

Little Big Crimes: Spiders and Fly, by Gary Phillips:   "Spiders and Fly," by Gary Phillips, in Witnesses for the Dead, edited by Gary Phillips and Gar Anthony Haywood, Soho Press, 20...

SMFS Member Publishing News: Death of a Sideman by Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ short story, Death of a Sideman, appears in the recently released anthology, South Central Noir. Mr. Phillips is also the editor of this volume published by Akashic Books. This book in the Akashic Noir Series is available in audio, digital, and print formats at the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors.

 

Publisher Synopsis:

From the introduction by Gary Phillips: “Within these pages you’ll find stories of those walking the straight and narrow—until something untoward happens. Maybe it’s someone taking a step out of line, getting caught up in circumstances spiraling out of their control. Maybe they’re planning the grift, the grab . . . whatever it is to finally put them over. Other times the steps they take are to get themselves or people they care about out from under. You’ll find the offerings in these pages are a rich mix of tone—tales told of hope, survival, revenge, and triumph. Excursions beyond the headlines and the hype.

 

The settings herein reflect South Central today or chronicle its colorful past, such as the days of the jazz joints along Central Avenue . . . From South Park to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the borderlands of Watts to the one-time Southern Pacific railroad tracks paralleling Slauson Avenue, take a tour of a section of Los Angeles that may be unfamiliar to you but you will get to know, at least a little, by the time you finish reading this entertaining and engaging anthology.”

 

Featuring brand-new stories by: Steph Cha, Nikolas Charles, Tananarive Due, Larry Fondation, Gar Anthony Haywood, Naomi Hirahara, Emory Holmes II, Roberto Lovato, Penny Mickelbury, Gary Phillips, Eric Stone, Jervey Tervalon, Jeri Westerson, and Désirée Zamorano.

SMFS Member Publishing News: Wages of Gold by Gary Phillips

Gary Phillips’ short story, Wages of Gold, appears in the just released anthology, Bass Reeves: Frontier Marshal Volume 5. Published by Airship 27 Productions, the read is available in print and digital formats at Amazon.

Synopsis:

In this volume of Bass Reeves Frontier Marshal, the legendary black lawman faces another four challenges as he rides the badlands of Oklahoma before it became a state.
From the curse of a Mexican witch to chasing a renegade Indian Chief, Reeves is relentless in his pursuit of lawbreakers and devoted to justice.

Writers Michael Panush, Thomas McNulty, Gary Phillips, and Mel Odom offer up tales of the frontier as seen through the eyes of the greatest lawman of them all. This is old fashion, western action as only these gritty pulp scribes can deliver. So saddle up and get ready to ride into adventure!

Publication News: Jukes and Tonks

 Today Down & Out Books released Jukes and Tonks,  edited by SMFS members Michael Bracken and Gary Phillips.  The anthology contains a dozen crime stories set in juke joints and honky-tonks, and at one point today Jukes & Tonks hit Amazon's Hot New Releases list: The Kindle edition was at #65 and the paperback edition at #67.

SMFS Member Publishing News: Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’s new book, Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem is out now. Published by Agora Books, the read is available in both print and eBook formats from the publisher,  Amazon,  and other vendors.

  

Synopsis:

MATTHEW HENSON AND THE ICE TEMPLE OF HARLEM is the first in a new exciting retro rollicking adventure series. This re-imagined pulp novel follows the Doc Savage-style adventures of the first black man to reach the North Pole —Matthew Henson.

The tail end of the Roaring 20s. Harlem. Hired by controversial spiritual leader Daddy Paradise to retrieve his adult daughter who has been kidnapped, adventurer Matthew Henson does just that. Then he must safeguard the two until the firebrand can deliver a momentous speech at a mass rally. Henson must employ all his survival skills to fulfill his task—skills that kept him whole in forbidden jungles, across Asia, and in sub-zero ice storms when he first reached the North Pole.

Henson’s charge brings him face-to-face with such illustrious characters as gangster Dutch Schultz, who's looking to muscle out numbers racket boss Queenie St. Clair, and famed inventor Nikola Tesla who is using his electrical acumen to surveil plutocrats. Henson’s pal Bessie Coleman, America’s first black aviatrix lends a hand as well. With a death ray zeroing in on him, he races against the clock to save lives, and keep a mysterious and powerful meteor fragment he brought back from the Arctic years ago out of the hands of monied evil-doers.

Set against the intellectual, artistic and political firmament that was the Harlem Renaissance, THE ICE TEMPLE OF HARLEM re-imagines explorer Matthew Henson in the style of Doc Savage and Indiana Jones. The one the Inuit adopted as their own and considered the best example of those from the distant South.

SMFS Member Publishing News: Gary Phillips

Today is the first day for Gary Phillips' online comic strip, “Lady Gone Missing: A Sam Cairo Case.” Illustrated by Manoel Magalhães, the subscription comic strip is hosted at Aces Weekly. To subscribe and read the comic strip and others, go to the Aces Weekly website.

Gary’s Synopsis:

The setting is 1958 Los Angeles and private eye is Sam Cairo who has his office in his uncle’s gas station in South Central. An old Army buddy comes to Sam to find his missing fiancé. Events take Sam and the groom-to-be out to the desert confronting a cult up to supernatural no good. Cairo is inspired by the real-life Sam Marlowe, reputed in an L.A. Times article to be the first licensed black PI in town. This is a subscription deal, about a $1.30 a week but you get to read the 6 strips that are up for 7 weeks --  https://www.acesweekly.co.uk/vol47-issue1

SMFS Member Publishing News: Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillip’s short story, “A Matter of Options” prompted by the Depression-era painting “Why Not Take the L” by Reginald Marsh appears in the new anthology, From Sea to Stormy Sea: 17 Stories Inspired by Great American Paintings. Edited by Lawrence Block, the read is available in print and digital formats. Published by Pegasus Books, the read is viable from the publisher and other vendors including Amazon.

Synopsis:

In the third installment of his acclaimed illustrated anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art.

Seventeen stories by seventeen brilliant writers, inspired by seventeen paintings. That was the formula for Lawrence Block’s two ground-breaking anthologies, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color, and it’s on glorious display here once again in From Sea to Stormy Sea.

This time the paintings are exclusively the work of American artists, and the roster includes Harvey Dunn, John Steuart Curry, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Helen Frankenthaler, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, Grant Wood, and Andy Warhol. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you’ll find Warren Moore, Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus. 

It’s an outstanding collection, with widely divergent stories united by theme and culture, and―no surprise―beautifully illustrated with full-color reproductions of the seventeen paintings.

Including stories by: Sara Paretsky, Jan Burke, Warren Moore, Patricia Abbott, Christa Faust, Jerome Charyn, Barry Malzberg, Scott Frank, Brendan DuBois, Tom Franklin, Gary Phillips, Charles Ardai, Micah Nathan, Janice Eidus, John Sandford, Jane Hamilton, and Lawrence Block. 

Illustrated with 17 color plates, one for each story.

SMFS Member Publishing News: Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ novella titled, Tacos de Cazuela con Smith and Wesson  is released today by Down & Out Books. This is the first installment of six book series, Guns + Tacos, created and edited by SMFS list member Michael Bracken and Trey R. Barker. At this time, the read is available in eBook format only from the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors. 

The entire series, with bonus content, can be ordered direct from the publisher.

Synopsis:

Why does an ER doctor used to dealing with the physical and psychological trauma of gunshot wounds obtain a handgun? What exactly has brought her to this breaking point, and what will be the consequences when she puts her plan into play on the infamous South Side of Chicago?

SMFS Member Publishing News: Gary Phillips

Back in April, SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ novella titled, The Movie Makers, was released by Down & Out Books. This is the fourth installment of the five book series, A Grifter’s Song. As noted in news announcement then, the read was only available in eBook format. As Gary announces below, the read is now available in print format.

Publishing News From Gary Phillips

I’m quite pleased with my 13,000-word story in the second volume of A Grifter’s Song series. “The Movie Makers” is Jim Thompson meets Harold Robbins.

Sam and Rachel are working a con in La La Land where the gold is for the asking as long as you can spin a captivating fable. Rachel’s character is an indie producer with Silicone Valley roots and Sam a life coach as they work their magic on the mark. 
All is going according to plan until the smiling gangster shows up and suddenly the scenario they created from fairy dust starts to evaporate as things go sideways…and they just might not get out by the skin of their teeth.

Plus only if you subscribe, there’s a bonus story by series creator and editor Frank Zafiro. Go to: https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/grifters-song-s1-subscription/

SMFS Member Publication News: Gary Phillips

SMFS member Gary Phillips’ novella titled, The Movie Makers has been released by Down & Out Books. This is the fourth installment of the five book series, A Grifter’s Song. At this time, the read is available in eBook format only from the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors.  An excerpt from the book was published online last February at Retreats From Oblivion: The Journal of Noircon.

Synopsis:

Sam and Rachel are working a con in La La Land where the gold is for the asking as long as you can spin a captivating fable. Rachel’s character is an indie producer with Silicone Valley roots and Sam a life coach as they work their magic on the mark. 

All is going according to plan until the smiling gangster shows up and suddenly the scenario they created from fairy dust starts to evaporate as things go sideways…and they just might get out by the skin of their teeth.

SleuthSayers: The Genesis of Guns + Tacos by Michael Bracken

 SleuthSayers: The Genesis of Guns + Tacos: by Michael Bracken with Trey R. Barker and Frank Zafiro Writers are often asked where they get their ideas, but no one ever asks antholo...

SMFS Members Published in Gary Phillips' Hollis For Hire

Two SMFS list members are published in the just released short story collection, Gary Phillips’ Hollis For Hire. Published by Pro Se Productions, the book is currently available in print and digital formats from Amazon. The two members are:

Sarah M. Chen with “The Parachute Kids.”

Editor Gary Phillips with “Hollywood Killer” and “King Cow” as well as "The Case of the Missing Dentist."

Amazon Synopsis:

In this rollicking collection private investigator Nate Hollis, a routine visit to the dentist sends him into an underground world of addictive vices; hunts a killer in the dead of winter in Chicago; uncovers secrets from the buried past; stalks the stalker of super hero street performers in the back alleys of Tinseltown; braves the unforgiving streets of New York City to stop a killer, and more in this electric-charged assortment of stories.

New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky, Edgar winner Naomi Hirahara, Deadly Ink nominee Sarah M. Chen, hardboiled adept Scott Adlerberg, and new pulpster Phillip Drayer Duncan along with Hollis’ creator and 2018 Anthony Award winner Gary Phillips (Black Pulp, Peepland) deliver tales of a P.I. who Kevin Burton Smith in Mystery Scene magazine said was “Slick as spit, big-shouldered Hollis walks the walk and talks the talk…” This edition also includes two previously published Hollis stories by Phillips, “King Cow” and “Hollywood Killer.”

SMFS Member Publication News: Gary Phillips

SMFS list member Gary Phillips’ short story, “I,Truck” appears in the  just released  anthology, 18 Wheels of Science Fiction: A Long Haul into the Fantastic. Published by Big Time Books, the read is available in print and digital formats from Amazon and other vendors including the publisher.  

Amazon Synopsis:

Take a trip through the imaginations of 18 visionary writers as they explore the future of trucking in this new science fiction anthology! There's something for every genre fiction fan in this follow-up to the hit "18 wheels of Horror - a Trailer Full of Trucking Terrors." 

From the back cover: An alien fuel additive shows just how fast a big rig can go... A disembodied driver wages war on self-driving trucks... A haul through time takes an unexpected turn... Reality shatters for a trucker using an experimental delivery device... Stargazing gives an overweight driver a new lease on life... A young girl risks her life to hitch a ride out of an apocalyptic wasteland...

The highways of the universe will never be the same!