Tag: Fiction

The Daily (or whenever) Eruption


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That Novel-in-Progress is Out (soon) 6/2/2024

On September 1, 2024, Guernica World Editions will publish Geoff Dutton’s Her Own Devices: A novel or two. This is the novel I last wrote about here over three years ago. (See next entry) You can find out lots more about it at Perfidy Press, and order it in advance at online bookstores. He spent four years crafting a story to rehabilitate characters from Turkey Shoot who had unfortunate ends, not as another thriller, but as women’s crime fiction with magical and metafictional elements. See reviews at BookTrib and Kirkus, and head for Geoff’s bookstore at bookshop.org to get the paperback. File under Self-Promotion.

Unwrapping a Novel in Progress: Friday 2/4/2021

Athens, looking South toward Piraeus. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

It’s been hard to pick a genre for my new novel Her Own Devices. Call it Literary Fiction cloaked as Contemporary Women’s Crime. After sweating over it for close to 20 months, I feel it’s almost a wrap and so am starting to unwrap it online to get some reactions.

Set in Athens and Piraeus, Greece not long ago, Devices carries on where Turkey Shoot left off, but in a different key and genre. To enjoy this one you don’t need to have read the first one, but you might want to once you’re done. Find more about both at Perfidy Press.

You can read a new excerpt of Devices in the February issue of the literary journal The Write Launch. I am most grateful to editor Sandra Fluck for her support by publishing this and previous excerpts. The new one is Chapter 8 (of 31), and begins Part Two (of four). Find it here, and go to my author page at The Write Launch to find the other two excerpted chapters.

Lastly, be the first on your block to receive my eclectic quasi-monthly newsletter Perfidy Press Pronouncements. Please sign up here to partake. It’s even easier to unsubscribe if it fails to satisfy. Continue reading “The Daily (or whenever) Eruption”

Book Marketing Tips for Radicals

What a debut author can expect

Let’s say you have had your fill of the New World Order and instead of taking up arms you decide to write a book. The book is your first, a novel about political strife from the perspective of left-wing radicals who decide to take matters into their own hands. Your radicals encompass conflicting left-wing ideologies and disagree on which political system is best. But they wholeheartedly agree that the current one must go and decide to take direct action that will inspire revolution. You rub it in by making your main protagonist a Muslim jihadi. Continue reading “Book Marketing Tips for Radicals”

The Spy Looking over My Shoulder

Learning from John Le Carré

John Le Carré (David Cornwell)
John le Carré at the “Zeit Forum Kultur” in Hamburg on November 10th 2008. CC 3 Attribution: KrimidoedliKr

I owe David Cornwell, a.k.a. John Le Carré, big time. He has led me from the literary wilderness to the promised land of Almost Fit to Print. Without his unbeknownst tutelage, I would never have gotten even this far. This is my humble homage to his humbling genius.

When, nearly three years ago I set out to write a novel about a multi-ethnic leftist international conspiracy from the perps’ point of view, I had urgent motivations but knew nothing about genre. As I spend much more time writing than reading for pleasure, there are a lot of books that might inform mine I’ve managed to miss. Truth be told, my literary tastes gravitate to non-fiction, mostly research material for articles. Over six decades, I doubt I’ve read more than 100 novels that weren’t assigned in some long-ago class. A year could pass before picking up a new one, rarely a thriller. I had but the vaguest idea of how to proceed after conjuring up quirky characters and a wisp of a plot in a land I had never visited. It would have to be a thriller, that much I knew. Having read few but seen a lot of spy movies, I figured I knew enough to do this. Continue reading “The Spy Looking over My Shoulder”

Turkey Day as My Family Knows It

Most people send holiday letters for Christmas. To avoid the rush last year I got an early start and sent mine in November. Have a fabulous Thanksgiving day, everybody. Whether at the table or in any other room, give no quarter to those reactionary know-nothing relatives. Story syndicated from my pages at cowbird.com.

Lights! Camera! Aristotle!

Having written a subversive action novel focused on terrorism that some early readers indicated would make a great movie, I gave the project some thought and soon concluded that my story was a natural for film adaptation. It has a simple, linear plot with subplots to spare and at least half of its settings were real places I hadn’t had to make up, with sharp, luminous details.

Suspecting that there was more to this I needed to know, I straightaway dove into the turbulent and treacherous waters of screenwriting, only to surface gasping over how ginormous and competitive, how overflowing with talent, copy, and productions the screenplay marketplace is. Not to mention the secondary markets for script consultants, synopsizers, agents, contests, how-to books, DVDs, webinars, and software products wanting to help you write screenplays that sell. Emerging from my brief and bewildering dip into these waters, it was closeup clear that to navigate a course to celluloid I needed to consult sage practitioners of the art. Continue reading “Lights! Camera! Aristotle!”

Catch of the Day

Flash fiction from a while ago, refurbished and scanned for malware

As usual, Max was working late. Not so usual for the pair of quality engineers who had invaded his cubicle, waiting to be noticed. “Earth to Max,” one of them finally annouced.

       “Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said,” he murmured, looking up from his tablet. His glasses were fogged from running through thickets of text and chasing after hyperlinks as he panned his face over to his two coworkers. His complexion seemed paler than usual.
       “I was trying to finger an entity that entered our room,” he said by way of an excuse. “Some of us think it’s an NSA droid.”
       His tone was hushed even though they were alone on the floor. Lakshmi asked “How can you tell it’s an agent, and how do you know it’s NSA?”
       Max glanced back to his screen. “It fits a profile, the way it insinuates itself. MrEd ID’ed it as the type that showed up in May trolling for Wikileaks sources.”
       Rob reiterated. “Anyway, I asked you how the tests were coming along. We need to validate the release tonight.”
       “It’ll happen. But this thing that barged into the chat room calling itself SkyRocket spooks me. Has to be disposed of.”
       “You’re sure?” Lakshmi asked, eyes imploring. “Can’t it wait?”
       “For what?” Max snapped back. “For them to bust us before we finish collecting evidence from the agency?”
       “About…?”
       “Can’t go there, Lakshmi. You know that. Just assume it involves the surveillance state peeking up your address.”
       Lakshmi sighed. “Okay, okay. We know you hack for freedom, but must you handle this thing now? We only have twelve hours to wrap testing and upload the release, you know.” Her fingers drummed out Helter Skelter on Max’s desk.
       Max was adamant. “Somebody needs to fire off Skyrocket, and I think I know how.” He punched some keys, stuffed his tablet into his backpack, and struggled up, his chair and his limbs creaking in unison. “Gotta go. Back in a few hours to mop up.”
       “Where are you going?” Rob asked. “Home?”
       “Norway, actually” was Max’s reply. “TTFN.”
       They stared after Max as he padded down the corridor. They had dropped by his cube to dope-slap him back to work. It hadn’t worked.
       Rob growled “I guess we gotta run his test code, if we can figure out how. Let’s hope it doesn’t find too many bugs.”

Max hurried through the parking lot to his car, unholstering his cell phone to dash off a message. When a response beeped he cranked the engine and lurched onto the highway. Fifty minutes later his wheels were two counties away. His mind was elsewhere, but the GPS kept him on course.

At daybreak, Lakshmi and Rob were still in his cubicle sorting through test logs when Max waddled in clutching a coffee cup.
       “How was Norway?” inquired Lakshmi. “Catch any fish?”
       “Big ones,” Max purred through a yawn.
       “Cut bait,” Rob demanded. “Where did you really go?”
       “I needed to visit a friend of mine. He has this really obscure tap into the Net. I couldn’t risk using my connection.”
       Lakshmi tossed her hair. “In Norway, right?”
       “No, but the proxy server we hooked into is, and it spoofed an IP address for us inside the FBI.”
       “Then what?”
       “So I suckered Skyrocket into a private chat room and told him Israel was collecting certain stuff they had no need to know and offered a few tidbits. When they analyze what went down between us, NSA will see Skyrocket debriefing some rogue FBI agent. Just a little red herring to keep them off balance until we’re ready to reveal all.”
       Creaking into his seat, Max continued, “Now let me run the other tests you should have done while you go fix whatever bugs you found.” Max—or at least his body—was back.