Blurb for THE RAPIST and some new writer's quotes

Hi folks,

I just got my advance paperback copies of my forthcoming novella, THE RAPIST, and I’m like the guy from the Robertson’s…. HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY! It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Thanks for Jon Bassoff, the publisher of New Pulp Press, who also designed the best cover I’ve ever had on any of my books.

I’m hoping to create a bit of buzz here, so I’m going to start including some of the blurbs I’ve received as the days dwindle down to release date on March 20. To date, I’ve received over 30 blurbs and every single one of them is raving about it. I really think this is going to be my breakout novel.

The first one I’m throwing at you is one of my favorites, from Scottish writer Helen FitzGerald. Because of the title and content, it was suggested I ask some women writers for their take on it and here’s what Helen had to say:

So, I’m reading Les Edgerton’s The Rapist. The title has already made me uneasy.

Five pages in and I can hardly breathe.

Ten and I’m nauseous.

For the next 50, I’m a mixture of all of the above, but most of all, angry.

I feel like ringing my feminist friends and confessing: Sisters, I’m reading something you will kill me for reading.

I feel like ringing my ex colleagues - parole officers and psychologists who work with sex offenders in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow - and asking them if they think it’s helpful to publish an honest and explicit transcript which shows the cognitive distortions of a callous, grandiose, articulate sex offender; one which illustrates his inability to have a relationship with a woman and his complete lack of empathy?

I’m thinking I don’t know what I should be thinking.

Will it turn sex offenders on?

Should we listen to this guy?

Is it possible to separate the person from the offence, and to empathise with him as he waits to die?

I don’t ring anyone.

I read on.

And the breathlessness, nausea, anger and confusion increase all the way to the end, at which point all I know is that the book is genius.

Helen FitzGerald, author, Dead Lovely, Bloody Women, The Devil’s Staircase, The Donor and others.

Thank you so much, Helen! Coming from a writer of much renown such as you, this means an awful lot.

Bonus: For reading through my self-promo (thank you!), I’m including some more writer’s quotes, since folks seemed to enjoy the last batch.

ADVICE TO OTHER WRITERS

“You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.” William Saroyan

“To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.” Anton Chekhov

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.” Gerald Brenan

“There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets… when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.” Charles Bukowski

“Listen carefully to first criticisms of your work. Note just what it is about your work the critics don’t like—then cultivate it. That’s the part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.” Jean Cocteau

“If you want to be true to life, start lying about it.” John Fowles

“The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.” Irwin Shaw

“One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.” Christopher Isherwood

“Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one’s sputum.” Vladimir Nabokov

“A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. That is too much of a temptation to the editor.” Ring Lardner

“Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.” W. Somerset Maugham

“Everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else.” Georges Simenon

“Once you start illustrating virtue as such you had better stop writing fiction. Do something else, like Y-work. Or join a committee. Your business as a writer is not to illustrate virtue, but to show how a fellow may move toward it—or away from it.” Robert Penn Warren

“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you.” James Michener

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than write for the public and have no self.” Cyril Connolly

“If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.” Don Marquis

“You can’t want to be a writer; you have to be one.” Paul Theroux

“Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.” E.B. White

“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.” W. Somerset Maugham

…and finally…

“If I had to give young writers advice, I’d say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” Lillian Hellman

Hope you folks enjoyed these! More next time!

Blue skies,

Les

MY NEXT BIG THING--THE RAPIST

Hi folks,

I met C.L. Phillips, mystery author of FIRST MISTAKE at Bouchercon and she graciously invited me to participate in a blog promotion where authors discuss their Next Big Thing. You can find her post here. And, thanks, Cindy!

But before we get to my next big thing, I’d like to throw a big shout out to Carl Brush, Maegan Beaumont, Jed Ayres and Richard Godwin, all of whom I hope will be participating in the blog chain with their own stuff next week. Meet these extremely talented writers! 

Carl Brush is an old friend and colleague. He’s written several historical thrillers, the latest of which is titled THE SECOND VENDETTA and is a novel I recommend highly. His novels are set in and around San Francisco and Carl is a meticulous scholar so you’ll know the environment of his characters is perfectly accurate. More—his novels are all page-turners!

Maegan Beaumont started out as a student of mine when I was teaching at Phoenix College and is now the program director of my ongoing novel-writing class and a few months ago she signed a two-book deal with Midnight Ink Books with an option for a third. She writes thrillers with a female badass protagonist who Jack Reacher wouldn’t want to mess with! You can preorder her first novel in the series, CARVED IN DARKNESS by clicking this link. Just be sure that all the doors and windows are locked before you begin reading it… Just sayin’…

Jed Ayres is a guy who writes some of the most brilliant noir this side of the ocean. He’s also the founder and co-host, along with bestselling novelist, Scott Phillips, of the prestigious “Noir at The Bar” events in St. Louis and has edited two anthologies containing work from the best noir writers in the U.S. And now, he’s published his own long-awaited collection of stories, titled… ready?... A F*CKLOAD OF SHORTS. Don’t let the title mislead you… it’s more down and dirty and nasty than that… Keep it locked up if you have kids…

Richard Godwin is an absolute genius and his dark thrillers are bestsellers in the UK and should be breaking out in the U.S. soon as well. He runs the well-known interview called “A Chin Wag at the Slaughterhouse” which I was privileged to appear in—best interviewer in the business, on a level with the Paris Review class of interviewers. His latest thriller is titled MR GLAMOUR one of my picks for Best Novel of the Year. It’s got a twist at the end that will blow you away. If you’re in the UK, you can find it by clicking this link.

Tune in to their blogs and you should see their own “Next Big Thing” sometime next week, I hope!

And now, mine….

Meet THE RAPIST, a rollicking romp through the world and somewhat twisted mind of protagonist Truman Ferris Pinter who awaits his execution on death row for the crimes of rape and murder. Some serious moments also…Scheduled for release April, 2013 from New Pulp Press.

Okay. I’ll admit it. I lied in the above description. The thing is, this isn’t a high-concept book that one can describe with a one-sentence, TV Guide logline. In fact, to describe it kind of gives it away so I’m opting to provide pre-pub reviews by some authors I respect highly to give you a bit of an idea what it’s all about. 

One Several Sentence Synopsis Review

Meet Truman Ferris Pinter, condemned prisoner #49028, a snarling, wicked, silver-tongued misanthrope – a black hole of a man who sucks you in with the human gravity of his self-deception, then distorts your beliefs with the super-logic of his epiphanies. Oh, it’s all there – gut-grabbing lust, sex, hate and violence, deeply disturbing comments about our insane world – but The Rapist by Les Edgerton is much more than a new classic of Modern Noir. Against all odds, master wordsmith Edgerton has created the most mesmerizing and disturbing narrator since Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, an intense, strange, well-spoken villain whose story and sexual perceptions will frighten many more men than women. The Rapist is not who -- or what -- you think.

Jack Getze, Fiction Editor, Spinetingler Magazine

The Story

Again, I’m relying on a review.

So, I’m reading Les Edgerton’s The Rapist. The title has already made me uneasy.

Five pages in and I can hardly breathe.

Ten and I’m nauseous.

For the next 50, I’m a mixture of all of the above, but most of all, angry.

I feel like ringing my feminist friends and confessing: Sisters, I’m reading something you will kill me for reading.

I feel like ringing my ex colleagues - parole officers and psychologists who work with sex offenders in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow - and asking them if they think it’s helpful to publish an honest and explicit transcript which shows the cognitive distortions of a callous, grandiose, articulate sex offender; one which illustrates his inability to have a relationship with a woman and his complete lack of empathy?

I’m thinking I don’t know what I should be thinking.

Will it turn sex offenders on?

Should we listen to this guy?

Is it possible to separate the person from the offence, and to empathise with him as he waits to die?

I don’t ring anyone.

I read on.

And the breathlessness, nausea, anger and confusion increase all the way to the end, at which point all I know is that the book is genius.

Helen Fitzgerald, author, Dead Lovely, Bloody Women, The Devil’s Staircase, Donor and others.

What is the hook? What’s this book really about?

‘I live in a small, dark realm which I fill out’. Jean Genet’s words in “Miracle Of the Rose”. And like Genet, Edgerton writes with lyricism and a sense of history of things that disturb, balancing through his superb style themes that may otherwise unsettle the narrative. Edgerton’s brilliant archaeological dig into the motivations of a rapist is an unflinching look at the darker recesses of the human psyche. There is nothing gratuitous here and it takes a command to achieve a narrative pull in such territory. It reminded me of John Burnside’s “The Locust Room” but it’s better written. Edgerton voices the demonic forces at work within his narrator’s head. He embeds the story with the protagonist’s need for redemption set against the backdrop of his life. "The Rapist" is confessional, poetic, unrelenting, and as real as the newspaper lying before you. It challenges the assumption that fictions need to censor the things people read every day in what is deemed factual. It is told in a style that situates it among the classics of transgressive fictions.

Richard Godwin, Apostle Rising, Mr Glamour

…and…

Les Edgerton has written, in The Rapist, something that . . . that . . . well, defies explanation. Don't get me wrong; the writing is extremely powerful. The imagery is wonderful and startlingly clear. The emotions are vivid and visceral. Emotions that grab you physically and rattle your teeth violently the further you dip into his tale. But the question is . . . how do you define it?

Nihilistic existentialism comes to mind as a basis for understanding. The realization that nothing . . . nothing . . . is real or meaningful. But somehow the definition falls flat. There is, ultimately, a purpose for what happens to the character. Better yet; there is a deep, almost Freudian, mystery that grabs you and makes your imagination soar with the possibilities in understanding what is happening.

I wouldn't say that, after you finishing reading The Rapist, you're going to have a feeling of satisfaction. In fact I strongly suggest you're going to feel as if you've just walked out of a House of Mirrors. You certainly will be confused, shocked, and puzzled.

But you will realize that you've just read something amazingly original. Truly, magnificently, original.

B.R. Stateham, author of A Taste of Old Revenge, Tough Guys: The Homicide Cases of Turner Hahn and Frank Morales and others

What inspired the book? Where did you get your idea?

From reading Charles Bukowski’s short story, “The Fiend.” The bravest fiction I’ve ever read, bar none. I wanted to achieve what he accomplished there. In my mind, I have, but that will be determined by the readers. I was also inspired by my own time in prison and from a guy in a cell next to mine who was in for rape and who turned out to have been bumrapped and eventually declared innocent.

What genre is this book?

Literary. Existential. Noir. Philosophical. Who knows?

Where and when can I read the book?

In April of 2013 from New Pulp Press at all the usual online outlets, although the publisher, Jon Bassoff is aiming for an earlier release. You’ll be able to purchase it as an ebook and as a paperback.

Thanks, folks. Hope you glom onto a copy when it comes out. It’s easily the best thing I’ve ever written and it was exhausting to write. I don’t think I’ll ever have again the energy it took to write this book. I think it would literally kill me.

Blue skies,

Les

Two-fer reviews--THE DONOR and AMERICAN COUSINS

Hi folks,

I’m going to write a “two-fer” review today. I’m taking a look at Scottish novelist, Helen FitzGerald’s novel, The Donor, along with her screenwriter husband Sergio Casci’s film, AMERICAN COUSINS.

THE DONOR

What if you were the only parent of two children and it was within your power to save one of their lives, but not both? How is such a decision even possible? How would you live with yourself whichever child you decided should live? How would the child you decided to sacrifice view you before she died? How would the child you saved regard you?

How would you look at yourself, no matter what choice you made?

I’ve just finished reading Helen FitzGerald’s novel, The Donor, which poses this very same problem for Will Marion whose wife Cynthia left him years ago for her criminal boyfriend, leaving their twin daughters, Georgie and Kay for Will to raise.

Twin daughters who both develop kidney disease and need transplants to survive.

I can’t remark on the plot much because it has multiple twists and turns that the reader should discover for him- or herself. Suffice to say that this is a complicated, multi-layered story that surprises at every turn, the tension building until it’s excruciating. Any parent that reads it will be forced to consider their own children and wonder how they’d react—what they’d do in the same circumstance.

It’s a brilliant character study of the three main players—the father and his two daughters--as each work through the psychological minefield individually. FitzGerald has delivered a powerful drama, gorgeously writ with grace, black humor, and compassion, and is the kind of literature one seizes upon when encountering its like and proclaims to all who will listen: Read this book!

I’m drained.

Emotionally spent.

How did it affect me?

The instant I read the last page, I drove down to my local license bureau and changed my driver’s license so that it showed I’m an organ donor. That’s how powerful it was. As perhaps an interesting aside, in a conversation with Ms. FitzGerald, when I told her what I’d done she revealed that she’d done the same thing in the midst of writing the book. I think many readers will do the same thing. I don’t know of many novels that trigger this kind of action.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Donor-ebook/dp/B005685ELQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321728891&sr=1-1 

…and then, I watched Helen’s screenwriter husband Sergio Casci’s film, AMERICAN COUSINS.

Twice.

The first time by myself and then my wife came home from work and I watched it again with her.

Simply put, this is what movies, as an art form, are all about. It had every single element a movie should have—intelligent and genuinely funny humor, crime drama, a riveting and thoroughly sweet romance, justice meted out, incredible obstacles, a fantastic character arc, incredible music and wonderful scenery. It made me want to immigrate to Scotland. This is a movie that resonated with me and keeps on resonating. It has a depth to it rarely seen in most films these days.

I’m not a fan of romantic comedies, but this one was different. In fact, when I was raving about it to my wife, she asked me if I was sure this was a romantic comedy. Are you sure it doesn’t have any helicopters in it or car chases, she asked, suspiciously. When I told her there wasn’t a single helicopter in it, she put her hand on my forehead to see if I was feverish…

I tried to explain to her that while, yes, it was a romantic comedy, it also had “guy” stuff in it. Although no ‘copter crashes there was an explosion… some shooting…

The movie is based on Casci’s own family story, when two cousins immigrate from Tuscany, one to America and the other to Scotland, each vowing to the other that whoever made his fortune first would then send for the other to join him.

Many years later, although each family has become firmly entrenched in his respective adopted country, they’ve remained in touch. When two of the American family, Gino and Settimo, now Mafiosi, find themselves on the run as a result of a criminal deal gone wrong with Ukrainian bad guys, they decide to take advantage of their family ties by flying to Scotland and laying low in their Scottish cousin Roberto’s home. They’ve assumed he’s cut from the same cloth as the American branch—a tough gangster—but they quickly find out he’s a gentle and peaceful man who, along with his grandfather, owns a fish and chips restaurant in Glasgow. From this fish out of water beginning, emerges a story that’s really got everything—the aforementioned elements—all delivered with elegant understatement. Nothing is over the top as is so often in films like this. The violence has a realistic edge, the romance is bittersweet and not syrupy, and just about everyone in the movie is believable. Many times these days, I’ll see the promo and then go to the movie and that’s the best part of the movie. With this film, they could have picked any part of the movie for a promo as the “best part” and would have been spot on. No weaknesses—it delivers throughout.

This is what more movies should be.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Cousins-Danny-Nucci/dp/B000KF0NFM/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1321729031&sr=1-1 

Since I’ve read Helen’s novel and seen Sergio’s movie, we’ve become long-distance friends and one time I asked them how they worked. Turns out, they work in the same room and often one turns to the other when he or she encounters a problem and consults with the other. That must be why I feel the same “heart” in each of their works. An amazing couple!

Presently, Sergio is working on developing the screenplay from Helen’s novel, The Donor. I can’t wait until it comes out!

Another “inside” bit of info I learned. Both artists are in the movie AMERICAN COUSINS. They are the windsurfing couple getting ready to launch their—whaddya call it? windsurfer boat?—in the scene at Loch Lomand. Before I’d seen the movie, I’d researched Sergio on the Internet and saw a handsome dude in the photos with his interviews. Just looked like your average successful movie dude—coifed and dressed ala Hollywood “success” style. Then, I saw the scene where he and Helen appeared… and nearly choked. He didn’t look like the photos I’d seen at all. In the movie scene, he was a bit… how should I say this?... a bit portly. When I mentioned my surprise, he laughed and said as soon as he saw the film, he began a diet immediately…

I’m a huge, huge fan of both Helen FitzGerald and Sergio Casci. Check out their work. You’ll be glad you did.

Blue skies,

Les

Guilty Conscience: Interview with Helen Fitzgerald

Guilty Conscience: Interview with Helen Fitzgerald: "Helen Fitzgerald is the author of five adult thrillers as well as young adult fiction also. Her current release 'The Donor' is gaining exc..."

This interview sold me on Helen Fitzgerald's writing when she talked about her use (non-use?) of description in answering this interview question:

Another stand out for me, was the writing style, no wasted words whatsoever. How much editing takes place after completing the first draft?

There was hardly any editing in The Donor – I think it took me two days. Most of the time, my editors say my writing is too sparse and too frantic, and ask me to slow things down and add description.  I’m not good at description. Fog’s fog.

Exactly!

Fog's fog.


My own take on most good description.


Blue skies,
Les