Blurbs

For the first time, I have gone after blurbs with a vengence. This is for my book next year - The Concrete Maze. This is a book so good, Russel McLean gave it several thumbs up. It is not a Precint Puerto Rico novel. Instead it is the novel I'd been asked to write for years. It is the hardboiled, noir novel about the place I grew up in - Da Bronx.

Anyway, so far, I've got a dozen blurbs. I think this is enough. I think that the praise is warrented (okay maybe not everything Ken Bruen said, but he's Irish so there's got to be some sort of way to discount some of it).

Interestingly, though the book is a paperback original and I don't know half the people I asked, no one turned me down. And, maybe more importantly, no one wrote to tell me that they couldn't in good conscience give me a blurb AFTER they'd read the book. Because I tried to explain to people that if they didn't like the book, they could still say something which I would creatively edit...

Here's a list of people who have responded so far. I'll be sharing bits of what they had to say as the month progresses.

Russel McLean
Ken Bruen
Wallace Stroby
Reed Farrel Coleman
Megan Abbott
Jennifer Jordan
Sara Gran
James Sallis
Sean Doolittle
Jason Starr
Manuel Ramos
and
Richard Aleas who ironically doesn't have a website unless I just link to Hard Case Crime.

Now guess which of these fine people used the phrase "f***ing Hell" in discussing a scene late in the novel. Only one guess per customer. First to get it right, gets a copy of the ARC for the book when they're ready (which should be about another week). Of course, if you're on this list, then you can't play.