Coming up for air

It's been more than a month since I last posted here because I've been writing the first draft of a new crime novel. Finished it yesterday, so I get to pop up out my gopher hole and take a look around.

When I'm working on the first draft of a story, I try to go fast to take advantage of the creative flow. I set daily goals for myself (usually 10 pages) and hit the mark nearly every day. As I get close to the end of a book, I tend to go faster, writing 15-20 pages a day. Those pages usually need more rewrite later.

Rewrite is the down side to this technique. First draft is fun. It's throwing paint at the canvas. Revision tends to be a long slog, especially the way I do it, going over a manuscript a dozen times or more before I hand it over to my agent. The first draft takes six weeks. The entire process takes six to eight months.

Part of the process is not looking at the manuscript at all, and that's where I am right now. I have to let it "cool" before I start revising and, if there's time, between each revision. Fresh eyes make such a difference.

During these pauses, I catch up the household chores and other work that's been hanging while I was off playing with my imaginary friends. That includes this blog (har) and some of the promotional stuff I'm always putting off. Also, I try to get out of the house a little.

This weekend, I'll be in beautiful Silver City, NM, for the Southwest Festival of the Written Word. First year for this downtown festival, and they've got lots of big-name authors from southern New Mexico, Arizona and Texas giving talks and signing books. Admission is free.

Also this week, I'm attending a big homecoming gathering for past staff members of the Daily Lobo, the student newspaper at the University of New Mexico. I didn't attend UNM, of course, but my wife Kelly was once editor of the Daily Lobo, and I've worked with lots of Lobo alumni. I'm looking forward to seeing some old familiar faces.

The class on American humorists that I'm teaching at UNM's Honors College this semester is lots of fun and the students are terrific. Just approved for next semester is my Become a Better Writer class. I'm on campus only one day a week for these classes, so it leaves lots of time for writing. And rewriting.

Madly scribbling

This week, I finished a final revision of my latest crime novel and immediately started writing the next book.

That's the way my summer has gone, jumping from one project to another while also preparing to teach a college course I've never taught before.

Not only did I finish the new novel (and all its revisions) over the past few months, I also wrote and published a hard-boiled short story called CEMETERY PLOT. It's available exclusively on Kindle (for

now). Only 99 cents. The story's gotten some nice reviews.

The latest novel -- about a hitman who discovers he has a grown son -- is one of three books included in a new deal I was offered by one of the big publishers in New York. All three books will be set in Albuquerque, but I can't say more until all the contracts are signed.

I usually take a little time off between books, but I've been champing at the bit to start on the third one in this Duke City trilogy. I outlined the novel weeks ago, but had to delay the start while I wrapped up work on other projects. Yesterday, I wrote the first few paragraphs, so I guess I'm under way.

My class begins Aug. 21 at the University of New Mexico's Honors College. This semester, I'm teaching "Funny on the Page: American Humorists and Their Times." Should be a lot of fun.

Except for that one-day-a-week class, I'll be pouring myself into the new novel. I can't wait.

My origin story

I won't be seeing the new "Man of Steel" movie, mostly because it's the origin story all over again. Is there anyone in America above the age of six who doesn't know the story of a baby sent from a dying planet to Earth, where he had superhuman powers and became the greatest superhero ever?

Filmmakers seem to think they need to start from scratch each time. How many times have we seen the origin story of Superman? Spider-Man? The Hulk? Perhaps the directors feel the previous movies got it wrong, but more likely they stick with the origin story because it's easier to start at the beginning. Plus, everyone can relate to the story of where a person came from and how it shaped the eventual adult.

My own origin story bears a surprising number of similarities to Superman's story (not counting the whole illegal-alien-from-a-dying-planet angle).

My superpower was reading. I started reading at the age of 3, and was a major pain to my early-grade teachers because I already knew how to read well. Teachers soon learned to feed me library books to keep me quiet while the others were trying to learn.

Like Superman, I grew up in a small town. In Sheridan, Ark., a tidy brick library stood next to the courthouse square. My mother took me there every week and let me check out as many books as I could carry. She even insisted that the elderly librarians let me read books in the "Adult" section (such risque fare as Leslie Charteris and Mickey Spillane). About the time I'd exhausted that library, we moved to a nearby city with a bigger library. I was all set.

At Pine Bluff High School, I worked on the school newspaper. I quickly decided on journalism as a career, just like Clark Kent, and went to work for the Arkansas Gazette right out of high school. The editors and reporters there, and the ones at The Associated Press, where I worked for nearly 10 years, shaped me as a writer and beat a lot of stupidity out of me.

Encouraged by my wife Kelly (a former journalist who bears absolutely no resemblance to Lois Lane), I started trying to write fiction when I was 30. For a decade, I worked at the Albuquerque Journal and wrote fiction in my spare time, while also helping raise our two sons. Those were the superhuman years. When I turned 40, Kelly sprung me from full-time journalism, and I've been writing fiction from home ever since.

I've published more than 25 books over the past 20 years and have a couple more in the pipeline. Most days, I can't wait to get to work on whatever new one I'm writing.

And that feels super, man.

Guns 'n' curses

I've just published a new short story. It's full of violence and bad language. Consider this fair warning.

The story's called CEMETERY PLOT. It opens with a man kneeling, wearing handcuffs, watching another man dig his grave. How he got there, and what happens next, is the crux of this very hard-boiled story.

Available exclusively on Kindle (for now), CEMETERY PLOT is only 99 cents. For more info, click here.

Folks who read my crime novels think of me as an author who does a lot of comedy. And I do. Most of my novels, from LONELY STREET to THE BIG WINK to A BOX OF PANDORAS, are full of the funny stuff. But my short stories tend to be gritty little one-act plays about criminals, centered around an act of violence or three. Not a lot of room for comedy.

Four of these short stories are available individually wherever e-books are sold: PAYOFF, YVONNE'S GONE, FOUND MONEY and SHOWDOWN. Only 99 cents each.

PAYOFF is about a 77-year-old heist man named Eddie who gets hired to commit a murder. YVONNE'S GONE is a rural noir about a drunken hillbilly who is gunning for his wayward wife. FOUND MONEY is a monologue featuring a courier who lost a bag of drug money.  SHOWDOWN centers on two old friends who are rivals at cards and one's startling admission over a game of gin.

I did the cover art on CEMETERY PLOT myself, using Kindle's new beta version of Cover Creator. The other covers (which are much, much better) were done by the lovely and talented Kelly Brewer. I like the one she did for PAYOFF so much, I put it on my business cards. Bang!

Other short stories of mine can be found in the anthologies CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT and WEST COAST CRIME WAVE. Those two stories aren't quite so hard-boiled, but they're both twisty and fun.

Please give my short stories a try. But remember: They're full of guns and cursing. The fainthearted need not apply. ;-)

The ants go marching . . .

The exterminator just left.

With the arrival of warm weather, we've been blessed with an infestation of tiny little ants. They don't seem interested in our water or our food. They just want to run around on the kitchen countertops and drive me crazy.

Like most people in Albuquerque, I'd wager, we have a regular pest control service. This is the desert. There are bugs. We don't want them in the house. Period.

Most of the time, the every-other-month service is plenty. But these ants showed up, and I've had exterminators here twice in a week, pitching God-only-knows what kind of poison at the little pests. I think they've got 'em this time. Only time will tell.

The ants are most active when we're asleep, so I stumble onto a parade of them every morning when I make coffee. I crush the little buggers and mop up their corpses with a damp paper towel. Usually, I try to be quiet about it, but the other day there was an alarming swarm, so I snatched up a fly swatter and started wailing away at the tile countertop.

From the next room, Kelly says, "What are you doing?"

"Killing ants."

"With what," she says, "a FORK?"

I told this story to the pest control manager when I called about the ants. He got a big kick out of it. Not many of his customers, I'm thinking, go for the laugh. He sent someone right away.

And now we wait.