Hank Early's Blog

Hey, all! Just wanted to get the word out that I have a new book coming out on December 20 this year. It's under my real name, John Mantooth, and it's called Holy Ghost Road. I'm super proud of it, and it's already garnered some big praise from some of my favorite writers. I hope you'll add it to your list and snag a copy when it comes out. If you want to preorder, you can do that here:

https://www.cemeterydance.com/holygho...

"Holy Ghost Road is a southern fried coming-of-age road novel mashed with an epic good vs. evil yarn. Thrilling from page one, as well as inventive and compassionate, the book made me want to go climb the nearest tree and sit in the branches with Forest." - Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club.

"Mantooth has a gift for imbuing every turn of phrase with the weight of a deep-down truth you can't imagine you didn't know before. When he turns his pen to horror, the result is nothing short of enthralling. HOLY GHOST ROAD is a prime example of atmospheric, spiritual and human immersion. Walking the long road with Forest, the reader sees through her eyes, and feels every flash of fear, dread and hope as though it were their own. Not to be missed." - Laurel Hightower, author of Crossroads and Below

"Whether he's writing horror or crime, John Mantooth always renders the South and its people with understanding of and compassion for its nuances, contradictions, particular nightmares and singular beauty. You'll find all of those things in Holy Ghost Road, wrapped around a tense, riveting horror story of demons, religion, and family, worthy of Robert McCammon and Michael McDowell at their best. This one is special." - Nathan Ballingrud, author of The Strange and North American Lake Monsters

"Holy Ghost Road is one part road novel, one part Southern Gothic, but at its core it's a modern fairy tale. Forest is on the way to her grandma's house, pursued by a wolf of a man and his pack of demonic minions. You will root for Forest as she faces various obstacles on her journey, you will cry with her, and you will fear for her as she is propelled toward the startling, terrifying climax. There's a bit of Lansdale here, a bit of McCammon, but ultimately this is a story only John Mantooth could write. Picking up this book will be easy. Putting it down again will be hard. And forgetting what you've read afterward will be damn-near impossible." - Ian Rogers, author of Every House is Haunted

This summer and fall, I've been busy promoting the first two books in the series and working on the third. I thought I'd check in with some photos and notes. Hope you enjoy!

First up, some photos from the book launch event in July for In the Valley of the Devil (Earl Marcus 2):

A little later in the summer, I did some book clubs that were a blast!

I even met a really BIG fan at one of them (and a little one too):

I did my third Noir at the Bar with some other great writers. I'm the one who doesn't seem to realize that we're taking a picture:

I made the local news (with the great Emily Carpenter):

I won an award (a gold medal, no less!): 

Oh, and I made the local paper!

So what's next? I'm finishing up Book Three (untitled at the moment) and about to release a horror novel under a different name. The horror novel is called The Year of the Storm, and it's got a kick ass cover. Look for it in the next few weeks. 

Today is the day! Earl Marcus returns. This time, he's working against the clock to find his girlfriend, Mary, who went missing in a strange cornfield in The Devil's Valley. In order to discover what happened to her, he'll have to team up with an unlikely ally, infiltrate the ranks of a secretive cabal of wealthy, white supremacists, and face a faceless enemy who stalks the cornfield, known only as Old Nathaniel. 

If you liked Heaven's Crooked Finger, I feel like you'll love this one. 

And don't worry, book three is on its way. Tentative release date is November 2019. 

 

 

Here’s the deal…

First five people to offer me proof of purchase of In the Valley of the Devil Hardcover will receive a free, signed paperback of Heaven’s Crooked Finger. Make sure I see the receipt of your preorder. You can post it below or send it to me via private message. First five only! Even if you don’t win, I hope you’ll consider preordering.

In the Valley of the Devil

Heaven's Crooked Finger



Preorder link: https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Devil-E...

Heaven's Crooked Finger has been out for approximately three weeks now, and I've been extremely busy with events (and working on the third book). 

I enjoyed a great book launch at Little Professor in Birmingham with fellow Crooked Lane author, Carrie Smith. She's a fabulous writer and super friendly! Check out her work here! After Birmingham, I flew to NYC to share another event with Carrie. This time, we read and signed books at the legendary Mysterious Bookshop. Heady stuff for a Southern boy! Here's a photo of my editors, my agent, and me:
























I'm the tall one with the crooked jaw. 

After NYC, it was back to the south and over to Oxford, MS, where I read with some amazing writers such as Tom Franklin, Mary Miller, William Boyle, Ace Atkins, and Chris Irvin. 

Next up was Noir at the Bar in Birmingham. It was a blast, and I got to see a ton of old friends. Chris Irvin and I even got to go on TV to promote the event. See:
























Finally, I went back to my hometown of Montgomery for a signing and saw some more old friends:
























Yeah, it's been a busy three weeks!

I'll close by sharing a new review from Bookpage. Here are their closing thoughts:"Heaven's Crooked Finger is chock full of meaty characters, any one of whom could figure as the subject of a separate book: the wily Rufus, whose lack of sight is never a hindrance to his wit and kindness; a villainous sheriff; runaways Millie and Todd; and a collection of lovely young women, victims of the church’s despotism.Altogether this is a humdinger of a story told with a fresh voice and more than a lick of understanding."

And of course, the obligatory links....

Heaven's Crooked Finger
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
BAM!
 

If you order the hardback of Heaven's Crooked Finger now, you should receive your copy this week, well in advance of the scheduled November 7 release date. As an added bonus, Amazon currently has the hardback priced at 18.55!

Here's the linK: https://www.amazon.com/Heavens-Crooke...

If you enjoy it, please leave a review at Goodreads and/or Amazon. Thanks!

November 7

I'll be celebrating the launch of Heaven's Crooked Finger at The Little Professor Bookcenter in Homewood, AL. Fellow Crooked Lane author, Carrie Smith will be joining me.

November 9

I'll be joining Carrie again, this time in NYC at the Mysterious Bookshop. 

November 16

I'll be in Oxford, Mississippi, participating in Noir at the Bar, hosted by William Boyle. 

November 17

I'll be back home in Birmingham at Rogue Tavern for the B'ham version of Noir at the Bar. Other authors include Eryk Pruitt, Chris Irvin, Grant Jerkins, Nathan Ballingrud, Mary Rees, Sam W. Anderson, and Kurt Dinan. Check out this sweet flyer my buddy, Jason Bickell made: 

 

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Jason Ridler's wild and fast-paced occult noir, Hex-Rated. Then we did an interview. I think his answers offer a really good glimpse of what the book is all about. It's a wild, smart ride through 1970 Los Angeles with magic, sex, and a noir sensibility that will appeal to a lot of readers. 

 

The thing that impressed me the most about Hex-Rated was the way you seemed to evoke 1970 Los Angeles. Is it weird to say I felt like I was there? Because I totally did. Was this something you really had to craft intentionally, or was it just organic to the story (either way, I’m totally impressed)?

Oh, I had to do my homework. I only lived in LA for a brief period (Long Beach) so have ZERO claim to being an expert. But I also knew I couldn't treat the books as historical fiction like Patrick O'Brien and have very ounce of the historical verity on every page. So I recreated the LA of 1970 with real history (Watts Riots, Hollywood, racial tension and daydreams of celebrities), as much real geography as I could muster, and infused it with the LA of pop culture, from rock and roll to pornography to literature. So it's the LA of John Fante's fiction and Ed Wood's movies and the LA of the Zoot Suit Riots and The Strip. I read once that Kazuo Ishiguro basically soaked in as much as he could learn about British butlers and class in the 1930s England and then in a storm of fury and talent and executed Remains of the Day. I did that with 1970s adult film (The Other Hollywood was essential reading to know what kinds of cars porn people loved), LA film history, carnival history, Fante's Ask the Dust, Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, the birth of heavy metal and proto punk. I devoured this stuff and tried to infuse it into a story about the death of the sixties, the birth of the seventies, and all through the story of a carney PI who abandoned the world of real magic to help the casualties of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll when creepy dark magic begins to return. 

The book hit a sweet spot for me in that it was all told through a certain noir sensibility while still feeling fresh and wild because of the fantasy elements. Talk about how you balanced the two.

It was fun as hell. There's a stoicism and coldness to much noir that I love, or a nihilism about value and purpose that is explored as the protag faces bizarre and tense circumstances. But it can get a little atonal. My master is Jim Thompson, who had a wild imagination and sense of humor and gothic sensibilities as well as the dark needle he was jabbing into the human condition. The Alcoholics is a hilarious and terrifying book. I did not want Brimstone to be another Grim Whisky Drinking Detective with a Rough Past. I have nothing to say in that world, at least not yet. So, Brimstone has a very large sense of humor about the human condition. His catch phrase? "Smile, it could always be worse!" 

The humor helps cut the darkness, as does the fantastical elements (thanks for noticing). I wanted the fantasy stuff to be more akin to comic book fantasy than is more typical of the the genre I'm playing with: big, wild, powerful, emotional and gripping. I wanted it in technicolor and what the gang at Marvel Comics call Kirby Perspective: the fantasy, when it shows up, punches you in the face like a NUKE!. And yet at the same time, I keep the biggest fantasy stuff off stage. Brimstone knows there are deep worlds of magic. His mentor, Edgar, was deeply invested in it. But his goal is to help the underclass struggling with its tendrils. He is the anti-Elric in that regard. It helps that I find stories about powerful people fucking boring and a form of class-worship of some kind! Give me the dimestore hood who IS NOT the chosen one and I will follow him into the mouth of hell. 

You may hate this question, but how would you pitch Hex-Rated to a reader who says they like fantasy but not mystery?

First, all fiction is mystery. Sorry. You want to know what happens next, right? That's a mystery! It's the Uber Genre. And unlike most mysteries the fun is in the encounters as Brimstone finds himself in worlds of dark magic, with berserkers and demons, and undead hitmen whose consciousness live in brain jars but who remotely operated corpses to wreck vengeance! So, that's more monsters per page than a lot of stories about elves and busted swords! Plus, as I said, my magic is more fun than most systems-based fantasy magic and more akin to Lovecraftiean and weird fiction uses of the sublime as well as other cultural folklore and supernatural elements (FUN FACT: I have an admiration for Filipino folklore) 

What’s the best review you’ve received so far? What about the worst?

Jason Heller at NPR gave me a stunning review, and he saw what few others have caught. Yes, it is a pulp fantasy novel written for fun and enjoyment. I'm a commercial writer and I want you to love the story. But believe it or not there is also a deeper meaning beneath the magic, sex, and monsters. The masters who emerged from pulp fiction, folks like Patricia Highsmith, Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, Philip K. Dick and Jim Thompson, could captivate you with dark and weird tales of astonishing stuff . . . but there was ALWAYS a deeper theme. I work with a similar guerrilla warfare attitude and if you scratch a little deeper you'll find me discussion reality and illusions and the nature of identity. In a place like Hollyweird, should we be surprised if monsters appear on porn sets? If these monsters are gods, as Donald Westlake and Harlan Ellison argue in stories like "Nackles" and The Deathbird Stories, is it our worshipping of them that makes them real? Heller caught what I was playing with and loved it, and for that I'm so grateful. 

The worst? It's a three-way dance between a minutia troll who didn't like that Brimstone (who is always poor) had plastic bags (too expensive in that era!), a fellow who hated that Brimstone was progressive for his era (as if being anti-racist was the REAL fantasy element for 1970s LA), and a lady who couldn't stand my love of rude language!

Your bio says you’re not only a writer, but also a historian and actor. How have those two roles informed your writing?

Well, I'm an improv actor (very different breed than scripted). So I enjoy creating things on the fly. I plotted out HEX-RATED but allowed myself to invent as I went, too, otherwise it would be a mechanical book with few surprises. I love tangents and divergence and my skills as an improv actor have sharpened my ability to follow strange stories to neat conclusions.

And yes, by day I'm a historian who works for Johns Hopkins University. I've got pretty solid research chops, so I can do detailed academic and popular research on stuff going on in LA in the era, which has been helpful. For years, i wouldn't TOUCH historical fiction because, if I may be frank, writing history is harder than fiction. It has a demand in terms of research, support, and execution that by necessity make it slower and less inventive because you are re-creating the past. Without that rigor, you're distorting the past. And that's evil. 

So fiction was always where I let my imagination run wild. But these days I'm taking skills from one to the other. I'm using narrative techniques from fiction to help write history (always with ample evidence!). And in my fiction I'm using my research skills to infuse stories with some historical essence while still allowing me the freedom to wander where my imagination goes. I read a lot on the Hells Angels to make sure they came off right in the book, and Hunter Thompson's book was instrumental (example: they were usually filthy and covered in cuts and wounds more than ink and badges). Research helps you find visceral details that help make moments come alive. I try to follow that logic when creating scenes, be it clothes, songs, booze. I won't get it perfect (as Dr. Minutia let me know about plastic bag!), but remember: I'm not recreating LA. I'm creating one that's full of demons and sex cults with magic that works! In this fake universe, the poor have access to Big Macs and Paper Bags!

Find Jason online at https://ridlerville.wordpress.com 

Order Hex-Rated

 

Heaven's Crooked Finger received its first review today, and it was a good one. Kirkus gave it a starred review, saying in part, "You won’t put down this powerful and painful tale, the first in a planned series, until you’ve seen its unlikely hero explore all the avenues of love, hate, deception, and faith and unravel a gripping mystery." 

Read the full review here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

Here are all of the blurbs Heaven's Crooked Finger has received so far. Not bad for three months before the book comes out!

"Hank Early's Heaven's Crooked Finger is a twisty, page-turning, modern Southern Gothic that packs an emotional wallop. His everyday and down-and-out characters are authentically rendered. Fans of Daniel Woodrell and Donald Ray Pollock take notice, Heaven's Crooked Finger is the real deal. "

-Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock

"Heaven's Crooked Finger is a first-class mystery - gripping, atmospheric, and tense from beginning to end. Hank Early's storytelling is truly outstanding."

-Andrew Grant, author of False Friend

"Hank Early's Heaven's Crooked Finger grabs you from the first page and doesn't let go. Evocative place writing, memorable-as-hell characters, sentences that hum, great pacing, and a strutting brutality. Early's a writer of great power. This is one that will stick with me, and I'm already looking forward to whatever's next."

--William Boyle, author of Gravesend

"Hank Early marches out of Harper Lee’s Alabama with a Southern Gothic detective story that will long leave readers catching their breath. This one leaves a mark. Early writes like kudzu: The seed drops in the first chapters. The reader should run, lest they soon find themselves entangled, unable to wrest themselves free." 

Eryk Pruitt, author of Dirtbags, Hashtag, and What We Reckon

"Can the dead come back to life? That's the question PI Earl Marcus has to answer when he returns to the creepy town in rural Georgia he left thirty years before to find out if his recently deceased father - the maniacal leader of a religious cult - has fulfilled his promise to return after he dies. Heaven's Crooked Finger has action, suspense and a cracking good mystery. By the way, if you are afraid of snakes, don't read this book." 

--Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of Violent Crimes and The Third Victim

"With Heaven’s Crooked Finger, Hank Early has not only written one of the very best novels I’ve read this year, but also introduced me to my favorite new mystery detective, Earl Marcus. This book is an expert mixture of action, suspense, and compelling characterization that easily establishes Early as a literary force of nature. Heaven’s Crooked Finger is going to be on a lot of Best of 2017 lists."

—Bracken MacLeod, Bram Stoker Award nominated author of STRANDED and COME TO DUST

From the opening pages of this book, you know you’re in the hands of a rare talent. Hank Early has penned a fast-paced, thought provoking, and thoroughly satisfying southern mystery. Heaven’s Crooked Finger is a truly astonishing debut, and one of the best rural mysteries I’ve ever read.

-John Rector Wall Street Journal Bestselling author of The Ridge, Already Gone, and The Cold Kiss