Rick Gavin's Blog

He doesn't actually exist. I (TR Pearson) used Rick Gavin as a pseudonym for a trio of novels set in the Mississippi Delta, but I'm afraid Rick has turned out to be a three-trick pony.

If you enjoyed Rick's books and think you could stand something set a bit to the north and a little less profane, then please do try a few of my titles and check out my blog over on my patch of Goodreads.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

And let's splash out some rotgut for Rick.

As painful as it is for me to admit this, I don't exist. I am not a Sheetrocker from Ruston, Louisiana. I am instead the alter ego of some guy named T.R. Pearson who made me up and writes my novels (so I don't have to).

It was bound to get out sooner or later, and now seems as good a time as any to spill the beans. I have one more novel coming out. It's to be published in November, and then I could well find myself killed off for good.

That's publishing for you. T. R. Pearson has largely given up on the business and is trying to raise a little seed money for a print on demand novel of his own through Kickstarter.

If he meets his goal, maybe I live. Maybe he finds the wherewithal to keep Nick and Desmond blundering through the Mississippi Delta. So if you can, please help save an imaginary roughneck from (for pleading purposes) Ruston, Louisiana.

Pearson's Kickstarter link is below. Pledge what you can. Anything will help. Delta Noir needs you!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1...

I'm grateful for any mention, and this Cleveland Plain Dealer crime-fiction roundup puts me in very fine company. Nice to wake up to on a frigid Sunday morning.

http://www.cleveland.com/books/index....

The second installment in Nick and Desmond's Delta misadventures has just been published and is available all over the stinking place. I had great fun writing it and hope you like it.

Also, I've been encouraged to tweet. I've just started and am editing myself severely at the moment, but that won't last. Follow me @rickgavin1.

I'm not much of an audio book fan -- I'll read it myself, thank you -- but I just downloaded the audio version of Ranchero (read by actor David Carpenter), and it's funny and engaging in ways I never expected. Not the novel so much as Carpenter's performance of it. He's dead on, droll, and hilarious. Carpenter does all the voices, and they sound just like I heard them in my head when I was writing the book. I was expecting to be bored and a little put off, but I spent the last hour cackling at my own stinking novel. I couldn't be more surprised or gratified.

Bravo to David Carpenter! I might have to rethink my audio book aversion.

It's finally here. October 25th and Ranchero is available for sale. Please do buy a copy if you can (buy two -- they're small), and I'd be grateful for a review if you can manage it.

I've been really lucky with the prepublication reviews for Ranchero. A starred review from Publishers Weekly -- "Full of inspired comic hyperbole, Gavin's rollicking debut does for the Mississippi Delta what Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen do for Florida." (that's great company)

A starred review from Booklist -- "This first novel from Gavin is a little miracle."

A starred review from Library Journal -- "Gavin's first novel is a sure winner."


And something I can quite decipher from Kirkus. It's certainly not starred. I'm a literate grown man, and I don't know if this review is good, bad, or indifferent. I'll paste the whole thing in below. See if you can tell. But . . . defalcating?


KIRKUS REVIEW:

A hapless repo man’s quest for a defalcating consumer turns personal in Gavin’s debut, a testosterone-fueled romp.

Nick Reid is just minding his own business, putting the bite on Percy Dwayne Dubois for the 42-inch flat-screen TV he’d missed three payments on, when Percy Dwayne lays him out with a fireplace shovel and helps himself to Nick’s wallet and cell phone and the 1969 calypso coral Ford Ranchero he’s driving. Because the car isn’t even Nick’s—it was the pride and joy of Gil Jarvis, the late husband of the landlady who loaned it to Nick while his own wheels were under the weather—Nick chivalrously vows to retrieve it in mint condition. Enlisting the help of Desmond, a hulking African-American colleague, he slips the traces of K-Lo, his enraged Lebanese boss, and high-tails it after Percy Dwayne, his wife Sissy and their diapered baby PD Jr. His sort-of-plan is to head to Yazoo City, the reputed home of Luther Dubois, who just might be a relation. Percy Dwayne, meantime, has other plans. Calling Nick using his own cell phone, he offers to ransom the Ranchero back to him. All these plans come to naught when a meth cooker named Guy runs off with Sissy, PD Jr. and the car. It’s not clear whether Sissy, like Helen of Troy, is cooperating with her abductor. In fact, nothing much involving psychology or narrative causality is ever all that clear. What’s certain is that no one normal will appear and nothing normal will happen until Nick catches up with the Ranchero—maybe not even then.

Forget comparisons to other books. The closest you’ve ever come to Nick’s experience is sitting in a Florida drive-in theater circa 1958.

Hi guys. Rick Gavin here. My first novel, Ranchero, will be out at the end of October. It was great fun to write, and I look forward to hearing from you about it. Find me here or on my Amazon author's page.

Here we go!