Anthony Neil Smith's Blog

Since my birthday is Monday (which is also back-to-school day), we're celebrating all weekend here.

But the best way you can wish me a happy birthday is to buy, read, and write an honest review of CASTLE DANGER: WOMAN ON ICE on Amazon and Goodreads. The book really means a lot to me, folks--new publisher, new series, new start--and I want to see it do well and find new readers. But I can't do it alone.

You've always told me kind things about my books, and all I can ask is that you tell all those readers who don't know anything about me what you like about my stuff.

In the meantime, I'll take a bit of a break, after just finishing yet another novel, a standalone, that I hope you'll all see next year.

https://www.amazon.com/Castle-Danger-...

A couple of interviews out there for my new novel:

With Fiona McVie: https://authorsinterviews.wordpress.c...

With BE-Ebooks:

http://be-ebooks.com/blog/interview-a...

And more to come, you can bet!

Get your clicker-fingers ready to buy CASTLE DANGER: WOMAN ON ICE, the first of a new series (and you can help to make it a *longer* series) of crime thrillers. Ebook original from BE E-books (Bastei Entertainment).

https://www.amazon.com/Castle-Danger-...

And who knows? If you stick around, maybe there'll be a chance to win a copy, too!

But, yeah, I like the part where you buy it more.

Yes, yes, let's start with a GIVEAWAY! Enter to win an early copy of THE OBAMA INHERITANCE! I've got a new short story in that one. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

And then there's the double shot: 8/8 and 10/10, CASTLE DANGER books 1 and 2 (WOMAN ON ICE and THE MENTAL STATES). Check em out: https://www.luebbe.de/bastei-entertai...

Coming to an Amazon near you:

https://www.amazon.com/Castle-Danger-...

Both of these come from hot sauce boutique The Heatonist in New York, and both are made by Homeboy's Hot Sauces, somewhere in the US Southwest. I've been really looking forward to both.

#1: Homeboy's Habanero

Not what I expected! It's kind of like Cry Baby Craig's, a sort of tart, "pickled" taste, but it's very very tasty. And it's a gorgeous deep mustard color. Not much heat, though. Still, the taste alone is worth it. Nice one.

#2: Hot Ones

Made especially for the hit web show "Hot Ones" (look it up--celebs sit down for interviews while eating increasingly hot wings. Must see), this one is a huge surprise. Chipotle peppers and pineapple make for one of the best tasting hot sauces I've ever had. The heat is a good right-down-the-middle buzz that doesn't overwhelm or underwhelm. It's solid and lasts a little bit. Can't wait to toss this on some chicken tacos next week.

#1: Cry Baby Craig's

I've wanted this for quite a while now. It's made in the Twin Cities, y'all, so I give it up for the locals. It's also made from pickled habaneros and garlic. Yes! A very bright fresh taste, actually. And it has classic hab "punch you in the face" heat, but it fades fast. That's no problem. Just put a lot of it on stuff and take bite after bite. It'll snap you back each time.

#2: CaJohn's Reaper Sling Blade

My first reaper sauce! As expected, this is not the sort of sauce with upfront heat. It slowly builds. It GRINDS up on you. By the time you've had a few bites, oh, it's ON. And it sticks around a long time, too. The real burn fades, but there is a nice residual heat that stay all over your mouth and down your throat. It's a nice one. It's also a very smoky, roasted taste, and it's a bit thick.

I'm going to give these both a verified "Hot Damn!" The important thing: they taste good, both of them. Excellent.

Yep, I'm back on Goodreads, and I'm going to keep you up to date on things over here.

Summer 2017. Working on a new novel called THE CYCLIST, which I hope you'll get hold of in 2018. Plus, my two CASTLE DANGER books are on the way, the first in August. Keep an eye out for a special giveaway.

Also, I will probably review hot sauces and act crabby a lot.

Cheers,
Neil

400 years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation flung their wooden shoes, called sabots, into the machines to stop them. Hence, the word "sabotage."

--Lt. Valeris, Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country.

 

I think of that line a lot, especially when I get upset about how my writing "career" (i.e., "expensive hobby") is going which makes me look inward and burn some old bridges. That's why I have rejoined and quit Twitter three times. Ultimately, I found that I hated it. That's why I recently "unfriended" 1300-plus people on Facebook, because it seemed to me that the majority were, like me, writers who wanted attention and thus didn't pay any more attention to what I was doing that I did to what they were doing. So yeah, I often "self-sabotage" because the writing I do shouldn't rely on my constant self-marketing to keep it alive and keep the readership growing. I'm tired, after years of trying to find ways to reach readers on my own, of being a marketeer. 
I love the editors at Blasted Heath, who are dear friends and with whom I'll be visiting in a matter of weeks, face-to-face, to hopefully talk about anything other than books. I really like the guy at Down & Out Books, who has taken on the monumental task of publishing my backlist in paperback again, as that side of my bookshelf had withered. But I accept the fact that they both have limitations on the amount of marketing they can do for me. I get it.
The real horror stories are from the people I know on the NYC presses who can't get their publishers to go to bat for them at all. Why buy the fucking book if you then won't market it? 
Anyway, let's face it: fiction writing in this new decade has become the 1% versus the 99%. The publishers shell out big promo bucks for those who are already guaranteed to make money. They toss the others pocket change. 
Those without larger publishers--the really small indie presses or the ones going it alone--sound like beggars at this point. I'm guilty of it as well.
I'm not going to do that anymore.
I want to write the books that I want to write. I hope there will be someone there to publish and promote them. If not, I might publish them to Kindle on my own, but I won't go nuts promoting them. The book is the reason I write. The part about them not selling annoys the hell out of me, and people tell me I should let it go. It's very hard to do so. I don't mind being a small press writer with a "limited" audience, but I do mind when even that audience doesn't bother to show up for a book they had been demanding from me (The 4th Lafitte).
Exhausted. 
And that's sad because every other aspect of my life is really good! My wife, my pets, my house, my summer garden, my job as a professor and Chair, all of that is great!
I'm currently working on a new book, as I've told you (Castle Danger), for the German publisher Bastei Lubbe and a new reading app called Oolipo, and I'm eager to see how it'll be received, and how it will be promoted. But above all, the writing itself has to be the driving force. I can't allow my expectations to get too high, because man, it hurts when they're dashed. 
So I whine on the blog. I whine on Facebook. I whine to anyone who will listen. And I know that's not very attractive, but I can't seem to help myself. I feel that after ten years of being a published novelist, I'm barely past the starting line after running ten marathons. 
I say all that to say this: I'm putting this blog to sleep. At most, it gets maybe two hundred views when I post a big article, but otherwise maybe twenty views a day. I want to archive it and start over. Maybe I'll start a new blog later, or maybe not. Maybe I'll figure out a new-fangled way to keep in touch, maybe not. I know I'll keep writing crime novels, and I'll keep talking to my friends on Facebook, but I don't want to get up on the blog stage here and do that anymore. I've had this blog for about 10 years, and I've changed the name a few times, but as I like to do every now and then, it's time to shutter it and start over. Go a different direction. Free myself of the old jacket and get a new one.
So, thanks for reading. I hope you'll be there for the novels in the future, and I hope you understand why the blog needs to go bye-bye in order for me to feel better. I'll keep this up a few more days, but then, time to turn out the lights on the old virtual dive bar.  

PS - That wasn't an April Fool's Day joke. Lafitte is dead. 

Billy kept on driving that stolen car north. In the passenger seat, Rome had stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating, a long time ago.

Billy fiddled with the radio--SCAN, SCAN, SCAN--but in all the hours since he'd taken Rome from the hospital, he had barely heard a damn thing about the kidnapping nor the decimated trail of debris he left in his path to get this far. Almost as if none of it had mattered.

Billy said to his dead passenger, "Then why the fuck do I even bother if no one pays any attention?"

He fiddled with the radio some more, drifted into the oncoming lane, and collided head on with a wide load semi hauling pieces of a wind turbine.

He died. Rome was already dead. The trucker died. Lafitte's ex-wife, already in a coma, died. Jenny's mom died six years later from cancer. Colleen was attacked in prison and died. 

When they found Lafitte's body, it had a lot of scars. 

THE END

To wash away the taste of yesterday's sewage spill of bitterness that I should've deleted but won't...

...here's a song I dedicate to my wonderful, long-suffering wife Brandy, who supports me through the big harvests and the dry spells. 

And I also dedicate this to my "real" readers, the few hundred that really get what I do. Because I'm sure if you get it the same as I get it, then we have a lot in common and we should be friends. 

P.S. - I mean "facebook" friends, not like, borrow money or go get coffee friends. Back off, people!