Thanks to all who attended last night's reading in Dublin! For those who weren't there, here is a recording of the event: https://www.periscope.tv/w/1ypKdPmjArRKW If you want to read the excerpt that Craig read last night, the first chapter of Head Games, click here: viewBook.at/HeadGames_McDonald And here is Craig McDonald's speech and a few pictures of … Continue reading Craig McDonald’s reading in Dublin as if you were there
Literary suicides: excerpt from PRINT THE LEGEND by Craig McDonald
"Hector sat in a booth alone in the back of the Italian restaurant. The freezing rain was lashing the windows and the trees lining the streets of Georgetown looked like glass sculptures. He took another sip of red wine and pulled the letter from his pocket. He read it five times: Poor dearest Pickle: There … Continue reading Literary suicides: excerpt from PRINT THE LEGEND by Craig McDonald
Donald Finnaeus Mayo about writing FRANCESCA
FRANCESCA: Genesis of an idea It's easy to forget just how different the world was back in the mid-1970s. No mobile phones, no internet, no Starbucks on every street corner. Easier, too, for dictators to keep a lid on their shenanigans. You could take out a town, empty a region of its population without any … Continue reading Donald Finnaeus Mayo about writing FRANCESCA
Interview with Richard Kalich in AM FM Magazine
"High Art can of course be found in all the disciplines, music, painting, all creative writing, film, etc. For me…all that I define as High Art has but one categorical imperative. It makes as its inherent demand and calling that we, as humans, stand before it and surrender ourselves wholly and completely to it. It … Continue reading Interview with Richard Kalich in AM FM Magazine
An Interview with Craig McDonald: The Hector Lassiter Series
An exceptional, in-depth, interview with Craig McDonald by Steven Powell, a researcher at the University of Liverpool, UK.
Steven Powell is the editor of Conversations with James Ellroy (2012) and 100 American Crime Writers(2012). He has written several articles for the British Politics Review, blogs about crime fiction at VenetianVase.co.uk, and co-organized the “James Ellroy: Visions of Noir” conference at the University of Liverpool. His most recent work is James Ellroy: Demon Dog of Crime Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).
“If you are not already initiated, I hope this interview will persuade you to start reading the Lassiter novels. They are compelling, thrilling and darkly humorous.
Lassiter is a brilliant creation…”
Craig McDonald is an author and journalist. He has written fourteen novels, including, to date, nine books in the award-winning Hector Lassiter series. I have kept up a correspondence with Craig these past few years as we are both avid readers of James Ellroy. I’m also a massive fan of the Lassiter novels, and when Craig agreed to be interviewed by me, he also kindly supplied an advance copy of the final novel in the Lassiter series, the forthcoming Three Chords and the Truth. If you are not already initiated, I hope this interview will persuade you to start reading the Lassiter novels. They are compelling, thrilling and darkly humorous. Lassiter is a brilliant creation– a crime writer who learned his trade with Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation in Paris in the 1920s. He is also a man who seems dangerously prone to violent intrigue, doomed love affairs…
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Fionnuala Brennan: Writing about Goya
I have long been fascinated by the charismatic artist Francisco de Goya. The seeds of my fascination with this Spanish painter were sown during my studies in History of Art in Trinity College, Dublin. The firework that sent me into orbit to write the novel, The Painter’s Women: Goya in Light and Shade, was a … Continue reading Fionnuala Brennan: Writing about Goya
HEAD GAMES: 90th anniversary of the theft of Pancho’s head
"Ninety years ago (on Feb. 6, to be precise), someone broke into the grave of assassinated Mexican Revolutionary General Francisco "Pancho" Villa and made off with his head. Pancho's skull remains MIA, so far as we know officially, on this 90th anniversary of the sacking of his grave. Just a very few years ago, one … Continue reading HEAD GAMES: 90th anniversary of the theft of Pancho’s head
Translation rights news: PRINT THE LEGEND to be published in Mongolia
Craig McDonald's novel PRINT THE LEGEND (#8 in the internationally acclaimed Hector Lassiter series) is going to be translated into Mongolian and published by Bolor Sudar Publishers in 2016. Hector Lassiter novels have been translated so far into French, Italian, Spanish (Mexico), Japanese, Korean and Russian. Listen to an excerpt read by Craig McDonald and … Continue reading Translation rights news: PRINT THE LEGEND to be published in Mongolia
“DEATH IN THE FACE is my love letter to that strange sad man Ian Fleming”
Craig McDonald about his new novel: DEATH IN THE FACE: THE YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE FACTOR (Caution: Mild spoilers ahead for the James Bond novel and film, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.) In 1962, a gravely ill Ian Fleming went to Japan to research what would result in his penultimate James Bond novel, YOU ONLY LIVE … Continue reading “DEATH IN THE FACE is my love letter to that strange sad man Ian Fleming”
Interview with Sean Moncrieff
Sean Moncrieff interviewed by Vincent P Bartley of IrishInterest.ie in the Irish Writers' Centre about his novel The Angel of the Streetlamps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FY9MpR7R7s
If you haven’t read Richard Kalich yet, this should convince you to start
An American Master ***** Richard Kalich is an American novelist who creates brilliant and accomplished works of fiction that deal with themes of cruelty and obsession . Although Kalich’s work is informed by the earlier works of the European avant garde, his exploration of the current era is as American and up-to-date as the latest … Continue reading If you haven’t read Richard Kalich yet, this should convince you to start
Richard Kalich: How I Write
I don't have a method but... and it’s a big ‘but’... I can speak of a pattern that has repeated itself with all four of my novels. And the same will be true with my next. I see my novels metaphorically. By that I mean an image comes to me... and that image, that poetic metaphoric image, contains all I need … Continue reading Richard Kalich: How I Write
Craig McDonald: “Why I write: One true sentence.”
Why I Write A while back, the wonderful Jen Forbus was collecting six-word memoirs from various crime and thriller writers. The exercise was inspired, she wrote, by the line attributed to Ernest Hemingway (a frequent supporting character in my Hector Lassiter novels) that resulted from a challenge to craft an über short story. The result, … Continue reading Craig McDonald: “Why I write: One true sentence.”
Why do I write? by David Hogan
Why do I write? I write because I am a prisoner. I write because there exists, beyond the walls of my preconceptions and just outside the barriers of my inventiveness, another story. It’s not wholly personal or cultural or factual. It’s not religious or utopian. Nor is it political. It’s all of these things, or … Continue reading Why do I write? by David Hogan
“From the menial, I’ll build meaning.”
Why I Write by Jackie Mallon The sound is like a low growl. You mightn’t hear it but even when I look at peace, I’m making it. Then I itch and scrape. Is my stomach empty? Do I need a walk? A nap? A blanket? Kibble? Tranquilizing? Reading, yes, that calms me. For a while. … Continue reading “From the menial, I’ll build meaning.”
“There’s only that unbidden quest to make a sentence sing…”
Why I Write By Colin O'Sullivan I write because I have to. No message, no voice. I write for it demands me. Because I have no choice. I wake and think of writing, I go to bed the same. All day I think of writing, My antidote, my pain. Nothing matters but the … Continue reading “There’s only that unbidden quest to make a sentence sing…”
Richard Kalich: “I see the world metaphorically.”
Richard Kalich in conversation with Lucy Sweeney Byrne It is clear, when talking to Richard Kalich today, that he is a novelist whom, once you hear of him, you wonder to yourself how you haven’t heard his name before. He is not a writer one would describe as prolific. He has endured writer’s block and the terror … Continue reading Richard Kalich: “I see the world metaphorically.”
Praise for the opening line of HEAD GAMES by Craig McDonald
"From a much newer novel, Head Games by Craig McDonald, the first line is: “We were sitting in a backroom of a cantina on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, three drinks in, when Bill Wade reached into the dusty duffle bag he had tucked under the table and plunked down the Mexican general’s head.” The … Continue reading Praise for the opening line of HEAD GAMES by Craig McDonald
“Why do I write” by Jackie Mallon
This is the question posed by my blogmate, Kate at Maison Bentley Style. It’s part of a blog hop. I could never say no to Kate. She is the big hearted, ever-so-stylish epicenter of my blogging society; our intrepid heroine and our gracious hostess. She is the pre-scandal Lily Bart; the always charismatic Daisy Buchanan; the nobly independent Jo Marsh of my circle.
Why do I write, you ask, Kate? Well, that’s like asking why one would want to disappear through this little gate…
What am I working on now?
Despite weeks lost to my well-documented home search and the attendant broker, mortgage, co-op application misery, I am about two thirds of the way through my second novel. First draft, mind you. And, full disclosure, it doesn’t have a beginning yet, nor have I any idea of the route to take to arrive at the ending. But it’s still an easier…
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