Showing posts with label Adrian McKinty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adrian McKinty. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Me? A Dad?

Apropos of my last post, about people using the internet to share all manner of personal information, I'm thrilled to say that Fiona Helen O'Rourke arrived last week, on December 9, 2009.

She and Jenna are doing well, as am I. Fiona came in weighing 8 pounds 13 ounces, and unfortunately for her, it looks like she may have gotten her feet from her father (I wear a size 15).

In my estimation, Jenna and I have averaged about four hours of sleep a night for the past week. I'm fairly delirious at this point, so I hope this post makes the least bit of sense.

Now I know what it feels like to be a Muslim detainee at Gitmo, being woken up every couple of hours.

In terms of this blog, well, I won't be posting with much frequency for the foreseeable future, for obvious reasons. I hope you all can forgive me, and by "all," I mean: Seana Graham, Nate Green, Marco, Adrian McKinty, Nicklas Hughes, Rita Vetere, and any lurkers (?) that might be out there, including dear old Dad. But I wanted to thank you for taking the time to read my otherwise inane ramblings and comment on same.

A bientot.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Promote Whatever You Want On My Blog


I dropped the ball on this last month, but I would like to keep this going. So, a reminder about the rules:

1) Promote whatever you want by leaving a comment.
2) You cannot, under any circumstances, promote anything for me.

I'll leave this post up for the next few days. Don't be shy if you haven't commented on this blog before - this is a great way to reach a new audience, even if it's only a drive-by commenting.
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I'm promoting the kick-ass thriller, Fifty Grand, by Adrian McKinty. I will be posting a joint review on this book shortly, but for now, I'll say this: it's a great story that really moves.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

I've Been Tagged

Those of you who know me well know I don't like to talk about myself. Perhaps that's why I sometimes struggle to come up with material for this blog. Today I am going to write about myself a little bit, but I have a good excuse: I was tagged to do this 4X4 meme by the notorious Seana Graham. I've tweaked it a little bit as you'll see.

Four golf courses I'd like to play:

1. Augusta

2. Pebble Beach

3. Pine Valley

4. TPC Sawgrass

My four favorite Westerns are:

1. The Searchers

2. Rio Bravo

3a. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

3b. Once Upon a Time in the West

4. Unforgiven

PS - When will we see a revival of this genre? I hope soon. It is one of America's greatest contributions to the cinema.

Four books that I recommend to friends, family, and strangers:

1. Dead I Well May Be

2. The Shadow of the Wind

3. Noble House

4. Bernard Cornwell's take on Arthurian Legend

Four reasons why The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie ever made:

1. George Lucas didn't direct it.

2. George Lucas didn't write the screenplay.

3. No Ewoks, Jar Jar Binks, or bad dialogue.

4. "No, I am your father."

Four languages I studied in high school:

1. English (yeah, it counts)

2. French

3. Latin

4. Greek

And no, I don't really remember any French, Latin, or Greek, and even English is a struggle these days.

Four stories I want to write before I die:

1. Screenplay for a biopic on Caravaggio

2. Sci-fi western set on Mars

3. A book that makes money

4. Screenplay for a sequel to this year's Star Trek

Four people I'm tagging to do this as well

1. Jenna O'Rourke

2. Nate Green

3. Nicklas Hughes

4. Matt Damon

Monday, May 11, 2009

Writer's Blog

Warning: This post contains elements of self-indulgence, so if you're easily offended by this, stop reading now.

I have writer's blog. I was so excited when I thought up this term during my car ride this evening, thinking I had coined a clever if somewhat obvious phrase, but apparently, it's a common enough term to have found its way into the unholy of unholies, the urban dictionary.

For the last couple of weeks, I've had trouble coming up with things to blog about. I have only one rule when blogging: write about whatever I want so long as it isn't self-indulgent, look how great I am/woe is me crap. So I know I've hit rock bottom when I break the one rule I've set for myself.

How do bloggers combat this fairly common occurrence?

Some of my favorite bloggers have an overarching theme to their blog. My good friend, Nate Green, explores the nuances and oddities of language in fiction and in marketing in his blog, 500 Words on Words. Peter Rozovsky somehow manages to be prolific and accessibly esoteric with his wonderful blog, Detectives Beyond Borders.

Speaking of prolific, Seana Graham manages four of her own blogs, each one with its one motif, while also being a frequent contributor to many other blogs.

On the other hand, Adrian McKinty blogs about the "psychopathology of everyday life," to steal his turn of phrase, which is a pretty big umbrella covering just about anything and everything.

So yeah, I may take a week or so off from the blog to recharge and think up something more intelligent than "writing about the practices of other bloggers." See you soon. I hope.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Adrian McKinty’s Dead Trilogy


This is a repost in honor of the upcoming April 27th release of Adrian McKinty's kick-ass thriller: Fifty Grand.
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You need to buy these books:

Dead I Well May Be
The Dead Yard
The Bloomsday Dead

Yes, I’m serious. You need to go out and buy these books.

Adrian McKinty is a great writer and a great storyteller. With most fiction, you’re lucky if you get one or the other. If you want to marvel at lyricism, clever turns of phrase, and complex, murky characters, you read the literary. If you want to escape and go on a thrill ride, you read the commercial. But you need not pick and choose with McKinty. You can have your cake and eat it too.

McKinty’s stories have been described as literary action thrillers. As accurate as that may be, the description doesn’t do his novels, or his prose, justice. Simply put, the guy knows his way around the keyboard. His approach to storytelling is quasi-conversational. You feel like you’re sitting down to a pint with him at the bar as he unveils the latest in a long-line of misadventures. But at the same time, his stories abound with moments of sheer literary brilliance that no amount of alcohol could produce.

McKinty, I suspect, is a guy who’s lived quite an interesting life, and his writing is all the more informed and hard-hitting because of it. No ivory towers for this author.

I’ve just finished his Dead Trilogy, three stories chronicling the life and times of his wonderfully-flawed, but cool-as-hell, protagonist Michael Forsythe. I’m tempted to call the character an author surrogate, but that would be presumptuous on my part. Forsythe is complicated, brooding, at times frightening, usually one step ahead of a bullet, exceptionally violent, but always likeable. I can’t decide if he merits a classification of hero or anti-hero. But that’s what makes him so damned great.

The three stories are ostensibly action thrillers, but unlike most other commercial writers, McKinty never falls into the typical trappings of the genre. Dead I Well May Be and its two sequels (The Dead Yard and The Bloomsday Dead) are not repackaged variations of each other. Thankfully, Forsythe isn’t charged with tracking a different serial killer each outing. He’s not approached by a gorgeous blonde and asked to investigate the disappearance of her husband/boyfriend/brother at the beginning of every story. He’s given different task in each tale and the unique challenges he faces serve to round out his character. Don’t get me wrong though: all three books are replete with carnage, mayhem (in the literal legal sense), double-crosses, twists, love, sex, and violence.

McKinty’s prose fires on all cylinders. And he pulls no punches when it comes to plotting. There is violence in his world, and more violence, and more violence, but it always serves the story. Along those lines, McKinty takes a lot of narrative risks, especially in The Dead Yard, but they all pay off. He allows the story to go where it has to.

Each Dead Trilogy novel contemplates its own issues, speaks its own voice, and has its own narrative drive. By the end, you’ve gone on quite a journey with Michael Forsythe, from upstart mobster, to mole, to detective of sorts, as McKinty unleashes his prose on us. I can’t recommend these novels enough.

Now seriously, go buy these books. Or you're in for a Belfast six-pack.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Win A Free Copy of The Unearthed Monday!

I'll be giving away some free copies of The Unearthed on Monday, so stop back for your chance to win. More details to follow.

Still haven't heard what my novel is about? Well, let me tell you. The Unearthed is a fast-paced paranormal thriller with a little something for everybody: mystery, drama, scares, twists, and violence.

But don't take my word for it. Here's what some others have said:

Ruth Schaller, in her glowing 5 skull review said, "This book was fast paced...I just couldn't put this book (okay, my ebook reader ... lol) down for long, because I just had to find out what was going to happen."

Famed Northern Irish writer, Adrian McKinty, had this to say: "Brian is a gifted writer and his book is excellent. Fast paced, exciting, twisty turny and scary."

And last but not least, my long-suffering wife said, "When are you going to be done on the computer? And don't say you have to write one more scene."


Here's an excerpt:

"Please state your name and address for us," Tim said.

"John Rosselli. Seventeen-thirteen Pembroke Lane."

"How long have you lived here?" Tim asked, already beginning to scribble notes on his yellow legal pad.

"Six months next week."

"You've called us here to investigate paranormal activity in your house, is that correct?"

"Yes. Not just in the house. It's outside, too."

"I understand," Tim said and made another note.

Jackie looked at Eddie, who seemed bored, while Tim steepled his hands and continued. "I need you to tell me about all the things you've--you, yourself--have experienced that you would call paranormal. You can refer to your list if you'd like. Then we'll walk through each one in detail. I can't stress enough that, for now, I only want to hear about what you have experienced. Not what others might have told you. Okay?"

Jackie pulled his list out of his pocket and unfolded it on the table, then took out his reading glasses and put them on. "Well, my wife has seen or heard most of the things, including the phone. And my son, he is talking to someone--" He felt his face get hot. "I'll let you talk to them about those things. I guess you'd say I've experienced the least. I was the first one to notice the carpet, though."

"Let's start with that, then," Tim said.

He tipped his head back once and said, "Right behind me. It had a stain. It's dark, like blood."

"I see." Tim craned his head to the side to see for himself.

"It's probably not there now... I'll start from the beginning," Jackie said. "The house was all hardwood when we moved in. I guess the Moriartys used areas rugs. Or maybe not, who knows. When we came for the open house, we noticed a dark spot in the wood behind where I'm sitting, just at the threshold to the kitchen. It was a dark brown, slightly darker than the floors.

"I thought nothing of it at the time. It just looked like a stain in the wood." Plus, the price we were getting was ridiculously low, Jackie thought bitterly. "We had the floors stripped and redone with a lighter finish. The guys doing the work told me they were able to get rid of it, that it was just some sort of stain from the previous job.

"Then, about a week later, I noticed there was a small stain around where the old stain had been. I called the floor guys and complained, asking them to come and take a look at it. They blew me off. Said there was no way to avoid tiny blemishes like the one I was describing.

"But the little blemish got bigger. Slowly. I know because it started out on one plank. Then it grew so that it was on two, then a few. It began forming a large circle. And it was a dark brown, so it really stood out against the lighter finish we'd had put on.

"I had another floor guy come and take a look. I thought it might be some type of fungus or rot. That maybe this part of the wood was exposed to something in the basement.

"The floor guy didn't know what it was. He told me he could replace that part of the floor. The wood replacement would be cheap, but of course he tried to convince me to have the whole floor redone--redoing one spot wouldn't look right, he said. We had to get some other work done on the house, so this seemed unimportant in comparison, so I told him we'd hold off.

"We put a throw rug over it, because it became an eye sore. It grew to about a foot and a half in diameter, then seemed to stop.

"We kept the throw rug down for a few weeks before running it through the washer. When I lifted it up, I saw the stain had started to get onto the bottom of the throw rug.

"I called the floor guy and told him I wanted that section of the floor replaced and to just put finish on that part--I told him not to worry about redoing the whole room. He came out and took care of it.

"But the stain came back."

Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Pleasant Return to John D. MacDonald

During my formative years, i.e. when I had no money of my own, I had to find a way to satiate my quickly-forming literary addiction. My Dad, an avid reader in his own right, had amassed a vast collection of fiction, most of it falling into the suspense, thriller, and/or crime genres. So naturally, all I had to do when I was ready for a new book or author was venture upstairs and dig one off the shelves.

It was thus that I introduced myself to John D. MacDonald, most famous for his 21-novel Travis McGee series. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, I devoured whatever MacDonald novel I could find in the house, and when I exhausted the supply, I moved on to a different author.

Fast forward seventeen years. Thanks to Adrian McKinty and Peter Rozovsky's fantastic blog, Detectives Beyond Borders, my interest in literate crime fiction was very recently renewed, and ever since I've been looking for good books to read in the genre.

I don't know how I remembered MacDonald, but somehow, the appropriate reaction in the appropriate synapse sparked the appropriate memory recall, and so I went to Barnes & Noble with gift card in hand, excited to reintroduce myself to John D.

I picked out two of his novels, One Fearful Yellow Eye and The Deep Blue Good-By, and just finished the former. Both feature MacDonald's most well-known protagonist, Travis McGee.

OFYE was both a good read and a very interesting experience. About twenty pages in, I recognized a few passages and realized I had already read it but didn't remember how it all turned out. MacDonald's stories are lean and move quickly, mostly thanks to a lot of dialogue. Maybe I was still feeling his literary influence, albeit subconsciously, when I was writing The Unearthed, which my editor tells me is dialogue-heavy.

The book was filled with sexual innuendo, and everyone, of course, wanted to sleep with the hero; but even more startling was the fact that everyone aside from the protagonist had some kind of unhealthy sexual past affecting their current lives. This was all a bit too much in pushing the boundaries of verisimilitude, and looking back now, I can't believe Dad let me read this book when I was twelve years old. (Wink, wink: Thanks, Dad)

What impressed me most about MacDonald's writing was, however, the style itself. It was literary, yet virile. A man's man telling a man's story with flashes of brilliance throughout, that caught the eye but never pulled me out of the story:


"Maybe we all mete out to ourselves our little rewards and punishments according to our very private and unique systems of guilt and self-esteem...So when you skip the cream pie and pass up the chocolate shake and deny yourself the home fried, you begin to think that, by God, you have a right to the Cherries Jubilee."


It was with some trepidation that I had returned to MacDonald, I'll admit. The years have not been kind to many of the things I enjoyed as a youth, as I suppose is true for everybody. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I still enjoyed MacDonald, even though my artistic sensibilities have changed quite a lot since then.

Note: MacDonald wrote 78 novels, one of which was the basis for both versions of Cape Fear.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Supporting My Habit

My name is Brian O'Rourke, and I'm a bookaholic.

(Quiet, respectful applause from the other addicts.)

Yes it's taken me too long to come to terms with my addiction to books. But by first acknowledging my problem, I'd like to think I'm taking a step in the right direction. I'm on the road to recovery.

Couple of weeks ago, I went through our "library" for something to read. I couldn't count the number of books on two hands that I bought and have not read yet. And no, that's not just because I have a problem counting (damned base ten system). When I ran out of fingers and toes, I grabbed the abacus and tried to figure out how the hell anyone ever used one of those for simple math. Anyways, there were a lot of books waiting to be read, some of them purchased more than TWO YEARS AGO.

Despite having so many tomes in the bullpen, I feel a compulsion, almost daily, to drive to a bookstore and spend money I don't really have on more books. I've only recently forced myself to start using the library. My "re-read rate" is less than one percent, so you'd think the library would make all the sense in the world, but no, the gluttonous capitalist in me must own everything he's ever read. And I've even figured out a way to rationalize my uncontrollable spending: I tell myself it's my literary duty to purchase books because very soon, I hope that people will buy MY book.

Not sure if you're a bookaholic? Here are some signs:

1) You tell yourself that you can stop buying books any time you want.
2) You tell yourself you can be a few days late paying the mortgage because Ken Follett's latest just came out.
3) You have at least five books waiting to be read, but still, the first idea you come up with for something to do on a weeknight is drive to Barnes & Noble.
4) You have a book in the car with you while you're driving, and you read while stopped at red lights.
5) You have a book in the car with you while you're driving, and you try to think of ways you can read and drive at the same time.
6) When every time someone buys you a book as a birthday gift/holiday present, you say: "Thanks, but I've already read it."

I'm thinking of pitching a new celebreality TV show about us bookaholics. I've heard that Gary Busey likes to read. Matter of fact, it doesn't matter what the theme of the show is as long as Gary Busey's in it. Put that man in front of a camera and you've got gold.

My latest literary addiction is a Northern Irish author by the name of Adrian McKinty. I won't go into great detail here about his work, because I'll probably end up writing a short review on one of his books in the near future. The guy's damned good.