Bill Crider – Larque Press | The Digest Enthusiast

Interviews October 16, 2019

Ellery Queen Dec. 2007

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Dec. 2007 Vol. 130 No. 6 Whole No. 796
Contents
David Handler “The Man Who Couldn’t Miss” art by Laurie Harden
Edward D. Hoch “Gypsy Gold”
Jon L. Breen: The Jury Box
Patricia Smiley “Party’s Over”
Bill Crider: Blog Bytes
Jon L. Breen “A Run Through the Calendar”
Loren D. Estleman “Wild Walls” (Valentino) art by Mark Evan Walker
Caroline Menzies “The Bathtub Oracle” (Dept. of First Stories)
Peter Turnbull “The Mummy” art by Allen Davis
Marilyn Todd “Room for Improvement”
2007 EQMM Readers Award Ballot
Anton Chekhov “A Malefactor” (Passport to Crime) translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
Martin Edwards “An Index”
Maria Hudgins “Murder on the London Eye”
Michael Bracken & Tom Sweeney “Snowbird” art by Mark Evans
Index: Vol. 129 and Vol. 130
Classified Marketplace
Indicia and Masthead

Publisher: Peter Kanter
Editor: Janet Hutchings
Editorial Assistant: Emily Giglierano
Excutive Director Art & Production: Susan Kendrioski
Senior AD: Victoria Green
Cover: Rafael de Soto

144 pages $3.99
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine website

I asked Michael Bracken about what it was like to write with a partner on “Snowbird.” Below is an excerpt from his interview in The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, June 2018:

In the early-2000s I edited five anthologies, and Tom had a story in each of them. When I pitched an anthology of private eye stories to a regional publisher, the publisher was interested only if all the stories were set in Texas and the contributors were Texans/ Texas residents. The only way Tom, a New Englander, would get a story in the anthology was if he collaborated with someone in Texas. Me.

Tom’s writing style—that is, the way he uses words and structures sentences—is (or was then) similar to mine, but his approach to writing is quite different. Where I throw something on the page to start and then figure out where I’m going, he likes to start with the theme and build backwards from there.

So, we went back and forth, writing and discussing as we went. I would write a bit and turn it over to him. He would edit or revise what I wrote and add more. I would edit/ revise what he wrote and add to it. All the while we held email discus- sions on the side about where the story was going, what we needed to research to move forward, and so on. (We even roped in a third writer—Çarol Kilgore—to aid with some research. Part of the story is set on the Gulf Coast and Carol provided us with details neither of us could get otherwise.)

Writing the way we did, it’s quite difficult to know now who wrote which passages, but after several months we had a complete draft. Unfortunately, the regional publisher was no longer interested in doing the anthology.
It is true that collaborating means twice the work for half the money, but Tom and I created a story neither of us could have written alone, and it was the first sale either of us made to EQMM. So, it was well worth the effort.

Vault August 30, 2019

Weird Menace Vol. 1

Contents
James Reasoner: Introduction
John. C. Hocking “Bodies for the Brain Butcher”
Bill Crider “A Night on Madhouse Mountain”
Scott Dennis Parker “The Curse of the Monster Makers!”
Keith West “Farmhouse of the Dead”
Robert E. Vardeman “The Hideous Blood Ray”
James Reasoner “Blood Treasure for Satan’s Buccaneers”
About the Authors

Rough Edges Press
Editor: James Reasoner
Cover Design: Livia Reasoner
6” x 9” 150 pages
POD $9.99 Kindle $2.99

Reviews May 23, 2018

Weird Menace Vol. 1

Much of my reading is in support of my series, The Digest Enthusiast—for articles, reviews, or interviews. When I take a break and pick up something purely for its own sake, I often turn to pulp fiction. For me, these stories are akin to comfort food, perhaps not entirely nutrition-rich, but delicious and satisfying all the same.

I’ve never actually read a shudder pulp, but I have to believe the stories in Weird Menace Vol. 1 from Rough Edges Press, are authentic. They’re set in right era and their creators are highly qualified to crank out new stories crafted in the rapid-fire, tension-packed style that inspired them.

I zeroed in on Vol. 2 because it contained a story by Michael Bracken that I wanted to read as prep for my interview with him for TDE8. But when I noticed Bill Crider had a story in Vol. 1, well, I had to have that one too. When I wrapped up design and production on TDE8, I was ready for a comfort read and sat down to read Bill’s story. I liked it so much, I decided to try another, and flew through the whole of volume one before I knew it.

What’s more, I’d be hard pressed to name a favorite. Each story was just plain fun to read; and despite their similarities, there’s enough variation in the setups, threats, and narrow escapes, so the action never slows. In fact, the trouble only escalates. What a harrowing, pleasurable read!

Opening Lines March 20, 2018

Opening Lines

Selected from a digest featured in The Digest Enthusiast book five:

“The telephone was ringing when I walked into my office. I thought I knew who it was, but I tossed my hat on the desk and answered it anyway.”
“Gorilla of the Gasbags” by Bill Crider EQMM Mar/Apr 2014

Interviews March 18, 2018

Bill Crider’s Blog Bytes

EQMM August 2007 cover — EQMM August 2007 with Bill Crider’s first Blog Bytes column

The Jan/Feb 2018 issue of EQMM may have been the last issue to feature Bill Crider’s long running column: Blog Bytes. Here’s what he said about it in our interview for The Digest Enthusiast five:

“I’m not sure how ‘Blog Bytes’ came about, as I inherited the column from Ed Gorman, who called me and asked me to take over for him. I suspect that the column was the idea of the EQMM editor, Janet Hutchings, who wanted to start making some connections with the online world, but it could have been Ed’s idea. When I agreed to do the column (in 2007; hard to believe it’s been almost 10 years), Ed sent me some of his columns to look at. They were all between 400–415 words, so I’ve stuck to that with my own column.

“The only thing that worried me about doing the column was whether there would be enough new blogs and websites to keep it going. I needn’t have worried. Another thing that occurred to me a few years ago was that some blogs deserved a repeat mention because people might have missed the first one or might have forgotten about it. So I now lead with a repeat each time.”

EQMM cover image from Galactic Central.

Interviews February 13, 2018

Bill Crider 1941–2018

Social media and the blogs of Bill Crider’s friends and fans celebrate the life of the gifted writer with tributes and recollections upon the news of his passing yesterday. Like many, I first met Bill through his wonderful blog Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.

In 2015, I was fortunate enough to meet him in person at Bouchercon in Raleigh, where he signed a copy of his—at the time—current novel Between the Living and the Dead. A year later, he graciously agreed to be interviewed via email and responded to general questions about his career, and highlighted some of his short stories and articles for magazines and zines like The Not So Private Eye, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, New Mystery, Hardboiled, and Ellery Queen.

When asked about his terrific story, “The Marching Madmen,” starring The Spider, he shared the inside information:

“I was invited to write a story for The Spider Chronicles, and the invitation came at a time when I’d been reading a lot of Novell Page Spider novels. I’m easily influenced by the writing style of other authors, so it seemed as if it would be easy to sit down and write a story like the ones I’d been enjoying. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, so I’m glad you think it turned out well. Writing the story kind of burned me out on The Spider, and I haven’t read any other Page novels since then.”

Rest in peace, Bill Crider, your stories and kindness, that touched so many lives, lives on.

Interviews February 3, 2018

Ellery Queen March/April 2014

An excerpt from the interview with Bill Crider, from The Digest Enthusiast book five:

Bill Crider: “At an Armadillocon some years ago, I was on the “Apes” panel, along with Joe Lansdale, Rick Klaw, Mark Finn, Chris Nakashima Brown, and probably some others I’m forgetting. The talk turned to a legendary pulp cover for a story called “Gorilla of the Gas Bags” in a pulp called Zeppelin Stories. As anyone knows, there are only a couple of copies of the magazine still around, so nobody had read the story. Joe Lansdale challenged the panelists to write a story based on the cover. He sold his, and I sold mine. I don’t know if anyone else wrote a story.”

Ellery Queen April/March 2014 cover — Ellery Queen March/April 2014 with Bill Crider’s “Gorilla of the Gasbags” with Hollywood detective Bill Ferrell

Attn. Writers: Sandra Seamans reminds us Switchblade magazine is open for submissions.

Interviews January 6, 2018

Ellery Queen March 1998

An excerpt from the interview with Bill Crider, from The Digest Enthusiast book five:

Bill Crider: “I’ve published only two stories in EQMM, and “The Case of the Headless Man” was the first. When I wrote it, I used a couple of my series characters, Bo Wagner and Janice Langtry. They’re a writing team, like Ellery Queen, and they write about impossible crimes solved by their amateur sleuth, Sam Fernando. Now and then the cops call them in and ask for their help with impossible crimes, like one committed by a man without a head. I really had some some fun with these stories, of which there are two or three. Maybe I should collect them into an eBook, except that I can’t locate the eCopy of “The Case of the Headless Man.”

“I’d tell you where the story idea came from, but I can’t do that without giving too much away. What I can tell you is that I’d been rejected by EQMM a couple of times, and I really wanted to be published there. When I came up with this story idea, I thought it was perfect for the magazine, and sure enough, the editor bought it.”

Hat Tip: The new Pulp Modern with Robert Petyo’s story “Sacrifice” is highlighted today by Kevin R. Tipple on The Short Mystery Fiction Society Blog.

Reviews December 15, 2017

The Coyote Connection by Bill Crider & Jack Davis

Nick Carter, aka N3, aka Killmaster, was an agent of an organization so secret even the government denied its existence. Nick’s assignments for AXE were reported in a series of well over 200 novels from 1964 to 1990 published by Award, Ace, and Jove.

The books are first-person accounts by Nick Carter himself, a pseudonym for a long list of uncredited writers that includes Bill Crider and Jack Davis.

“I was in a writers’ group in Brownwood, Texas, where I was teaching at Howard Payne University, and one of the women in the group couldn’t see to drive at night,” says Crider. “She had her husband drive her, and he sat in on the meetings. One night he suggested that he and I collaborate on a Nick Carter novel. The short version of the story is that we did, and we sold the book. The title is The Coyote Connection [Ace Charter, 1981]. My collaborator was Jack Davis, the brother of Jada Davis, whose One for Hell is a noir classic.”

Nick Carter is cut from the same cloth as other spies that starred in men’s adventure stories and tales of espionage from his era. He’s impossibly smart, able to handle any situation regardless how badly outnumbered, and impossibly irresistible, bedding any woman who crosses his path. So Carter’s milieu is dated—laughably or sadly, depending on your perspective.

Still, there is vicarious adventure to be had in The Coyote Connection, and the novel remains entertaining, fun, and engaging.

When you consider its authors, it’s not surprising the story is set on the border of Mexico and Texas. Coyotes are smugglers hired to transport people into the US without all the red tape. AXE gets wind four terrorists are coming over. “Their mission is to seek out and assassinate certain key members of Congress.” Carter’s mission is to find and take out the four assassins before they can strike. Considering he gets nothing further from AXE, the mission seems hopeless. But this is Nick Carter, one of only four Killmasters, and the best of the lot at that. Crider and Davis manage to make the impossible seem plausible—or at least enticing enough to plunge readers forward rather than pause to ponder Carter’s remarkable luck or the bane of coincidence.

Allowing for the series’ prerequisites—review Carter’s prowess with weapons, espionage, and seduction from time to time—Crider and Davis give us a solid spy adventure novel well worth reading then and now.