Category Archives: Snubnose Press

Dishing up Pulp Curry in a new way: why I am starting a Substack newsletter

After much thought I have decided that to experiment with moving the focus of my blogging from this site to a new Pulp Curry Substack newsletter.

Why am I doing this?

The first post on this website appeared on July 2010 (about the incredibly underrated 1979 Australian heist film, Money Moversyou can read the post here). I’ve been writing on the site with varying frequency ever since (579 posts in all), and for the most part have enjoyed it immensely.

But for the last 12 or so months I just haven’t been feeling it – or getting the hits to make it seem worthwhile – and have started to wonder whether it’s worth continuing with the effort. Posting on a website has been starting to feel like the equivalent of trying to read a broadsheet newspaper in a crowded tram carriage, unwieldy and inconvenient.

And, thinking about it, I suspect the blog format is starting to get a bit stale for me and is actually now a brake on my posting more regularly.

I know that I’m no Robinson Crusoe in this regard. The majority of the blogs I used to follow have gradually fallen by the wayside, as people have moved on, grown weary of the effort, found other interests, adopted other means to get their message out, or, in some cases (gulp), died.… Read more

My year in books: Benoit Lelievre

Today is the last guest post in the ‘my year in books’ series.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the selections that have featured on my site over the last few weeks as much as I have. There’s one more post to appear in the series, that’s my top reads for 2013, which I’ll be posting in the next day or so.

In the meantime, I’m going out on a strong note with Montreal-based blogger, Benoit Lelievre. Many Pulp Curry readers are probably familiar with Benoit’s cracker of a site, Dead End Follies. If not, check it out, it’s a great repository of writing on all things hard boiled crime and film.

Welcome Benoit.

2013 was a tough year. Tough but positive overall. I faced professional and personal turmoil, had to adapt to several tricky situations and flat out improve as a human being. On the downside, my creative input has dropped bear to nothingness. But thank god for good books. I read several great novels in 2013. Here are the five best books I have read this year, in no particular order:

The Subtle Art of Brutality, Ryan Sayles

Richard Dean Bucker, better known as RDB, is a creation half-way between Lawrence Block’s detective Matthew Scudder and Sons of Anarchy’s Jax Teller.… Read more

My year in books: Tom Pitts

Piggyback-coverNext cab off the rank in the ‘my year in books’ series I’m running over December is one of my fellow authors in the Snubnose Press stable, Tom Pitts.

Tom is the author of a great little novella, which I read earlier this year, Piggyback. It’s the story of two young women who like to party and think they’ve ripped off a car trunk load of free drugs, when in fact all they’ve really done is bring down a s*** load of chaos upon themselves.

Piggyback, along with all other Snubnose Press titles (including my novel, Ghost Money), is currently just 99 cents until before Christmas.

Anyway, enough of my shilling.

Tom’s got a novel called Hustle due out with Snubnose in 2014. 

You can find him on the web here.

Tom, your five minutes start now…

Under the Dixie Moon, Ro Cuzon

I’m often seen touting the wares of French-born, New Orleans transplant, Ro Cuzon. That’s because he’s great, this book is great. It’s a huge tale with a lot of moving parts and it manages to tie them all together in an end-run marathon of staccato chapters that build and build until you think it’s got nowhere to go–then it takes you further.… Read more

Fact and fiction in criminal case file 002

Ieng Sary Hearing 1

Late last week Ieng Sary aka criminal case file 002, former foreign minister for the charnel house known as the Khmer Rouge regime, died in Phnom Penh at the age of eighty seven.

One of five senior members of the Khmer Rouge being investigated by an international tribunal, Sary died denying he had any role in overseeing the death by starvation, torture and murder of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and early 1979.

Unfortunately, he escaped justice, dying before the tribunal could hand down its findings into his case.

Described in the charge sheet as ‘retired’, he lived peacefully in the former guerilla strong hold of Pailin until 2007, when an ageing Soviet-era chopper swooped down and police arrested and bundled him off to Phnom Penh.

For me, the news of the 87-year-old Sary’s death was very much a case of fact and fiction merging.  Sary’s defection from the Khmer Rouge in 1996 forms the historical backdrop of my crime novel set in Cambodia, Ghost Money.

Normally, I’d feel dreadful using someone’s death as an excuse to plug my book, but I’ll make an exception in Sary’s case.

I was just about to a stint as a journalist with one of the wire services in Phnom Penh, when news of Sary’s defection from the Khmer Rouge broke.… Read more

Guest post: a sense of place

Texan crime writer Jim Wilsky is one half of the team behind Blood on Blood, one of the many excellent books produced by the publisher of my crime novel, Ghost Money, Snubnose Press. He and Frank Zafiro blog at the site, Hardboiled Partners in Crime.

Blood on Blood is a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game as two estranged half-brothers race against time (and each other) to try to find jewels from their father’s last big heist. It’s on my Kindle. Why don’t you put it on yours, too.

Frank was good enough to drop by to talk about a sense of place and how it features in his writing.

Take it away, Jim.

First of all, I want to say what a pleasure it is to be doing a guest post on Andrew’s page here. Being asked to do this by a brother Snubnose Press author makes it even better.

If you’re reading this, but you haven’t read Andrew’s new book Ghost Money yet, then I have to say you’re missing the boat. You’ve had a tragic lapse in judgment. Redeem yourself! Get a copy of Ghost Money. You’ll enjoy a terrific book.

Andrew wanted me to write a little about the crime fiction scene in Texas, where I live and work.… Read more