20 Random Facts & Trivia About My Books & Writing

1. At one point, The Assassin’s Prayer was considered by

Showtime for a direct-to-cable movie. Through my agent at the time, I was told that a 5-person board would make the final decision; alas, the vote was 3-2 in favor of not optioning the book and my dreams of premium cable stardom died. It’s probably because I told them I wanted the lead actor to sport a mullet even better than Chuck Norris’ in The Hitman…

2. I wrote “The Killing Question” for no other reason than I wanted to (*spoiler alert*) kill a child molester via shotgun up the ass. I’ve written a lot of violent death scenes in my time, but this still ranks as one of my favorites. I probably need professional help…

3. The Assassin’s Betrayal started out as an action-comedy screenplay titled Killing Guppies. The script had a more Tarintino-esque tone and featured a female psychologist/hit-woman whose gimmick was that she never actually assassinated anyone, but instead used her psych skills to convince them to kill themselves. Hey, I never said all my ideas were gems…

4. Chunks of Hell was originally going to just be called Hell Chunks, with a cover designed to look like a box of kid’s cereal, but with horror imagery. “0% Sugar! 100% Blood!”

5. “Resurrection Bullets” started out as The Crow fan-fiction and was originally called “Hell’s Harvest.”

6. My single biggest influence while writing “Warlock #1: Autofire Blitz” was the movie Commando. None of my quips quite match the classic “Let off some steam, Bennett,” but Locke telling a scumbag bartender, “You look like an elephant’s dick,” gets the job done.

7. Vesper Falls, the fictional town in Gristle, is modeled after the actual town of Vermontville in the Adirondack Mountains, which is where I reside. Vesper Falls is also mentioned in the short story “Gurgles” (featured in Chunks of Hell) and my work-in-progress “Warlock #2: Kill ‘Em All.” Basically, Vesper Falls is my version of Castle Rock…

8. Jack Reece, the vigilante private eye from “The Killing Question,” makes a cameo appearance in “Warlock #1.” There’s a very good chance I’ll have the characters team up somewhere down the road. And I don’t mean “team up” in a Brokeback Mountain kind of way…

9. Despite having co-written several projects together, Derric Miller and I have never met. But if we ever do, we will instantly bond over our mutual hatred of cats.

10. Malakai and his handler meeting in an abandoned church (The Assassin’s Betrayal) was a deliberate homage to the opening scene in John Woo’s The Killer, one of my all-time favorite action movies.

11. The original title of Chunks of Hell was It’s Always Darkest Before You Die. I think it would have been a big hit among Death Row inmates…

12. I never use blasphemous language in my writing. Plenty of other four-letter words get tossed around like candy on Halloween, but you’ll never see “Jesus” or “Christ” used in a profane manner.

13. “Warlock #2: Kill ‘Em All” (currently being written) takes place in the same remote region of the Adirondack Mountains as Gristle. First cannibal mutants, now murderous, meth-cooking biker gangs … no surprise that my books are not endorsed by Adirondack tourism groups.

14. More people have requested a sequel to “The Killing Question” than any of my other stories or books. Something about the smart-ass vigilante private eye apparently resonates with readers. That, or they just want to see if I can top that villain death…

15. The sickest thing I’ve ever written hasn’t been published yet. It involves morbid obesity, deviant copulation, and some of the strangest cats you’ve ever met. You can read all about it if “Mudslingers 2: The Bloodletting” ever sees the light of day … which my wife is hoping never happens.

16. In addition to writing dark, nasty, mega-violent fiction, I also dabble in spiritual essays/meditations. Yeah, there’s kind of this Jekyll & Hyde thing going on in my noggin…

17. The Assassin’s Betrayal was deliberately designed to be both a stand-alone novel and a pseudo-sequel to The Assassin’s Prayer. However, the 3rd book will be a true sequel, tying together the events and characters from both novels. It’s called (for now) The Assassin’s Revenge and at my current writing pace, it should be available somewhere around the year 2027…

18. The events—and locale—of Gristle are referenced in “Cycle of Savagery,” a work-in-progress werewolf novella co-written by me and Derric. Tonally, it falls somewhere between Silver Bullet and Dog Soldiers. If you’ve never seen either, please stop reading this and go rectify your oversight immediately.

19. Tyler Cunningham, the charmingly weird protagonist of fellow Adirondack author Jamie Sheffield’s mystery series, makes a cameo appearance in Gristle. And no, the cannibals do not slurp out his intestines like slimy Lo Mein noodles from a bad Chinese restaurant…

20. Though he doesn’t know it yet, someday I want to co-write an action-comedy with Adam Howe. Or Shane Black. Whichever one returns my calls first…