This and That

Catching up on a few odds and ends today. First, special thanks to Dorian of “Tales of the Easily Distracted” for including me in her list of recipients for the “7x7” award. I appreciate her thinking of this blog. However, instead of answering the seven questions about myself and picking seven others to receive the award, I’m just going to sit this one out. Have a look here on Dorian’s other pics for this award, and for her interesting answers in the game.

Next up, this is to announce that my ebook “Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red” is being re-issued in a second edition with a new cover by Casey Koester. You know her better as fellow classic film blogger Noir Girl.

Terrific artist, isn't she?  Have look at Casey’s blog here.

I've decided to commit to turning this into a series ("Double V Mysteries") featuring our two unlikely amateur sleuths, and the next book will be published this summer.  It will be called "Speak Out Before You Die".  Lurid-sounding, isn't it?  It's actually a line in a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  More on that later.

Casey's "Cadmium" cover, and future covers for this series will have a stylized "noir" look suggestive, but not imitative, of the pulp novels of the era in which these stories take place. I hope to carry these stories right up through the 1950s.

Casey's own unique style represents a fresh approach to nostalgia-inspired graphic art, and I am pleased and privileged to have her work associated with mine. 

“Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red” is a “cozy” mystery set in Hartford, Connecticut in 1949. Here’s the blurb:

Juliet Van Allen, a museum administrator, discovers that her artist husband is having an affair with another woman. Elmer Vartanian, recently released from prison for a museum robbery, is coerced into helping scout the museum for a heist by a gang that has kidnapped his daughter. Juliet’s husband is found murdered. Elmer signs on as her alibi in exchange for something he wants. Together, dogged by the scandal-monger newsman, the shrewd police detective, and scrutinized by the even more judgmental eye of Hartford’s elite, the rich widow and the ex-con try to outrun them all in a 1948 Lincoln Cosmopolitan, in a world where Modern Art meets old-fashioned murder.

YES, IT’S NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK. “Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red” will be available as a print book in paperback beginning in April. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops will carry the book, but I’m not sure how wide the distribution will be yet. I may also offer it on my own personal website and through this blog. I haven’t worked that out yet. This is all kind of a new experiment for me.

You can read the first chapter in this previous post here.

Finally on the docket today, I’d like to pass the word along, if you haven’t heard already, that the For the Love of Film Blogathon is once again gracing the blogosphere. The dates are May 13-18th, hosted by the dynamic duo of Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films, ably assisted by This Island Rod.

The theme this year is Hitchcock, and the goal is to help the National Film Preservation Foundation stream "The White Shadow" (1923), free for us to see for four months and record the score. As Marilyn Ferdinand so ably puts it, the “For the Love of Film Blogathon to raise that money so that anyone with access to a computer can watch this amazing early film that offered Hitchcock a chance to learn his craft, with a score that does it justice.”

Hop on board the effort to raise money for this worthy cause or just keep on the lookout for the blogs participating in this event. I’ll be posting on “North by Northwest” (1959) on Monday, May 14th.

I think that’s it. We return you to your regularly scheduled blog.