I finished Tom Piccirilli’s The Fever Kill last night. If you’ve read Dan Simmons’ hardboiled crime novels, that will give you an idea of what to expect. However, Tom plays with expectations. The main character hates a certain character, for example, but when you get to meet the character, you have to re-evaluate your opinion—and then perhaps re-re-evaluate it later on. Ditto for the ones Crease likes. It’s a fast read, at about 200 pages, and narrow pages at that (I read it from page proofs so I don’t know what the final version looks like). It comes from my pals at Creeping Hemlock Press and has an intro by Ken Bruen.
The Big Bang Theory kept up a consistent level of humor last night. I’m starting to see shades of The Odd Couple in the relationship between the two male characters. I laughed out loud more than a couple of times, which is a good sign. It was good to see Janeane Garofalo on 2-1/2 Men last night, too, though I don’t think I would have recognized her if I hadn’t seen her name in the credits. It was a different kind of role for her, one utterly lacking in her trademark acerbic wit.
I got one of those ouchy-good rejection letters yesterday. This one was from Asimov’s, one of my dream markets. The editor took the time to write me a personal response, always appreciated, in which she said the story was “very nicely one” though the storyline lacked in originality. (Seeing as how it was inspired by “Mars is Heaven,” I’ll concede that point.) She said she “definitely looks forward to seeing more” of my work. Close, but no bananas. Nevertheless, it is heartily encouraging.
