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Red light means stop; green light
means go; and yellow light is proceed with caution. Except Thai drivers have a
way of blurring the meaning of traffic lights. Signaling what is expected, what
is wanted, or what one can get away with are mentally built from the cultural
bricks of education, family, friends and neighbors. Simple signals such as yes,
and no, like traffic signals arent always to be relied upon.
In Thai culture, it is a
well-established tradition that before you enter the house of a Thai, you first
remove your shoes. The feet, according to local custom, are the lowest part of
the body. Walking on streets and pavements makes for dirty shoes. There are a
couple of levels at work. First, your feet (and everybody elses) occupy the
lowest realm (pointing with your foot at someone is a major cultural gaff).
Second, there are some practical health issues packaged with living in the
tropics. Dog shit is one. Along with various parasites and bacteria which have
been known to hitch a ride on peoples shoes and into their houses.
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more: http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/ ...
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Posted: 7/30/2010 5:41:33 AM |
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Writing a novel is the end product
of a long creative journey. Much the same conclusion can be said about writing
and directing a film. Since Monday I have been guiding Hollywood screenwriter
Chase Palmer through Vincent Calvinos world. Chase is writing the script play
for Spirit House. During the past couple of days, I have been thinking about how
a novelist transfers and shares his world with a screenwriter.
The Vincent Calvino seriessoon to
have 12 novelsis over a million words spanning nearly twenty years. A
screenplay runs about 120 pages in length. The film going audience will never
read it. Instead they will watch the film. Their experience is what they see on
the screen; not what is put on paper for the director, producer and actors.
People who watch a movie (unless they are in the industry or writers) dont
understand or much care about the screenplay. Why should they? It is like the
building you live in. How often to you think about the blueprints that were
labored over, changed, revised in order to realize the physical structure. I
suspect not often.
Read more: http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/ ...
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Posted: 7/22/2010 10:26:10 PM |
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Experts are people we rely
on when we are ill, build a house, buy a car, board an airplane, or invest in
equities or bonds. We also buy books written by an expert because we trust
that this persons knowledge, experience and wisdom will shed a light on a
subject that is of interest.
Crime fiction also has
increasingly become the domain of authors who have developed expertise about
police procedures, investigations, police department culture, as well as
psychology, justice systems, politics, and language.
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Posted: 7/9/2010 12:18:42 AM |
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Everyone, it seems, has a
complaint. Now and again. Some people complain more than others. You likely know
someone who fits the bill. We all do. No matter how we trim back our
relationships, Facebook pages, and socializing, we find ourselves in a situation
or next to a person who complains bitterly about not getting a backstage pass to
Lady Gagas dressing room.
Some cultures are complaint
infested. Other cultures are complaint adverse. Men complain about women. Women
complain about men. People complain about restaurant service, hotel rooms, the
size of airline econ seats, their boss, their spouse, their neighbors, their
weight, their hair, their teeth, small dogs, religion, cold food, sex, bad
diets, boredom, dating, noise, taxes, the weather, the government, TV news,
foreigners, genital warts and, of course, other drivers.
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Posted: 7/2/2010 1:30:26 AM |
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"We should read to give our minds a
chance to breathe the oxygen of ideas."
Christopher G. Moore...
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Posted: 6/30/2010 11:57:04 PM |
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Four of the Vincent Calvino
series: Spirit House, Asia Hand, The Risk of Infidelity Index
and Paying Back Jack are widely available in the United States,
Britain and the Commonwealth. That would also include the second-hand market,
too. You wont have to search high and low in your city to find a copy published
by Grove/Atlantic.
The problem readers have
is finding other titles in the Vincent Calvino series or anyone
of my 10 standalone novels. That means English language editions for 17 of my
novels, outside of Thailand, are not available through bookstores. Online
vendors, seeing an opportunity, often quote staggering prices of up to $483.00
for a copy of A Bewitching Smile. A fair number of the backlist of
my books are on offer for over $100.
My Thai publisher sells
online my books for less than the Thai retail price found in any bookshop in
Bangkok. Have a look at my publishers website. http://www.heavenlakepress.com/buybooks.htm
The fly in the
ointmenttheres always oneis the cost of international shipping. ...
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Posted: 6/29/2010 12:11:24 AM |
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Review
I place a lot of stock in
authenticity when it comes to fiction. The best novels are written by authors
who arent only talented writers but draw upon first hand experience, bringing
to the reader insight into matters that are largely hidden from the general
public.
Barry Eisler is such an
author. Hes a former CIA agent who has become a best selling novelist. Inside Out , is
his most recent novel. It will be released on Tuesday 29th June 2010.
It is the kind of book that only someone with Eislers background could write.
And it is a book that should be read not only as a first-rate thriller but a
testimony from an author who has seen inside the cage and understand the nature
of violence that goes on inside.
...
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Posted: 6/28/2010 3:26:07 AM |
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  The Black Cat (Grove imprint) edition of Asia
Hand is now on sale at amazon.com for $9.45. This is the fourth
novel in the Vincent Calvino series to be published by Grove/Atlantic. Copies
should be (or soon be) in an American, Canadian or British bookstore near you.
Asia Hand had good reviews
when first published by White Lotus in 1993.
The Black Cat edition
is also getting good press.
Asia Hand is a skillfully crafted,
addictive ride through one of the planet's most raw and vivid cities. Moore and
Calvino define the dark pungent cocktail that is Asian noir.
Eliot
Pattison, author of the Inspector Shan series ...
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Posted: 25/6/2553 10:38:07 |
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As an author of crime fiction, my
literary world is thoroughly salted with violence. Like a good miner, I spend a
great deal of time in the mine examining the ore, picking off a murder, a
mugging, or a robbery from the walls of the community where I live. Bangkok.
Violence isnt so much a theme of literature as a way of life for most people
around the world. In pre-historical times, violence was much worse. Authors of
crime fiction like myself study the causes of violence. We are always alert for
stumbling on the hidden trap door where, once opened, we can explore why
violence happens.
Localized, individual acts of
violence we class as crimes. The police handle the offenders and the suspects
are processed through a civilian court system with certain safeguards and
determined to be guilty or innocent depending on the evidence the government
produces. This is how a society dispenses justice. And justice matters if a
modern political system is to remain stable. Notions of crime, police and
justice are recent in our history.
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Posted: 25/6/2553 10:37:26 |
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Tomorrow 25 June I'll be
blogging about the dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal. Below is the start
of the essay:
The Monopoly of Violence
The case
for firing General Stanley McChrystal
As a author of crime
fiction, my literary world is thoroughly salted with violence. Like a good
miner, I spend a great deal of time in the mine examining the ore, picking off a
murder, a mugging, or a robbery from the walls of the community where I live.
...
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Posted: 24/6/2553 15:33:06 |
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Don't worry about avoiding
temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
Winston Churchill ...
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Posted: 23/6/2553 10:49:41 |
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"Who are these people who
spend so much of their days posting anonymous comments, and what is motivating
them?" The Boston Globe weighs in, "After years of letting anonymity rule
online, many media heavyweights, from The Washington Post to The Huffington
Post, have begun to modify their policies. The goal is ...to take the playground
back from anonymous bullies and give greater weight to those willing to offer,
in addition to strong views, their real names." Link: http://is.gd/cYU4Y ...
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Posted: 22/6/2553 17:30:56 |
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This question lies at the heart of a recent Guardian essay The human heart of the matter by Geoff Dyer. Dyer, himself a novelist, looks at recent books set in Afghanistan and Iraq including David Finkels The Good Soldiers and Sebastian Jungers War and finds that non-fiction has relatively more strength than fiction. And that American journalists, whose companies provide them with real luxury more able than their British counterparts.
 
 
...
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Posted: 6/18/2010 1:35:51 AM |
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From the
Bangkok gets
noirer
In the latest in the
Vincent Calvino series, crime writer Christopher G. Moore does what he does
best: kill someone and let the brash, unsuave, unpretentious Calvino unearth the
dirty details. In Asia Hand, Vinnie along with the sophisticated Thai cop
Colonel Prachai (Pratt), his partner in solving crimes sets off to find the
murderers of a farang cameraman. What follows is a journey into the big, bad,
dark world of Bangkok politics and double-dealings. The stakes are high when
luck forsakes the duo. A happy-ending? Surprise us!"
Link: http://is.gd/cRd1w ...
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Posted: 6/16/2010 5:34:49 AM |
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The
Hollywood Reporter
says, Screenwriter Chase Palmer has been hired to adapt the
mystery novel Spirit House, written by Christopher G. Moore,
for FilmNation Entertainment.
On the question of the
Calvino movie Franchise, Killer
Film reports:
Palmer is also putting
together a draft for the upcoming movie Dune. Production for Spirit
House is still in the baby stages at this moment, so nobody else is
reported to be attached. Its pretty easy to assume that they want to make a
franchise out of this, given the plain fact that this novel is one of eleven
books that center on the same private eye character and his dangerous
adventures. Its now merely a matter of whether or not the execution will be
good enough to boost that kind of revenue, as is the risk with every other
potential franchise film out there nowadays....
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Posted: 6/15/2010 1:22:35 AM |
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At the Foreign
Correspondents Club of Thailand on Thursday evening 10 June 2010 a large
audience turned out to watch a series of videos shot during the May 14th to 19th
period when violence erupted in parts of Bangkok. The panelists were
photographers and cameramen (no women on the panel) who had, often at great
personal risk, shot compelling images. After watching almost one hour of the
events unfold through these images, I had the question as to what to make of
what I saw on the TV monitors.
I suspect that I wasnt
alone in feeling the powerful emotions that images of being dead bodies, the
wounded, soldiers firing M16s and armed demonstrators throwing firecrackers,
Molotov cocktails. There were also images of the Men In Black (MiB), the name
given to a group of men who wore (mostly) black and were armed with handguns or
M16s or other weapons. Those on the panel contradicted the governments claim
that there were 500 hundred such MiB. It is likely to be exceedingly difficult
to find out the exact number, who these mystery were, their affiliations with
outsiders, their connection to the Red Shirt demonstrators, and who financed,
organized and led these men. Or if indeed there were multiple groups of MiB.
These MiB moved like particles in a quantum system. Everyone sought to collapse
the quantum state and measure what was inside the war zone. ...
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Posted: 6/13/2010 10:31:21 PM |
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Politics in Thailand, as in most
countries, is a tug of war between the past and the future. The constitution and
institutions function as setting the ground rules for the tug of war and assign
referees who show a red card when one side violates the rules. That is the
theory. Nation states arose as way to exercise on sovereignty over geographic
borders. The idea of exercise of that sovereignty as the internal affairs of
states within those borders is an old, established one.
It is hard to let go of the idea
that geographic borders will matter less in the future. Borders are in the
processing of diminishing in importance with collateral consequences for
sovereignty, constitutions and political institutions. Place matters less than
it once did. Place is analogue. We have entered a digital world that, for
communications purposes, makes geographic borders irrelevant. ...
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Posted: 6/10/2010 11:59:26 PM |
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Tomorrow
Friday, 11 June 2010, I'll post a blog on Bandwidth, Social Networks and
Political Dissent.
What is happens when geographic borders collide with the
digital world? ...
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Posted: 6/10/2010 12:34:21 AM |
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Who we are, how we feel about ourselves, not to mention how we organize our
life is contingent on what we remember. Without our memory, our world collapses
not unlike a black hole where all information is lost (or at least
inaccessible).
Writing fiction is an actively engagement of memory. The characters
memories, the way they are affected and deal with memories is an essential part
of the story. In real life, when there is a trial, a witness is asked to recall
what she or he saw. By recalling events, we engage in memory recall. ...
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Posted: 6/8/2010 11:13:13 PM |
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The demonstrations have
ended in Bangkok, but the Thai script wars continue. This reflects the fact that
both the government and the Reds Shirts are deeply divided. There is one thing
that binds them. There are certain universal tropes used to silence or dismiss
their critics (Thailand isnt unique in using them). In waging the propaganda
wars, the advantage is to the government as they have more resources to bring to
bear to censor their critics. For example blocking websites for not telling what
they deem to be truth.
There is the rub. The
truth. How it is told and who tells it and what is to be done with those who
seek to tell a different truth? Different truths like ambiguous heroes can cause
confusion. Thus the official justification for bans, censorship and
detentions. ...
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Posted: 6/7/2010 1:23:09 AM |
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