Detective Lankford speaks

Triple Emmy winner Bryan Cranston discusses THE LINCOLN LAWYER, in which he plays the suspiciously named Detective Lankford. I've seen the flick, which is great, but there is definitely some Lankford abuse going on throughout the picture. More on the movie in a few days.

More from Jerry

The late, great Jerry Fielding

David Speed sent me the link to this cool montage he created for this early piece by one of my favorite composers, the great Jerry Fielding. I really dig it. Here's how he describes it:

Hi Terrill,


I posted this on Nick Redman's wall yesterday; in addition, I mailed it out to Elizabeth & Hillary Fielding, Mark Hendrik and another handful or so of potentially interested FB friends.

Since your bona fides as a JFAS member are easily discernible, I thought you might also be interested in this artifact of Jerry's early career, which I believe was not only the first recording under his name but also the LAST recording he would make before his arranging and bandleading career, both in and out of the studio, received a big-time - if not exactly welcome - boost by virtue of being blacklisted by his erstwhile Hollywood employers.

A sobering note: recorded in 1953, this album has now reached the ripe old age of 58, one year older than Jerry ever got to be. 

Anyhoo, aside from the exemplary arrangement, featuring solos from Fielding friends, Buddy Collette on alto and Joe Howard on trombone (preceded by tenor saxophonist Don Lodice, about whom I can find little in the way of info, much less ANY images), my modest vid features a couple of short but sweet JF-related LA Times articles w/ pics, circa '47 and '52. I do hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely,
David Speed

It happens....

Another day, another cover

JT designs covers a lot faster than I can edit old manuscripts.

JT Lindoos strikes again!

Here's the proposed cover for the new edition of SHOOTERS, courtesy of JT Lindroos. This one is proving a bit more controversial than NORTH OF SUNSET, so I thought I'd give my "followers" a sneak peak and see what you all thought. There will be some tweaks and changes along the way, so all comments and suggestions are welcome.

Me? I love it. But don't let that sway you....

It begins

I've been wanting to do a follow up post to my "line in the sand" rant but let's face it, I'm not much of a blogger. I'm going to try to get better. A lot has happened since that blog. A slightly different version of it ran in the back pages of Publisher's Weekly yesterday, thanks to Wendy Werris and Lynn Andriani. A number of Blogs also reposted the original post, sometimes only reprinting parts of it, which led to some confusion, but it also made me aware that I had left quite a bit out of the story in the first place. I'll try to fill in the gaps in the weeks to come, but right now I am working on bringing some work to the Kindle and its cousins. I'm putting together a team to help guide me through this new land. So far the most important member of this team has been Lee Goldberg, who knows just about everything there is to know about this stuff. He has been my e-Guru and has been an invaluable resource. His blog can be found here: http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/ and at the right side of this page under the title "A Writer's Life."

The second member of the Seven Samurai is JT Lindroos, who kindly dropped me a note after the blog post and said he'd like to help me with the cover designs. I sent him a photo that I wanted to use for a short story collection I'm preparing and he quickly sent me back a number of different designs. I think we've settled on the one up above. Click on it if you want to see it larger. I think he did a great job.

I'll try to post updates as I go along and introduce you to all the people it takes to do this "on your own." Right now I am editing the scanned versions of my first two novels, SHOOTERS and ANGRY MOON. The plan is to get them on Kindle, along with the short story collection, by the end of the month.

So let me know what you think of the new cover. There is still time to make changes. That's what's turning out to be the most fun about this. The quickness and flexibility of not going through committees has a lot going for it.

JT Lindroos can be found here: http://jtlindroos.carbonmade.com/