The Writer's Life: The Writer's Life 2/24

Among a recent batch of book donations was Lullaby Town by Robert Crais. Although the title doesn’t quite fit the proceedings, it is an entertaining read. The story is simple: a successful Hollywood producer hires a private eye to find the wife and child he divorced long ago. The trail leads to a small Connecticut town and NYC. Along the way there is a lot of gun play. Told in the first person by the hero, Elvis Cole, it features a lot of the smart aleck, cynical humor of the classic novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald in solid prose and dialogue, minus the plot convolutions. The novel’s best asset is its authenticity in investigative techniques and weaponry. Curious about the author’s background, I checked out his website, which provided only this morsel: “…using elements of his own life.” His Wiki profile offered no further illumination in this regard. I assume he has experience in some sort of security operations. Crais, who has received numerous awards and whose work has been published in 62 countries, grew up in Louisiana and graduated from LSU. He has written 20 novels, 16 featuring Cole or his laconic partner, Joe Pike, in the lead. Lullaby Town was his third and demonstrates that he had already hit his stride. The book, published in 1992, remains popular. A recent check at Amazon, where 12 million books are listed, found it at 54,385th, this more than 20 years after its debut. Surprisingly, only one of his novels, Hostage, starring Bruce Willis, has been adapted to the screen. It went nowhere. Lullaby Town would appeal to fans of fast-paced thrillers. Is the action plausible? More so than in most of this type of fare. The suspense lies in the fate of the supporting cast. Its 300+ pages fly by, reading more like 250. On a scale of five, I rate it 3.5.

I've committed another gaffe regarding my PC. Frustrated at being unable to find a venue that would allow me to recover files I stored on a number of floppy discs, I bought a converter at Amazon, using $21 in gift certificate money I'd earned online so I wouldn't have to dig into my own pocket per se. Like a knucklehead I assumed I'd simply plug it into the USB port, slide a disc in, and read. No, it requires a small program to be uploaded into the computer, and I failed to check if it would be compatible with Windows 7. It isn't. It is with XP. I researched downloading XP, but it was complicated and there were a lot of warnings about it not running well, so I passed. For the second time this month I feel like an idiot. I should have learned not to be presumptuous when I downloaded Microsoft Word and failed to note the annoying extras that could have been avoided simply by unchecking a box.

The day wasn't entirely negative. Wondering if my Cruzer backup stick would work while I was disconnected from the internet, I plugged it in, spotted a "Launch" tab, and clicked on it. It asked for a password. I typed in the one I use for all non-monetary sites and voila -- the stick is functional again. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a system backup on it, although I was certain I'd done that when I'd first bought the thing. What a month.
Vic's 5th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/okxkwh5

Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
Vic's Short Story Collection: http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tinyurl.com/pdxwsnt

Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp

Vic's Horror Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3f

Vic's Blog: http://vicfortezza.blogspot.com/

Vic's Web Site: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/