Six Down & Out Books Titles Receive 2017 Anthony Award Nominations

When the Anthony Award nominations were announced in early May, we were thrilled and humbled to see that six of our titles were among those being recognized as among the best crime books of 2016.

For Best Anthology or Collection, UNLOADED: CRIME WRITERS WRITING WITHOUT GUNS edited by Eric Beetner; CANNIBALS: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE PINE BARRENS by Jen Conley; and BLOOD ON THE BAYOU: BOUCHERCON ANTHOLOGY 2016 edited by Greg Herren received nominations.

And for Best Novella, NO HAPPY ENDINGS by Angel Luis Colón; CROSSWISE, a Tommy and Shayna Crime Caper by S.W. Lauden; and BEWARE THE SHILL, a Tale of Deception by John Shipphird received nominations.

“Congratulations to the authors of all the exceptional books and stories that were recognized with Anthony Award nominations,” said Eric Campbell, publisher of Down & Out Books. “I am particularly honored and proud that six of our publications were included in the nominee list. To those authors, I offer my highest compliments.”

Also nominated for Best Paperback Original was LEADFOOT, a crime novel by Eric Beetner, which Down & Out Books will reissue next month.

The winner in each category, chosen by Bouchercon 2017 conference attendees, will be announced immediately following a Sunday brunch on October 15 in Toronto.

Down & Out Books Celebrates Sixth Anniversary with Discounts, Contest for Readers

We are absolutely thrilled to celebrate our sixth anniversary as an independent publisher of award-winning literary and crime fiction, and want to share our joy with you.

We will launch a summer-long promotion offering readers and booksellers special discounts and a feature a contest to win free books and swag. Details will be posted on our website as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.

While many indie publishers have come and gone over the last six years, we continue to seek partnerships and opportunities for expansion. In 2016, ABC Group Documentation became our first imprint with a focus on fiction at the edge of the mainstream. In early 2017, Ron Earl Phillips’ Shotgun Honey publishing company officially became our second imprint. This summer will see the launch of Down & Out: The Magazine, a quarterly digest of the best crime fiction has to offer.

“My goal from the beginning was to publish books built around memorable characters and strong storylines from both established and up-and-coming authors,” said Eric Campbell, publisher of Down & Out Books. “I am proud of what we have achieved to date and am very excited about our future.”

New in the Down & Out Bookstore This Month

June 5: GITMO by Shawn Corridan and Gary Waid.

Retired smuggler Dixon Sweeney exits Raiford after eight long years behind bars, vowing “From here on out, things are gonna be different.”

And boy is he right: his wife has left him, emptied his safe deposit box, moved their entire house to Key West, and is shacking up with Sweeney’s former partner and Best Man. Worse yet, Buck Wiggins is after him for a sixty-five grand debt. But Sweeney’s broke! So Buck sends Gooch and Gunther Canseco, twin towers of steroidal ape stuff to tune Sweeney up each week until he pays Buck back.

And he thought life in prison sucked!

When a mysterious Cuban-American approaches Sweeney with an offer, Sweeney is forced to accept. The payoff? A cool half mil. The problem? The money is hidden inside a house in Cuba. Worse yet: on Guantanamo Naval Base, a.k.a. GITMO!

Strap on your seat belt and prepare for the ride of your life, as unlikely hero Dixon Sweeney and his beat-up Chris-Craft challenge the Gulf Stream, waterspouts, man-eating sharks, the crazy Canseco twins, the Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, the entire Cuban military and one super sexy senorita in this hilarious romp through the Florida Straits!

June 12: LAGNIAPPE, a Collection by Les Edgerton.

Twenty years after the publication of his first short story collection, Monday’s Meal, Les Edgerton delivers the goods once again in this collection of harrowing tales of outlaws, ex-cons, frightened men and women, rap-partners throwing back tall boys and taller tales, children forced to become killers, stabbings and shootings, bad asses and sad asses…a wide-ranging collection of distinct and memorable characters who will exhibit a kind of wisdom not obtainable from the halls of academia. This is not a gathering of people contemplating their navels but real people facing the consequences of their actions…and it ain’t often pretty.

June 16: DOWN ON THE STREET by Alec Cizak. Published by ABC Group Documentation, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

What price can you put on a human life?

Times are tough. Cabbie Lester Banks can’t pay his bills. His gorgeous young neighbor, Chelsea, is also one step from the streets. Lester makes a sordid business deal with her. Things turn out worse than he could ever have imagined.

“Alec Cizak demonstrates in Down on the Street that he remains among the top fiction writers alive, regardless of genre. This is a crime story, but it’s so much more. Words like sharpened blades cut out the reader’s heart, emotionally and otherwise. I read this novella in a burst. A week later, I’m still absorbing it.” —Rob Pierce, author of Uncle Dust and With the Right Enemies.

June 19: CRIMINAL ECONOMICS by Eric Beetner.

Standing between Bo and Slick and $642,000 from the bank job:

Prison. A hurricane. A horny cop. A naked priest. An angry cab driver. Two wanna-be criminals. A speeding train. A hot soldering iron. A peeping tom. A fed-up girl. A gun dealer. A homeless lady. An empty shotgun. A girlfriend with other plans. One pissed-off mom. Two pissed-off drug dealers. A bitchy landlord. And 48 crazy hours.

When this is all over, they’ll either be rich, in prison or dead.

June 23: BLACKY JAGUAR AGAINST THE COOL CLUX CULT by Angel Luis Colón. Published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

Ex-IRA hard-ass, wanted international criminal, and all-around hooligan Blacky Jaguar is back and on the run.

After painting the Cross Bronx Expressway red—literally—and losing his beloved car Polly to his ex, Linda Chen (who isn’t returning his calls because she’s not a complete idiot), Blacky decides his time is running short and has tasked himself with one last stop before tossing hands up and surrendering: Graceland.

Of course, nothing Blacky Jaguar sets his mind to ends up being simple. Contacted by an old frenemy, Broderick Kimbo, Blacky finds himself strong-armed into protecting the budding leader of a growing social justice movement against escalating attacks from an online cabal known as The Cool Clux Cult and their shadowy internet tough-guy leader, neilDATASStyson.

What happens when Blacky Jaguar meets a problem he can’t punch? What happens when our Irish hero discovers a pair of Doc Martens is utterly inappropriate for walking the wilderness? What happens when Blacky discovers the glory of the Chicken Biscuit?

What happens when Blacky Jaguar goes up against The Cool Clux Cult?

June 26: AMERICAN STATIC by Tom Pitts.

After being beaten and left for dead, Steven finds himself stranded alongside the 101 in a small Northern California town. When a mysterious stranger named Quinn offers a hand in exchange for help reuniting with his daughter in San Francisco, Steven gets in the car and begins a journey from which there is no return.

Quinn has an agenda all his own and he’s unleashing vengeance at each stop along his path. With a coked-up sadist ex-cop chasing Quinn, and two mismatched small town cops chasing the ex-cop, Steven is unaware of the violent tempest brewing.

Corrupt cops and death-dealing gangsters manipulate the maze each of them must navigate to get to the one thing they’re all after: Teresa, the girl holding the secret that will rip open a decades-old scandal and scorch San Francisco’s City Hall.

Steven finds Teresa homeless and strung out as their pursuers close in and bodies begin to pile high on the Bay Area’s back streets. Hand in hand Steven and Teresa lead the mad parade of desperate men to the edge of the void.

And Coming in July…

The hits just keep coming this Summer!

On July 10th, the hard-hitting crime novel SOUTH OF CINCINNATI by Jonathan Ashley comes out.

A week later on July 17th, the long-awaited return of PI Nick Polo hits the bookshelf with POLO’S LONG SHOT by Jerry Kennealy.

July 21st is the publication date for Robert Leland Taylor's THROUGH THE ANT FARM from ABC Group Documentation, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

Closing out the month on July 31st is a new collection of stories from the Triangle Chapter of Sisters in Crime, CAROLINA CRIMES: 21 TALES OF NEED, GREED and DIRTY DEEDS, edited by Nora Gaskin Esthimer with an introduction by Jeffery Deaver.

Finally, a special treat for fans of Anthony Neil Smith: we're reissuing eleven of his crime novels this Summer, with the first ones coming out this month!

Our Featured 99¢ Crime Novels for June

We’re featuring two ebooks for 99¢ this month.

From June 1st through 15th, THE GENUINE, IMITATION PLASTIC KIDNAPPING, a comic crime novel by Les Edgerton, may be purchased for just 99¢ on Kindle, Nook, iTunes, and Kobo. Also available from the Down & Out Bookstore in both .mobi and .epub formats.

A mix of Cajun gumbo, a couple tablespoons of kinky sex and a dash of unusual New Orleans settings and you wind up with Les Edgerton’s latest romp fest!

Pete Halliday is busted out of baseball for gambling and travels to New Orleans to make his fortune hustling. Five years later, he’s deep in debt to bookie and in cahoots with Tommy LeClerc, a Cajun with a tiny bit of Indian blood who considers himself a red man.

Tommy inveigles a reluctant Pete into one scheme after another, the latest a kidnapping scheme where they’ll snatch the Cajun Mafia King and hold his amputated hand for some serious jack.

Along the way, Pete is double-crossed by Tommy and falls in love with part-time hooker and full-time waitress Cat Duplaisir. With both the Italian and Cajun mobs after them, a chase through Jazz Fest, a Tourette’s outbreak in a black bar and other zany adventures, all seems lost.

And don't miss checking out Les’s new short story collection, LAGNIAPPE, new this month from Down & Out Books.

From June 16th through 30th, CATCHING WATER IN A NET, a Jake Diamond mystery and the winner of the 2000 St. Martin's Press/PWA First Private Eye Novel Award by J.L. Abramo, may be purchased for just 99¢ on Kindle, Nook, iTunes, and Kobo. Also available from the Down & Out Bookstore in both .mobi and .epub formats.

San Francisco PI Jake Diamond is a hero who plays both sides of the private eye street. He is a careless dresser with a sloppy lifestyle and he couldn’t keep his marriage from falling apart. But he also epitomizes the best of the modern shamus. He has the kinds of friends a man in his profession needs—jailbirds, mob bosses, and a cop who can surreptitiously run license plate numbers for him.

Jake has been down on his luck lately, barely making enough money to pay the bills but it looks like business might finally be picking up. A woman comes to his office begging him to find her missing husband who has been accused of murder. Jake remembers that his mentor Jimmy Pigeon always says “Whenever I’m asked to locate a missing spouse, the words ‘no, but thanks for asking’ always come to mind” and almost turns the case down, but then he learns that the murder victim was Jimmy Pigeon.

Determined to discover the identity of Pigeon’s killer, Diamond scrambles between Los Angeles and San Francisco following leads that range from weak to delusional. With the help of his trusty and sarcastic assistant, Darlene Roman, compulsive gambler Vinnie “String” Stradivarius, and Italian-American “businessman” Joey Russo, Jake slowly uncovers the motives behind Pigeon’s murder.

Jake’s adventure has all the components of a great new private eye series—scares, suspense, lots of laughs, a few tears and a big surprise at the end.

This Month’s Featured Author

In a continuing series of features from our authors, Lawrence Kelter writes about the Elusive Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow. Larry's new book is BACK TO BROOKLYN, the sequel to MY COUSIN VINNY. Check it out!

Did you ever want something so badly you could taste it? Of course you have. Who hasn’t? I was afraid of heights, so I never dreamed of being an astronaut. But like any other kid, I dreamed of playing major league ball, shredding lead guitar in a rock band, racing at Le Mans, and any number of other pursuits I was not meant to succeed at—a bitter pill for any young man to swallow.

Then along came the personal computer, and BAM, I was back in the game.

Now, my story is probably not much different than any of yours. I wanted to write the Great American Novel.

And I did.

Repeatedly, in fact.

At least I thought I had. But few agreed with me. All right, it wasn’t all that bleak. Along with a shoebox full of rejection letters, there were acceptances from agents and a smattering of publishing deals.

But not enough to make a career of it.

My accountant called it a hobby, a remark he paid for with a swift beheading.

Continue reading …

Down & Out Authors on the Net

• J.L. Abramo

An excerpt from the author’s new crime novel CONEY ISLAND AVENUE was featured on Omnimystery News.

The crime novelist was a guest on Kevin’s Corner, where he talks about the writing process and his new novel.

The Pulp and Mystery Shelf interviewed the author, where he discussed his work.

• Eric Campbell

The publisher of Down & Out Books was featured on The Booklist Reader in its Small-Press Lineup. "Some of the biggest crime fiction is perpetrated by some of the smallest players," they say. "We’re determined to shine the spotlight on them before they break out and wreak havoc across the whole country. Read them — before they publish again!"

• Danny Gardner

The author was interviewed on The Reading Frenzy, where he discusses his new crime novel A NEGRO AND AN OFAY.

• Jack Getze

The crime novelist was one of the featured authors in a post by Barb Goffman on SleuthSayers, talking about fictional towns based on real places. His new book, THE BLACK KACHINA, is published this coming August.

• Jeffery Hess

The author of the new Navy noir collection COLD WAR CANOE CLUB was interviewed by James R. Duncan.

• Dana King

An excerpt from the author’s latest Penns River crime novel RESURRECTION MALL was featured on Omnimystery News.

The author was a guest on In Reference To Murder, writing about how he goes about researching characters and plot points for his books.

He was also a guest of Elizabeth A. White with a post titled "Truly Like Going Home".

And he was featured on Mystery Playground with a recipe for (and instructions on how to drink) The Depth Charge.

He was later a guest on BookBitch.com, where he writes about research, in general and specifically when it comes to plot points in a story.

Finally, the very busy author was interviewed on Books Can Be Deadly.

• Nick Kolakowski

The crime novelist writes about thrillers and real life in a feature on ITW Presents: The Thrill Begins. His new book is A BRUTAL BUNCH OF HEARTBROKEN SAPS.

He was also a guest with Elizabeth A. White visiting rural noir.

• S.W. Lauden

The author of the Tommy & Shayna crime capers asks an intriguing question — Are Book Trailers Worth It? — in a guest post on Do Some Damage: An Inside Look at Crime Fiction.

He later followed up that discussion with Elizabeth A. White on what the word "crazy means when describing art, inviting readers to share their crazy book thoughts.

• Paul D. Marks

The co-editor of the COAST TO COAST anthologies was the featured author on Criminal Minds talking about a number of topics, including the role that setting plays in books.

• Gerald M. O’Connor

The 2017 IPPY Awards were handed out at a ceremony in New York City, and congratulations to the author as a winner in the category of Best Adult Fiction e-Book for THE ORIGINS OF BENJAMIN HACKETT!

• Thomas Pluck

The author talks about the development of the lead character in and the research for his new crime thriller BAD BOY BOOGIE on Crimespree Magazine.

• Scott Loring Sanders

The author of the short story collection SHOOTING CREEK interviews novelist Lisa Under on Something Is Going To Happen.

• Frank Zafiro

The author of THE LAST COLLAR talks about going from a crime-fighter to a crime novelist in an discussion on K5’s New Day Northwest, the NBC affiliate in Seattle.

He subsequently wrote on his blog about the experience of being interviewed on television.

He was also a guest of Pam Stack on Authors on the Air, talking about his time as a linguist in the military, his police career, the experience of co-authoring, and why writers say they’re writers, not authors…and more.

New This Month on NetGalley…

Down & Out Books has uploaded two new titles for review this month.

POLO’S LONG SHOT, the new Nick Polo mystery by Jerry Kennealy (July 17, 2017) and THE BLACK KACHINA by Jack Getze (August 7, 2017) have been added to our library on NetGalley this month.

If you are interested in obtaining an eARC of any of our available titles for review, visit the Down & Out Books page on NetGalley and submit your request. We value your honest opinion of our books and hope to see your reviews on the Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble sites or your own website or blog. Send us your link!