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2010 Macavity Award Finalist, Best Mystery Nonfiction

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Bookname ROGUE MALES:
CONVERSATIONS & CONFRONTATIONS ABOUT THE WRITING LIFE

Now Available as an eBook!

"Craig McDonald's outstanding interview collections provide a steady supply of insight, inspiration, and fascination, and will become cornerstones of this crime writing generation's history. These are writers who understand and love their craft, interviewed by a writer who understands and loves his craft. If there's a better combination than that for a rare level of insight into the minds behind the work, I can't imagine what it might be. Rogue Males, like its predecessor, Art in the Blood, is a treasure."
   —MICHAEL KORYTA, ENVY THE NIGHT

Read more praise here.

"ROGUE MALE: An uncontrolled animal that lives apart from the rest of its herd or group, acting independently and using unorthodox methods that are unpredictable. His reasons for challenging the status quo are often excellent. (He is) a dark horse and an unknown quantity."

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FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

It is a dangerous thing to know a writer," Hemingway cautioned.

But I've chased down and tried my best to corner the writers whom I most revere. I've pressed my heroes for answers.

The writers I've spoken with over the past five or six years have by turns been funny, warm, truculent, insightful and sometimes brusque. Some have been extremely thoughtful, and some have been flip or prickly.

The interviews have been cordial and charged.

They've rarely been less than provocative.

In the following interviews, you will encounter mavericks, trailblazers and the gadflies. Men of conscience, entrepreneurs and magnificent bastards.

They are variously crusaders and reformers … exhibitionists and isolates. These are writers who have lost parents and wives and children, sometimes through tragedy, sometimes for pursuing their art, and sometimes as a result of their own head-shaking bad behavior. When it comes to their excesses, most of these men are their own harshest and best/worst critics.

Through it all, to a man, they have remained stubbornly creative, working alone, writing novels and stories through all manners of turmoil and adversity. These writers embody Papa's admonition and they "use the pain" to inform their best compositions—the works that are likely to be the ones that will endure and influence the next crop of rogue males who are, for better or worse, just testing the fences.

Echoing James Ellroy, "Here's to them."

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Order now!
IndieBound (support your local bookstore)
Amazon (Hardcover)
Amazon (Paperback)
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Powells

Buy the eBook:
Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook

Bleak House Books hardcover, May 2009: ISBN-13: 978-1-60648-036-6
Bleak House Books trade paperback, May 2009: ISBN-13: 978-1-932557-45-9
Adams Media eBook, July 2011: ASIN: B005FFP4BK

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I
THE LEGENDS
James Crumley: The Right Madness
Elmore Leonard: Ten Rules

PART II
KITH & KIN
Daniel Woodrell: Crime in the Ozarks
Alistair MacLeod: The Tuning of Perfection

PART III
DARK HISTORY
Andrew Vachss: Two Trains Running
James Ellroy: To Live and Die in L.A.

PART IV
PAGE TO SCREEN AND BACK
Max Allan Collins: On the Road
Stephen J. Cannell: Hollywood Tough

PART V
DUTY & HONOR
Craig Holden: Love & Death
Pete Dexter: The Poetry of Violence

PART VI
THRILLER
Randy Wayne White: Perfect Law
Lee Child: One Shot

PART VII
TROUBADOURS
Tom Russell: Tough Company
Kinky Friedman: Independence Day

PART VIII
THE DESERT DIALOGUES
James Sallis & Ken Bruen

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ROGUE MALES BOOK TRAILER



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PRAISE FOR ROGUE MALES

"A fascinating follow-up to the 2006 Art in the Blood dialogue with leading crime writers, this collection by journalist and fiction writer McDonald (Head Games) underlines the "rogue male" theme by putting some of the most influential crime fiction wizards under the spotlight. There are choice nuggets in the chatter between McDonald and the scribes, Leonard revealing the secret to James Patterson's profitable corporate brand, Andrew Vachss endorsing the merits of print journalism and Ellroy labeling the late poet Anne Sexton "hot but doomed." Wannabe writers will savor the various tidbits of information about novelization and screenwriting from veterans Max Allan Collins, Stephen J. Cannell and Pete Dexter. The troubadour section of the book has its crowning glory with a howling yuk-fest by singer/ writer Kinky Friedman and an insightful tit-for-tat by literary mavericks James Sallis and Ken Bruen. Informative, compulsively readable and mentally spicy."
   —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"McDonald, author of two crime novels starring raffish crime writer Hector Lassiter (Head Games, 2007, and Toros & Torsos, 2008), is also a critic and interviewer. In Art in the Blood (2006), he compiled 20 uniformly fascinating interviews with major crime writers. As a writer and an unabashed fan of the hard-boiled style and worldview, McDonald brings a knowledge and point of view to his questions that unlock the personality behind the public persona in all of his subjects. His subjects tend to be writers' writers... not mass-market household names but authors with whom readers make a deep and lasting connection. A must for all fans of the "rogue males" who populate the edgiest crime fiction."
   —BILL OTT, BOOKLIST

"Craig McDonald gives a peek behind the creative curtain with this illuminating compilation of 16 author interviews. McDonald shows his skill at getting writers to talk about themselves, their work and the craft of writing. McDonald, an Edgar nominee for Head Games, also offers insightful introductions and a bibliography for each author. As a result, you want to immediately start reading each author's works."
   —OLINE H. COGDILL, SUN SENTINEL

"Thanks to McDonald's preparation and skills as an interviewer, this is one of the better collections of its kind."
   —JON L. BREEN, MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE

"There seems to be more natural give and take between McDonald and the other authors than one usually finds in interviews. Credit that to McDonald being well-read—studied, even—in each author's oeuvre, as well as intelligent questions that do not simply repeat from author to author. Combine those qualities with men who are (mostly) willing to discuss what they have done with their lives, and I found myself hating that each interview had to end. For those in the writing life, for those considering entering into it, when you try to assess why (and at some point you will), reading Rogue Males is a good place to start."
   —COREY WILDE, THE DROWNING MACHINE

"Rogue Males... is weightier than the first and, especially when read after the other books, leaves between its pages, an after-image of the author himself. This time around, McDonald is a presence, not just a prompt, and his subjects respond to him as a peer. We feel we're hanging out backstage with the bands while they compare notes on clubs, groupies and record companies."
   —HARDBOILED WONDERLAND (read the full review here)

"No, this isn't the newest Hector Lassiter novel, but a great collection of interviews with various crime writers... If you want to learn a thing or two about the craft of crime writing, I really can't think of a better place to start. Besides, the James Crumley and extensive Daniel Woodrell interview are worth the price of admission alone."
   —BLOODY KNUCKLES, CALLUSED FINGERTIPS

"Rogue Males is a collection of interviews and conversations with (mostly) crime writers such as Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, James Sallis, Daniel Woodrell and Pete Dexter. McDonald knows his stuff. A good intro to contemporary crime writing and writers."
   —GLASS HOMBRE

"This was a very interesting book especially for writers or crime fiction fans to go beyond the character and learn something about their favorite authors."
   —MUSIC AND MORE (read the full review here)

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Brian Lindenmuth interviews Craig at Spinetingler.

John Kenyon interviews Craig at Things I'd Rather Be Doing.

Jedidiah Ayres interviews Craig at Hardboiled Wonderland.

Crime novelist Sandra Ruttan interviews Craig about interviewing for the Baltimore Examiner.

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Coming soon from Bleak House Books
French translation coming from Moisson Rouge


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