Now with added Bluesky!

Much as I’ve loved Twitter over the years, it seems as though it might be on its last legs. I didn’t want it to collapse before I’d found a new home, so I’ve wheedled an invite code out of my alter ego Fiona, and set up my own account on Bluesky Social.

It’s still very new and I haven’t tracked down all my many crime/noir contacts, or posted much, yet. But it seems very friendly and ‘happening’, much like Twitter did in the good old days, so I’m hoping to spend (waste?!) quite a bit of time over there.

If you’re already on Bluesky and would like to follow me, you can find me on @tessmakovesky.bsky.social, and that alter ego I mentioned is at @fionaglass.bsky.social. If you haven’t yet joined and would like to, then hit me up for an invite code. I haven’t been on there long enough to be given one yet but I should have in a couple of weeks and will be happy to help.

Seven years – still going strong!

What am I referring to? Well, my first book ‘Raise the Blade’, which was first published by Caffeine Nights almost exactly seven years ago. Since then it’s been released from contract, and re-published on Kindle with a few minor edits and a gory new cover (below). But slightly to my surprise it’s still proving as popular as ever, with a super new five-star review on Amazon appearing only a few days ago.

“Dark and funny… some very humorous interludes…”

You can see the review here if you’d like, and if you want to see what all the fuss is about, then why not check the book out? You might find you like it just as much as this latest reviewer did!

“Like a spider wrapping flies…

Would you go, alone and unarmed, into the home of a murderer? This darkly humorous novella examines the theory that certain people contribute to their own downfall through the choices they make, whilst referencing Pink Floyd’s brilliant track Brain Damage – and the odd elephant or two.

When psychopath Duncan leaves a trail of duct-tape-wrapped bodies scattered across the suburbs of Birmingham, there’s nothing to link the victims except his own name and address, carefully placed on each new corpse. Six very different people follow his clues, each convinced they can use Duncan to further their own selfish or naïve ends. Is there a reason Duncan’s driven to target these particular individuals, or does their very nature contribute to their fate? Will any of them be strong enough to break the cycle and escape a painful death? Or will Duncan reel them in and rearrange them to his own insane ideal?”

Embers of Bridges out now!

There’s great excitement in the Makovesky household as my latest book has just gone live on Kindle (and KU). ‘Embers of Bridges’ is a comedy noir set in Birmingham featuring a hapless gang of petty criminals, robberies, loyalty, jewellery, football, a hint of gay lurve, betrayal, and a bizarre getaway on a canal boat.

***

Van driver Mickey’s been following best mate Gaz from one scrape to another since primary school. He’s been deluding himself about the reasons for almost as long: Gaz is fun; Gaz brings excitement to his otherwise dull life; Gaz’s sister Trudy is hot enough for any kid to die for.

Now the Live Hard, Die Young gang’s all grown up and the scrapes have turned into robberies, but the excuses stay the same. Mickey’s loyalty is about to be tested, though, as Gaz is acting weird and the robberies keep going tits-up. As their latest job in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter leads to a bizarre getaway on a canal boat, he can think of only one thing. Not him. Not Gaz. This can’t be lurve. Can it?

But Mickey isn’t the only one with a secret. And when he finds out what Gaz is hiding, he has to decide which of his bridges to burn…

“Embers of Bridges has it all: dark wit, a distinctive Birmingham setting, and a grifter you can’t help liking…” ~Margot Kinberg, author of the Joel Williams mysteries and the Patricia Stanley mysteries

“This author is fabulous at building an atmosphere… Beautifully written and quietly compelling, this is a gem of a story.” ~Ellie Thomas, author of London in the Rain and the Twelve Letters series

Prison visiting, Inveraray style

Pic credit: Wikipedia

We’re not long back from a road trip around south-west Scotland to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary. One of several stop-overs was in the small town of Inveraray, which boasts a harbour, a huge castle, some stunning scenery – and a museum set in, and dedicated to the history of, its historical jail.

We’d passed through the town several times in the past but never had time to visit the museum. I was also a bit dubious because of the emphasis on ‘grisly displays’ in some of the publicity material. But on a pouring wet, freezing cold October day, it seemed to be the perfect place to shelter from the elements without having to drive out of town for miles.

In the end the grisly stuff wasn’t too bad, since it was limited to one section on the ground floor which dealt with the earliest times at the jail, when people were routinely tortured or put to death in agonisingly brutal ways. I looked at one or two of the information signs, wished I hadn’t, and got through the rest of the section without looking too closely at anything.

After that it was better, though, as various new laws and reforms of the prison system were brought in. Conditions were still far from ideal, with overcrowding rife and punishments that far outweighed the seriousness of their crimes. But at least the sheer sadism seemed to have been watered down, and in some cases peoples’ lives were so terrible that the prison was better than life on the outside.

It was fascinating to look round the various floors, cells, washrooms, and tiny exercise areas, but I also found it a sobering experience. So many wasted lives; so much suffering. So little understanding, or even interest in, the reasons why people were committing crimes. There were tales galore of children whose parents had died or abandoned them, stealing a few paltry items to help feed their younger siblings, and being imprisoned for years or even transported to Australia as a result. No word on what happened to the younger siblings, who probably ether took to stealing themselves or quietly starved to death.

It made me grateful that the penal system in the UK, although not perfect, has at least moved on hugely from this. Although one startling display towards the end showed a typical cell from modern-day Barlinnie jail, also in Scotland, and showed that apart from a TV, some better bedding and an in-cell toilet, almost nothing had changed…

Embers of Bridges coming soon!

It’s official! After weeks (months!) of writing, editing, proofreading, rewriting, re-editing, designing a cover and sweating a few buckets, Embers of Bridges is all set to hit the virtual shelves and will hopefully be available by this time next week.

This noirish comedy of errors in set in Birmingham (the suburbs, the canals and above all, the world famous Jewellery Quarter) and features Mickey, Gaz and the rest of the Live Hard, Die Young gang as well as friendship, loyalty, disillusionment, a few Pink Floyd references and even the occasional elephant.

Here’s the blurb:

“Four friends. One robbery. What price loyalty?

Van driver Mickey’s been following best mate Gaz from one scrape to another since primary school. He’s been deluding himself about the reasons for almost as long: Gaz is fun; Gaz brings excitement to his otherwise dull life; Gaz’s sister Trudy is hot enough for any kid to die for.

Now the Live Hard, Die Young gang’s all grown up and the scrapes have turned into robberies, but the excuses stay the same. Mickey’s loyalty is about to be tested, though, as Gaz is acting weird and the robberies keep going tits-up. As their latest job in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter leads to a bizarre getaway on a canal boat, he can think of only one thing. Not him. Not Gaz. This can’t be lurve. Can it?

But Mickey isn’t the only one with a secret. And when he finds out what Gaz is hiding, he has to decide which of his bridges to burn…”

And here’s the rather spiffing cover, which I designed myself using images from ilya on Pexels and Tim Mossholder on Unsplash. The colours, the bridge and the helicopter are all strangely relevant…

I’ll post again the minute the book’s available, but in the meantime, here are a couple of quotes from readers who’ve devoured the ARC and seem to have enjoyed it…

‛Fiona Glass is fabulous at building an atmosphere and that is one of the gripping elements of this beautifully written and quietly compelling contemporary gay noir story.’ —Ellie Thomas, author of ‘London in the Rain’ and the Twelve Letters series

‘What do you do when life’s going pear-shaped, and the mates you thought you could trust let you down? Embers of Bridges has it all: dark wit, a distinctive Birmingham setting, and a grifter you can’t help liking. Mickey Delaney is just trying to make a life for himself, but with friends like his, that’s not going to be as easy as he’d like! Come along for the ride as Mickey dodges bad traffic, bad weather, bad luck, and dodgy friends!’  —Margot Kinberg, author of the Joel Williams mysteries and the Patricia Stanley mysteries

Crawling out of the coffin…

In my last but one post, I mentioned that if ever I started writing crime and noir again you’d be the first to know. Well, guess what?

Pic credit: Allan Stewart on pixels.com

It’s been a long time away from the genre, but I never expected two years of pandemic, when I could hardly bear to think about crime fiction let alone write it. But for the last few months I have, at last, been able to sit down and work on a darker book again. And the great news is that I’ve actually finished writing it.

So what is it, I hear you ask? Well, it’s called ‘Embers of Bridges’, and it’s a humorous gay noir set in Birmingham (where else), featuring a hapless gang of robbers, the Jewellery Quarter, and a getaway on a canal boat. I first had the idea over a decade ago, but it’s never quite gelled before. Now it has, and I’m surprisingly pleased with the result.

Of course, it’s not quite ready to go out into the world yet. I started on the edits this morning, and as usual it’ll need quite a bit of work. But I already have a cover and a blurb, and I’m really hoping I can turn this baby around in the next few weeks. In which case, once again, you’ll be the first to know…

A Saucerful of Secrets

Last weekend we headed to Birmingham for a much-postponed (thanks to the pandemic) treat – a concert by Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets.

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets

For anyone who doesn’t follow prog rock, Mason is a brilliant rock drummer who formed one quarter of the original line-up of Pink Floyd. Recently he’s put together his own band, including other rock legends such as Guy Pratt and Gary Kemp, to play some of Floyd’s older material. As he himself said, the other surviving members of the group tend to focus on Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, but Floyd was so much more than that. It’s also his own tribute to tortured genius Syd Barrett, the front man of the original band, who wrote much of that early material.

We booked the concert pre-pandemic and had to sit on our hands while it was postponed about four times. This time, we were so used to being disappointed we hardly dared hope, but as it was, we arrived at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall clutching our tickets to find it was all happening at last.

Was it worth the two year wait? Yes, absolutely it was. Every last second was amazing, brilliant, masterful – and surprisingly good fun. Unlike the original band, who even a fan like me has to admit could occasionally be a bit po-faced, Saucerful of Secrets are a lot more relaxed and even, at times, mischievous. In between numbers, Mason provided entertaining snippets looking back at the history of the band and some of the songs they played. Like Vegetable Man, for instance, which he freely admitted was never recorded because it was never finished, because none of them had a clue how to finish it!

The highlight of the night was a complete, unabridged, and pretty much note-perfect rendition of Echoes, possibly the first Floyd track to really sound like Floyd, if you know what I mean. It’s one of my favourites, and I sat utterly spellbound for the 25 minutes it took to play. I could almost have been back in the 1970s, before all the splits and acrimony, listening to the Pink Floyd of old. A very special treat, and one I hope we can repeat some day.

The photo above isn’t mine, sadly – we took a few on a mobile phone, but the lights were so bright the lens focused on those rather than the band members, so all it really looks like is a lightning strike. This pic is courtesy of The Midlands Rocks.

Come and meet the ‘real’ Tess!

I’ve been saying for some time that I’m not reading, watching or writing much crime fiction at the moment – but I suddenly realised that I’ve been much too coy about what I’m doing instead.

Most of you know that Tess is a pen name, and I think I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’m currently concentrating on romance. I may even have hinted that it’s LGBT romance. But that’s been pretty much it. Which makes no sense at all, really, since books is books, reading is reading, and although not everyone who reads noir likes romance (or vice versa), in my case the two aren’t as far apart as you might think.

For starters my characters are quite alike no matter what I write. On top of that, there’s often a whiff of romance in my noir (think Sandra and Mike in ‘Gravy Train’, for instance) and there’s some really dark stuff in some of my romance books. So, after nearly ten years of keeping my two brands firmly separate, I’ve decided to change all that and go for the Big Reveal instead. This is because I’m working so hard on my romance books that I’m getting less and less time to log on to all of Tess’s accounts. It’s got to the point where weeks go by without me visiting Facebook, Twitter or anything much else, and I’ve realised that I’m in dire danger of losing touch with all the wonderful friends I’ve made over the years I’ve been writing as Tess. And you’ve all been so supportive that I’d really hate that.

So with all necessary fanfares and drum rolls, may I introduce my other half – the real person behind the pen name of Tess. Step forward… Fiona Glass. Fiona (that is, me!) has been writing for even longer than Tess, and while she has written some dark crime and noir (eg in the Radgepacket series from Byker Books) she’s also long specialised in LGBT, dark, and paranormal romance.

If you fancy coming along and finding out more about the real me, why not drop into my lnk.bio page which has links to all my various social media accounts, along with web page, blog, newsletter and gawd knows what else. I really hope some of you will choose to follow the real me, and maybe check out books like my dark vampire romance ‘Echoes of Blood’, or my poignant ghost-y novel ‘December Roses’.

All of Tess’s books and stories remain fully available, by the way. I’m not killing myself off, just making it clearer what I’ve been up to for the last year and a half! I really hope some of you (most of you?!) will make the jump and come and say hello. I’ve valued your friendship and support so very much over the last few years and would love to think we can stay in touch. If you do decide to potter on over and check me out, then hi, and welcome to the real me. And if Tess crawls out of her coffin for long enough to write anything else, you’ll be the first to know.

A sudden outbreak of crime movies

There have been some really good crime movies on Sky recently, after rather a long drought. I mentioned The Burnt Orange Heresy the other day, but we’ve also watched a couple of others – Dark Web: Cicada 3301 and Silk Road – that were entertaining in different ways, and I still have Say Your Prayers downloaded and ready to go.

Of the two we’ve seen, I think I preferred Silk Road. This is the (partly fictional, partly true) story of a libertarian young man who set up a drugs delivery service on the dark web, made a fortune, and was eventually tracked down by the DEA and the police. The film featured some cracking performances from Nick Robinson (as hot-shot cyber drug-dealer Ross Ulbricht) and Jason Clarke (last seen as the slightly less criminal half of the politician/gangster siblings in Brotherhood) who played a grizzled, old-fashioned cop reassigned to the cyber crime unit after a misdemeanour. Given that he could barely switch on a laptop this gave rise to some hilarity but as he himself said, “I may be old and slow but I’m not stupid,” and he taught himself, leaned on an informant for tuition, and came close to bringing down Ulbricht all by himself.

The film started slowly with a lot of character building of Ulbricht, his friends and girlfriend, and Clarke’s Rick Bowden. It got rather soapy at times and I felt it could have been trimmed, while still introducing the characters and their motivations. However, once Bowden started to track Ulbricht the pace stepped up and it became a fascinating cat-and-mouse between a computer whizz who’d set up the definitive ‘untraceable’ dark web site, and an old-fashioned cop who refused to give up. In the end things didn’t go quite to plan for either of them, and there was a nice twist as both suffered the consequences.

I liked the way the director played with the audience’s sympathies; we began with a sneaking sympathy for Ulbricht and his ideals, then switched to rooting for Bowden in his efforts to trace Ulbricht and show up his annoyingly patronising bosses – and then made us doubt ourselves in the dying minutes of the film, and with the explanatory credits at the end. All in all a really solid crime movie, well made and well acted, and I’d happily recommend it to anyone.

Dark Web: Cicada 3301 had a similar theme: a tale about a hacker (Jack Kesy) who breaks into a mysterious secret society who run an addictively cryptic game, also on the dark web, whose previous participants have often disappeared. The tone was quirky, at times even surreal, and the end result felt rather like the love child of Deadpool and Videodrome. It raced along from one clue to the next with stalkers, apparent hallucinations, fight scenes, and a nice framing device where Kesy’s character explained his actions to some kind of special court, with frequent flights of fancy to make the prosecutors who’d been pursuing him look even more inept than they actually were.

In the end it was let down by some shockingly caricatured characters and hammy acting, and by the slight feeling that either the writers weren’t quite as brilliant as the plot needed them to be, or that they were but the whole thing had been dumbed down. Not even a cool twist at the end was enough to fully rescue it, but it was entertaining and fun and probably deserves a bit more (but not much more) than the two stars it gets on Rotten Tomatoes…

Arthouse Noir

Last night’s viewing was a fascinating and unusual 2019 movie called The Burnt Orange Heresy. Based on a 1971 book of the same name by American noir author Charles Willeford, it features Claes Bang (who played Dracula in the recent BBC vampire series) as successful but dodgy art critic James Figueras, Elizabeth Debicki as a down-on-her-luck young American woman partying her way round Italy, Mick Jagger (yes, really!) as supremely wealthy art collector Joseph Cassidy, and Donald Sutherland as reclusive artist Jerome Debney.

The plot centres around a deal made between Cassidy and Figueras: Cassidy will arrange for Figueras to interview Debney (the first time anyone has been able to do that for over 50 years) if Figueras obtains one of Debney’s paintings for him. Since Debney lives in a cottage on Cassidy’s Italian estate this sounds straightforward, but needless to say it isn’t, and events spiral into chaos, stoked by Figueras’s drug habit and growing paranoia.

I was interested to see that Willeford’s book dates from the early seventies, because the movie, although set in modern-day Italy, has a really old-fashioned feel that reminded me strongly of the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair. The “exotic” setting (it was filmed around Lake Como); the wealthy characters; the woman who’s been hounded out of her small town background because she (gasp) had an affair with a married man; even the slightly disconnected, artsy dialogue – all could have been lifted straight from a 1960s film. That’s not a bad thing, mind you – it certainly made this movie stand out from the welter of current, and all-too-standard, heist and hustle films.

The pace is slow, and the interactions between the characters are subtle and filled with sub-text. Tension builds almost imperceptibly in the lazy, heat-filled hours and days at Cassidy’s stunning villa. At first it all seems a little too arthouse, but gradually Figueras is dragged into the murky depths of his own making, one poor choice leading to another in an unstoppable downward spiral. The conclusion is shocking, but also oddly satisfying; the deliberate ambiguity suits the tone of the film and the final denouement was reminiscent of the “My memoirs!” line at the end of Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Reviews of The Burnt Orange Heresy are mixed and there were one or two bits that felt out-of-place, such as a formulaic horror-movie-style murder scene, whilst some of Figueras’s actions are so illogical you do wonder how he’s managed to hold down such a high-profile job. The performances are excellent, though (especially Sutherland, who as you might expect steals every scene he appears in and even a few he doesn’t), and in the end this is a really classy film and one I enjoyed immensely. It makes a nice change to have something other than mad car chases and spraying bullets, and the old-fashioned feel never detracts from the surprisingly dark noir storyline.

One bit of trivia: the official blurb for the film says that Figueras is hired to steal one of Debney’s paintings, but that’s a vast over-simplification of a much more complicated arrangement. In fact, Figueras is reluctant to get involved, and only agrees when it becomes apparent that Cassidy has unearthed information about his background that could damage his career. There’s a nice feel of ‘hoist with his own petard’ at the end, but as with all good noir, nobody really gets out of this unscathed. No wonder I liked it so much!

Where the Heck Wednesday: Beau Johnson

Bet you thought you’d never see another one of these posts, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong, because I’m hoping to kick-start the series again in the coming weeks. And here’s the very first in the latest batch, from Bishop Rider author Beau Johnson himself. Over to you, Beau…

Book title: Brand New Dark

Location: Culver City

Author: Beau Johnson

BeauJohnsonFiction.com / Twitter

“Oh, hello there. You startled me. I kid. I kid. I know. I know. But if I’m anything, it’s far from conventional. (insert weird face emoji here)

Anyway.

Tess! Thanks for having us! Very kind of you to give this Canadian and his thoughts your time. 

All right, so today I believe I’m scheduled to discuss location-slash-setting. This is correct? Good. Cool. I mean, it’s the only thing I’ve prepared.  But just so you know, I’m not going to be going on about any old location. Why not? Well, Tess, allow me to count the ways! One, like my main character’s life itself, why yes, I do like to make things more difficult than they should be. And two…well, I don’t really have a two. Honestly, I’m just happy to be here, Tess. More important, I really didn’t think you’d let me get this far.

Anyway.

So, Culver. The city itself, this has always been Bishop Rider’s stomping ground. He wasn’t born there, no, but it is the place he dies. In the overall narrative, however, Culver comes nowhere near a setting that I choose to bring to life. It houses roughly a million or so people, sure, and Rider does visit its sister city, Hanson Falls, quite often, but it’s not the be all/end all to the backdrop of Rider and his struggle.

No, Rider has his safehouses for that. 

Which, in my mind, has always been the location that allows this figment of my imagination to shine.  Each safehouse becoming more integral to the story as the years have worn on–both here, with me writing this as I am, as well as the fractured timelines I tell Rider’s story from.

He prefers one safehouse over another, of course, and yes, there had at one time been three, but alas, life has a habit of getting in the way. (insert explosion emoji here)

Would I change things? Make Culver City a living breathing character if I could go back? Nah, I don’t think I would. It serves its purpose, serving up degenerate after degenerate in all the ways I need/have needed it to. It’s those particular basements in those particular safehouses that have come to stand out with regard to location in Rider’s universe. I imagine the upgrades have something to do with this as well, perhaps a killbox or two, but I feel if I give anything else away here I may start spoiling certain storylines to come. It means I’m going to have to back away now, Tess, slowly, while offering my thanks once again as I do. I say this from above the ravine one of those safehouses I mentioned backs onto, as Rider and I look down upon Culver as it sleeps. There are no stars here tonight either, Tess, and nary a moon. There is only the city, its lights, and the glasses of scotch both Rider and I raise to you now.

Thank you for having us, Tess. We appreciate the time. (insert awkward high-five/hug emoji here)”

***

Beau Johnson is a husband, father, writer, booster. He has written three books, A BETTER KIND OF HATE, THE BIG MACHINE EATS, and ALL OF THEM TO BURN. Each hold Bishop Rider stories, the man’s life and struggle, but on July 12th, 2021, BRAND NEW DARK, a Bishop Rider only book, will be unleashed upon the world through Down and Out Books. Of late, Beau has also found he holds the power to trigger the world’s least favorite/most racist Buffy the Vampire slayer on Twitter. Her followers too, of course, but that’s a bio for another story.

Buy Brand New Dark here.

Carlisle here we come…

One of the many downsides of the pandemic has been the impossibility of seeing friends. This week, after almost a year and a half, I finally got to meet up with a bunch of fellow Crime-and-Publishment-ers in Carlisle. It was absolutely lovely, but it very nearly didn’t happen at all.

With help from Irene Paterson I’d arranged it for Monday lunchtime at our favourite cafe, Cakes & Ale. I was all set to travel up by train, and really looking forward to it, if a little nervous about being crammed into a railway carriage full of strangers for over an hour. At the moment, everything is by advance booking only, so on Saturday evening I sat down to order my tickets – and found to my horror that every last seat on both the outward journey and the return had already been sold.

To say I was upset was an understatement, but Other Half sprang to the rescue, donning a cape and driving me to Carlisle on the day. He spent a couple of hours mooching round and discovering interesting bits of the city, while I plonked myself at a table in the cafe’s surprisingly pretty garden and caught up with everyone again.

Not all of the group were free at such short notice, but we managed to rustle up seven: myself, Irene, Linda Wright, soon-to-be-published Ann Bloxwich, AliceMae Jamieson, John Langley, and the superstar of the group Mike Craven, whose books are now so popular that he’s had a brand of coffee named after his main character Washington Poe.

No hugs yet, but it was super to see people face-to-face at last, and be able to talk for a couple of hours (while still leaving time for tea, coffee, soup, sandwiches or cake – though not all at once). Here’s hoping we can do it again – without having to wait another year and a half.

I took my camera to get a nice group shot of us all and forgot to take the snap! So here’s a picture of the garden instead. Hard to believe this is right in the centre of a bustling city.