Steve Brewer is opening a Bookstore!

Here's some awesome positive news.

Mystery writer Steve Brewer is opening a bookshop. Steve writes on his blog that he and his wife signed a lease for space in the historic Nob Hill Business Center on Route 66 in Albuquerque. The independent bookstore will be called Organic Books. His two sons will work the store, but Steve says it will be a family business.

Steve Brewer is the author of 31 books and has been on many book tours all over the country, so he plans to have a busy calendar of events at Organic Books. The store will feature New Mexico authors as well as a curated slection of thousands of used books.

Grand Opening planned for early November.

Good luck, Steve!!

Party Doll by Steve Brewer: Guest Post

Today I welcome crime writer Steve Brewer with a post on Bubba Mabry's 9th outing in Party Doll. 

** GIVEAWAY: Win a FREE DOWNLOAD of Party Doll. **
Make a comment about Bubba, Party Doll, or any of Steve Brewer's other books. There will be 5 winners chosen randomly. Be sure and post your email. Deadline for comments: March 10. 
 
Steve Brewer is the author of more than 20 books, including the recent crime novels CALABAMA, FIREPOWER and CUTTHROAT. His first novel, LONELY STREET, was made into an independent Hollywood comedy starring Robert Patrick, Jay Mohr and Joe Mantegna. BOOST currently is under film/TV option. Brewer's short fiction has appeared in the anthologies DAMN NEAR DEAD, THE LAST NOEL and CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT, and he's published articles in magazines such as Mystery Scene, Crimespree and Mystery Readers Journal.
 
STEVE BREWER:

I've written more than two dozen books now, but none were more fun for the author than my latest Bubba Mabry adventure, PARTY DOLL.

This story was a no-pressure labor of love. No deadlines. No editor breathing down my neck. I started writing it as a short story, but it grew to a 37,000-word novella and that was okay, because I knew all along I'd self-publish it as an e-book.

Over the past year or so, I've republished my entire backlist as e-books, and I thought a new Bubba story might drive traffic to the bumbling Albuquerque private eye's eight other outings.

Bubba and I have been together a long time. He starred in my first published novel, LONELY STREET, which came out in 1994, and I've come back to him again and again, in between the standalone crime novels that I also write. Getting into Bubba's voice is like slipping into a comfortable old shirt. Familiar and warm and easy.

(By the way, LONELY STREET was made into a Hollywood comedy that went straight to DVD a couple of years ago. It's available through Netflix and such.)

In PARTY DOLL, Bubba is hired to locate a missing stripper who goes by the stage name Joy Forever. As so often happens, the investigation leads to something much bigger. This time, it's a major corruption case that's also being investigated by his wife, newspaper reporter Felicia Quattlebaum. The two of them get to the bottom of it all, but not before Bubba suffers a few beatdowns and other indignities.

I've started work on a new crime novel, also set in Albuquerque, and it's a standalone that doesn't include Bubba. But I'll come back to him eventually, I'm sure. Bubba's never very far away.

For more about Steve and Bubba, see www.stevebrewer.blogspot.com.

Steve Brewer: Calabama

Today I welcome guest blogger Steve Brewer.

Steve Brewer is the author of more than 20 books, including the recent crime novels CALABAMA, FIREPOWER and CUTTHROAT. His first novel, LONELY STREET, was recently made into an independent Hollywood comedy starring Robert Patrick, Jay Mohr and Joe Mantegna. BOOST currently is under film/TV option. Brewer's short fiction appeared in the anthologies DAMN NEAR DEAD, THE LAST NOEL and CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT, and he's published articles in magazines such as Mystery Scene, Crimespree and Mystery Readers Journal.

A writing coach, Brewer has taught at the University of New Mexico, the Midwest Writers Workshop and the Tony Hillerman Writers Seminar. He regularly speaks at mystery conventions, and was toastmaster at Left Coast Crime in Santa Fe, NM, in 2011.

Brewer worked as journalist for 22 years, then wrote a weekly syndicated column for another decade. The column, called The Home Front, produced the raw material for the humor book TROPHY HUSBAND.

Steve Brewer:

Sometimes, it starts with the title.

You need certain key ingredients to get going on a new novel -- a setting, a notion of the plot, a good opening line, a protagonist that speaks to you. I also like to have a title in mind before I start writing, though we all know they sometimes change.

Occasionally, the title is the spark that sets an idea on fire. That was certainly the case with my 18th crime novel, CALABAMA.

I first heard the term from a friend in Redding, California, where I lived from 2003 to 2010. Redding is an isolated city of ninety thousand people, way up north near Lake Shasta, and it's the setting for one of my other novels, BANK JOB.

Soon as I heard the word "Calabama," I knew I must write a novel to go under it. It was the perfect description for life in inland California.

When most people think of California, what comes to mind is Los Angeles or San Francisco or beach towns like Santa Cruz, where I live now. But the state's vast interior is rural and socially traditional and politically conservative and prone to pickup trucks. It resembles Arkansas (where I grew up), but with palm trees.

I've bucked that redneck mentality my whole life, so it was easy to create a character who'd do the same. Eric Newlin is a dope-smoking slacker who landed in Redding by accident. He's unhappily married, works for his father-in-law and dreams of escaping Calabama.

Eric survives a traffic accident, one of those near-misses that feel like an omen, and he decides his life is going to change. It does. It goes straight to hell. Jobless and broke, Eric gets mixed up in a kidnapping scheme with a local crimelord named Rydell Vance, and things go very wrong.

The novel's a hillbilly noir, full of violence and greed and backwoods bitterness, but leavened with dark humor.

Kind of like Calabama itself.

Steve Brewer's new novel CALABAMA debuts June 15 via Kindle, Smashwords and other e-book platforms. Only $2.99.