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Articles by David Cranmer
Ventoux Learning Network
datacenterknowledge.com Ten stories that define the year in data centers
Favorite Movies and TV Featuring Railroads by Scott D. Parker
When you think of what makes a western a western, railroads and trains naturally make it onto the Top 10 list. They may not be in the Top 5, but they certainly play a significant role. I know they did when it came time for me to write my own western stories, especially with the creation of Calvin Carter, Railroad Detective. You see? It's right there in his title. David Cranmer (aka Edward A. Grainger) and I emerged on the scene more or less at the same time, now over a decade ago.
The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s "Blue" Album: An Appreciation
I first became aware of Joni Mitchell’s Blue when Rolling Stone printed their instantly outmoded "Top 100 Albums of the Last 20 Years" in 1987. That her masterpiece was ranked at 46, I’d later learn, was one of the many problems with the male-dominated list, but I’m grateful they at least printed the final verse to “The Last Time I Saw Richard.” Those lines hit me like a Joe Frazier right. This was dynamic poetry and I wanted to know more, hear more.
Waitin’ Around to Die By David Cranmer and Stephen J. Golds
BIO: David Cranmer is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine and whose own body of work has appeared in such diverse publications as The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Under the pen name Edward A. Grainger he created the Cash Laramie western series. He’s a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter.
“The Holy Ghost of Poetry” By David Cranmer @BEATtoaPULP
While the great American whale is lost at sea And the latest, edgy crime novel often dulls the fuck out of me I’ll take some Dickinson, classic Emily, The holy ghost of poetry. And wade through her verses of trees, birds, and ethereal beauty … that always have a stamp of death for good measure.
Evening News Hero By David Cranmer
A. Hero happened by a burning brownstone just in time to save a terrified kid. The latchkey named Ian was trying to open a window that wouldn’t budge. Hero using his Leatherman forced the window open and helped Ian escape. — Local 5 News asked around, searching for the 6 o’clock lead. But he was gone, not to be found.
Evening News Hero By David Cranmer
A. Hero happened by a burning brownstone just in time to save a terrified kid. The latchkey named Ian was trying to open a window that wouldn’t budge. Hero using his Leatherman forced the window open and helped Ian escape. — Local 5 News asked around, searching for the 6 o’clock lead. But he was gone, not to be found.
Jesus In The Ghost Room by Rusty Barnes
Rusty Barnes pulls the curtain back on JESUS IN THE GHOST ROOM with an ominous tone.
Writers on Writers
"Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir" (1966) by A.E. Hotchner Ernest Hemingway was full of cock and bull, and his friend A.E. Hotchner learned how to spot the times Papa told tall tales by paying close attention to the particulars and teasing out the inconsistencies. One such time, Hemingway began a salacious story by describing a one-night stand with spy Mata Hari.
Poets Who Bled on the Page
Header: Hughes, Sexton, Baudelaire Poetry has seen a surge in popularity during these uncertain times we find ourselves facing—a worldwide pandemic, fluctuating financial markets, and never-ending military conflicts, to name a few—and quite often crises of any kind, whether on a global or personal scale, create catalysts within an individual to become more introspective about their place in the world and their very own existence.
Modern Western Films Written Better Than Ever
The Western ran dry in movies and television by the early 1970s for many reasons, though not for lack of quality material. There were plenty of talented writers looking to improve the genre by going deeper than the outmoded stereotypical plots of cowboys vs. Indians, range wars, and the lone gunman, to name a few. Hollywood being a cold money-making machine, when Western films began failing at the box office in favor of space operas and godfathers, their attention waned.
Twelve Doctor Who Villains and Why They Hate Him So Damn Much
The Doctor has been battling with some of his enemies for hundreds (thousands?) of years, and I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten the reason for the individual conflicts and how they got started. But, for the rest of us, here’s a brief guide to a few villains that rattle the Time Lord’s cage. Cybermen Cybermen come from the planet Mondas and at one time were flesh and blood until they began experimenting with swapping their organs and limbs for artificial parts in a means of surviving.
Adventures, Spies, Gangsters, and Thrillers: A Look Back at Four Richard Burton Films
Photo courtesty of Lifetime TV. The public image of Richard Burton (1925-1984), for better or for worse, will forever be intertwined with Elizabeth Taylor (who he married twice) and for a lifetime struggle with alcohol. But at his Hollywood start, Burton established himself as a top Shakespearean actor on par with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. Poor film choices—a number of them with Taylor—helped dilute that prestige during his lifetime.
Break Bad with these Bobbleheads, Bitch!
If you're looking for the perfect way to decorate your own personal domicile, look no further than these awesome Breaking Bad-inspired figurines courtesy of Mezco Toyz. Between the Heisenberg pillows, the Saul Goodman and Gus Fring figurines, and the plush purple teady bear from the Wayfarer 515 airplane crash, fans yearning to return to New Mexico should be pleased. And us? While we might not be ready to fully break bad, we are definitely ready to look badass with our new Jesse Pinkman bobblehead.
The Fowlest of Influences
Every day, outside my window, high in the snags of an aging pine grove, I listen as a pileated woodpecker chisels away. Its rapid series of hammering taps match my keyboard strokes as we both labor to subsist. A bird that drills with its head into solid wood for lodging and a meal of carpenter ants seems to possess a skill set similar to the freelance writer: patience, commitment, and a dash of non compos mentis. cRaZy, as I call him, is at it from morning to night.
The Sinful Virtues of Marginalia and Highlighting in Books
Five years ago, I was with my wife and daughter passing through Knoxville, Tennessee, when I stopped at a McKay's used bookstore (an essential oasis for bibliophiles). Unbeknownst to me, I was at the beginning of my education in Saul Bellow—a literary staple—when I picked up a copy of Herzog (1964), rated by Time as one of the 100 best novels in the English language. One can hardly disagree with page after page of poetry as Mr. Bellow unveils Moses E.
In Defense of The Soft Machine’s Cut-Up Twisted Landscape
A friend of mine, let’s call him Christopher, summed up his feelings on the Beat Generation by saying he “liked the idea of the movement” much more than the actual fiction that propagated it, finding a majority of the collective body merely literary flotsam. He didn’t go so far as the attributed Truman Capote quote, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” and credited the bunch minimally as a few one-trick ponies. I disagreed.
Writer, Heal Thyself: Coping with 2017
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” Shakespeare’s oft and overused quote has never seemed more applicable than in 2017, a year that has seen a deluge in tidings of geopolitical tension, racial division, mass shootings, natural disasters, and sexual harassment. The weight of the news flows at an alarming pace and has been an assault on the nerves, leaving the senses raw.
The Savage: An Interview with Frank Bill
I first published Frank Bill in the BEAT to a PULP webzine back in 2009, and have had the pleasure to do so a few more times in the years that followed. From the start, I was taken with the intensity of Frank’s characters; individuals living on the fringe of society, who, often through no fault of their own, are reduced to primitive survival. He doesn’t pass judgment on these creations; instead he props them up, warts and all, showcasing the driving powers behind desperation.
Voices of the Dead: In Memories and Literary Prose
When the family reserve has been let down by the indie publishing, I go back to the daily security grind which takes me here and there, until the coffers are no longer on life support. So, there I was, at 4:30 a.m., shuffling into the Holiday Inn dining nook in Warrenton, Virginia—preparing my bolstering dose of English breakfast tea—when I noticed the woman I had exchanged pleasantries with the previous morning was unhinged. "Be careful out there," she warned.
Book vs. Television: What TV's Sheriff Longmire Is Doing Wrong
The Walt Longmire Mysteries by best-selling author Craig Johnson debuted in 2004 with The Cold Dish, and since the release of the second book in 2006, Death Without Company, a new installment has come on the heels of the previous each year. A television series based on the books premiered in 2012, and survived a switch after its third season from the A&E network to Netflix. A sixth season is set to air in September and there’s been some buzz about a movie follow up.
My Unlikely Writing Influences
Like many writers, I was reared on a never-ending veneration for big guns such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Authors who’ve passed some ‘immortal’ litmus test for stuffy academic types to get overly excited about. Harsh? Perhaps, because most of the top tier lit club have deservedly earned their marks. But along the path I’ve learned some of the best prose originates from sources other than these writing titans.
Three Things That Will Tank The Dark Tower Movie For Fans Of The Books
The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed. That sentence for a Dark Tower enthusiast is the equivalent of “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” No bullshit hyperbole there. Pick any fandom of a popular epic series—Potterheads, Twihards, Tributes, Whovians, Trekkies, Warsies, Sherlockians, Ringers, XPhiles, Buffistas—and we’ve all seen the frenetic nature of their rabid loyalists.
Q&A with Court Merrigan, Author of The Broken Country
Court Merrigan describes himself as a farm-raised country boy, recovering expat, teacher, and businessman. He lives in Wyoming with his family and has an alternate history Western novel just released from BEAT to a PULP books with a Crusoe-inspired title: The Broken Country: Being the Scabrous Exploits of Cyrus & Galina Van, Hellbent West during the Eighth Year of the Harrows, 1876; With an Account of Mappers, Bounty Hunters, a Tatar, and the Science of Phrenology.
Review: Heretics by Leonardo Padura
Heretics by Leonardo Padura is a sweeping novel of art theft, anti-Semitism, contemporary Cuba, and crime from a renowned Cuban author (available March 14, 2017). Within the pages of Leonardo Padura’s latest Mario Conde adventure, the reader can’t help noticing that atmosphere dominates—that squalor kind of atmosphere found in Raymond Chandler’s dirty Los Angeles streets or, more recently, the “Appalachian noir” of David Joy.
Review: The Weight of This World by David Joy
In The Weight of This World, David Joy returns to the mountains of North Carolina with a powerful story about the inescapable weight of the past (available March 7, 2017). There’s a strong thread of uncompromising, dark fiction that's weaved its way back through the literary epochs.
Westworld 1.07: “Trompe L’Oiel” Episode Review
There’s a big reveal in this episode, and some solid direction is taking form. First, let’s catch up with Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and William (Jimmi Simpson), who didn’t appear in last week’s show. William is certainly discovering himself. He’s learned that maybe he truly enjoys the high-adventure lifestyle and the mayhem that goes along with it—Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.) points out that William has made it further than his friend Logan (Ben Barnes), who’d been the one to edge him into it.
Review: Hold a Scorpion by Melodie Johnson-Howe
Hold a Scorpion by Melodie Johnson-Howe is the latest Diana Poole crime thriller that takes our amateur sleuth deep into Southern California's underworld to uncover the mystery of a diamond-encrusted scorpion―and the reason for the murders that follow in its wake. Diana Poole has split with her egocentric boyfriend, Peter Bianchi, who had chided her to take a good look at herself. So she does—by going to a movie theater and watching her larger-than-life image on the silver screen.
Westworld 1.02: “Chestnut” Episode Review
Somehow this name didn’t quite register while watching the first episode. I mean I heard it, Anthony Hopkins plays Robert Ford, creator, or rather “God,” of Westworld. But what a choice of a name it happens to be … Bob Ford, the man who lives in infamy for shooting outlaw Jesse James in the back while James was hanging a picture in the family home.
Review: Red Right Hand by Chris Holm
Red Right Hand by Chris Holm is the 2nd book in the Michael Hendricks series, featuring a terrorist attack in San Francisco and a Federal witness Hendricks must find and protect (Available September 13, 2016). What makes Michael Hendricks rate higher on my sliding scale of contract killers and makes him worth reading? For one, he's operating in a world where there are real consequences to his actions.
Review: Face Blind by Lance Hawvermale
Face Blind by Lance Hawvermale follows a man with a neurological disorder, prosopagnosia, that prevents him from recognizing human faces as he confronts an enigmatic killer in Chile's Atacama desert—the most lifeless place on earth (Available August 23, 2016).
Review: The American Girl by Kate Horsley
The American Girl by Kate Horsley is a riveting psychological thriller about an American exchange student in France involved in a suspicious accident, and the journalist determined to break the story and uncover the dark secrets a small town is hiding. Quinn Perkins, an exchange student in the south of France who’s been rooming with the Blavette family, wakes up in the woods unexpectedly. She then walks to a road and smack dab into the path of an oncoming car, leaving her in a coma.
Review: A Time to Die by Tom Wood
A Time to Die by Tom Wood is the 6th action packed thriller featuring the enigmatic assassin Victor (Available August 2, 2016). With the glut of assassins in literature and film, I considered my bias when it comes to the contract killer in fiction before reading even the first paragraph of A Time to Die by Tom Wood.
Review: The Branson Beauty by Claire Booth
by Claire Booth is the debut book in the Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery series. (Available July 19, 2016). I watched a comedy sketch from the 1950s that poked fun at the overabundance of television shows about the Old West lawmen. In a side-splitting parody, these keepers of the peace were literally bumping into each other in a ridiculously imagined “what if” scenario.
An Artistic Debut: Reviewing Soho Sins by Richard Vine
SoHo Sins by Richard Vine is an intriguing debut novel about the underworld of the New York art scene (Available July 19, 2016). Nothing like an admixture of art plus murder for a mystery-fused suspense tale. A classic example is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, where a vain man's portrait ages as he stays youthful and in a final fit of indignation, he stabs at his degenerate likeness with horrific repercussions. The film The Two Mrs.
Review: The Innocents by Ace Atkins
by Ace Atkins is the 6th book in the Quinn Colson series and a gritty, darkly comic tale of greed, violence, and unexpected redemption (Available July 12, 2016). Having just finished reading my first Ace Atkins novel with Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn, I was curious to experience Mr. Atkins’s own voice. While I appreciated his adept handling of famed Boston sleuth, Spenser, and the fresh angle he brought to it, proceeding within Parker’s world must have been confining.
Torn and Frayed (The Drifter Detective Book 7)
The night of August 15, 1951 finds Jack Laramie on the road just, outside of Clyde, Texas. The private detective stops for gas and food. The waitress, Vicky Mae, does not appreciate the small joke Jack makes as she serves him a cup of coffee. His joke was also very much not appreciated by the man who clearly has an ongoing interest in Vicky Mae.
Review: Rancher’s Law by Dusty Richards
by Dusty Richards is a classic Western that follows Luther Haskell, who must make his way through the good, the bad, and the damned in pursuit of a cold-blooded killer with a plan of his own (Available June 28, 2016). For unethical ranchers like Matt McKean, the high prevalence of land and cattle disputes makes the Arizona Territory’s Christopher Basin ripe for the pickings; he’ll go beyond his power to take advantage of a situation that might bolster his own wealth.
R. Is for Robot: Reviewing The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Elijah (“Lije”) Baley is a New York City homicide detective, three thousand years in the future. His world is an overpopulated Earth, with eight billion people living in massive, layered complexes—caves of steel—enclosed by mammoth domes. Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York have grown to the point where they are almost touching. Humans no longer know what it is to see natural light (except the elite who live at the top) or experience the feeling of the wind on their back.
Under Burning Skies 2: Best of 21st-Century Westerns
Almost two decades into the century, quality Western films are alive and kicking. Though doubtful the genre will ever bound back to its silver screen “heyday” of the 1940s and ‘50s, those released now are often top-grade fare. Modern Westerns crafted by film makers like Ron Howard, Gore Verbinski, and Joss Whedon pay a tribute to the legacies that preceded them and give a fresh twist on execution.
Under Burning Skies: Best of 21st-Century Western Movies
Almost two decades into the century, quality Western films are alive and kicking. Though doubtful the genre will ever bound back to its silver screen “heyday” of the 1940s and ‘50s, those released now are often top-grade fare. Modern Westerns crafted by film makers like Andrew Dominik, the Coen Brothers, and Quentin Tarantino pay a tribute to the legacies that preceded them and give a fresh twist on execution.
Prolonged Parker: Slow Burn by Ace Atkins
Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn by Ace Atkins is the newest Spenser novel, where Boston PI Spenser faces a hot case and a personal crisis (Available today!). An assessment of a new Spenser novel requires this reviewer to reveal a bit of my adoration for series creator, Robert B. Parker, and why I was initially hesitant to read the continuations by Ace Atkins. Makes this post four years overdue, since Mr. Parker died in January 2010 and Ace Atkins took over two years later with Robert B.
Ed Gorman’s Relentless Western Noir
Relentless by Ed Gorman was published in 2003 and has now been rereleased in eBook format through Rough Edges Press. As a marshal working in Skylar, Colorado, Lane Morgan sees it all and then some. His day has him separating two old timers with medical conditions to keep them from beating each other up, relaying the good news to an old woman that the county assessor is going to reappraise her property, and teaching a tinhorn hell-bent on being a shootist a valuable lesson.
Under Burning Skies: The Americano, Hombre, and Backshot
You have to love low-budget RKO Pictures for always throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. In the first thirty minutes of The Americano, Glenn Ford on a trip to sell three Brahman bulls in Brazil, encounters piranhas, crocodiles, mountain lions, snakes, and a desperado named el Gato played by Cesar Romero! Silly, undemanding, pulp Western grounded by the ever reliable Ford and mucho on-location filming of Brazil that’s astounding to behold.
A Dust Up in My Reading Habits: Reviewing Dust Up by Jon McGoran
by Jon McGoran is the 3rd Doyle Carrick ecological thriller that finds Doyle in Haiti, investigating a murder and its connections to a big biotech company, Energene. I’m not sure what the last biotech or eco-thriller I read was—which is my knavish way of saying I've never read one, or if I had it didn’t leave much of an impression—and I’m not necessarily drawn to such subgenres.
Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy
Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy is a southern coming-of-age thriller, set in the mountains of Cashiers, NC, which follows young Jacob McNeely as he struggles to decide on whether to continue helping his father and his meth business or leave town and build a new life with the girl he loves. Where All Light Tends to Go is nominated for the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Jacob McNeely dropped out of high school at age sixteen and went to work for his father selling meth.
The Education of a Pulp Writer
What a strong actor Daisy Ridley (Rey) is in every scene. All the youngers are marvelous but this lady has serious acting chops—looking forward to watching her in material beyond a space opera. And for the returning veterans: Great to see Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewie (Peter Mayhew) though Carrie Fisher seemed stiff as Leia—uncomfortably so. And, hey, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han sure could have used you a little sooner.
What I've Been Working on with Charles Gramlich
Having narrowly survived a raging fire, the warrior, Bryle, finds himself caught in a labyrinth of treacherous caverns. It isn’t by accident. An eyeless sorcerer has summoned Bryle. He wants the barbarian to retrieve a talisman that will stop a demon of unfathomable power. To do so, Bryle must first face the challenges of the sorcerer’s maze: flooded tunnels, poisoned traps, and a monstrous beast that can heal its own wounds. The sorcerer promises the barbarian his freedom if he succeeds.
The Education of a Pulp Writer
We hit the ground running with 2016 BEAT to a PULP releases and thought it would be nice to arrange all the darlings in a row. The Posthumous Man came out a couple of years back but we gave it a face-lift and wanted to include it here. We are now up to something like fifty published books. But who's counting? Grey O'Donnell is back to normality after the events in Retribution six months before.
Six Guns, Noir Fistfights, and Burnout: Eric Beetner Interview
I enjoyed the hell out of working with Eric Beetner on The Year I Died Seven Times that was one of BEAT to a PULP's critical and commercial successes of 2015. Our second collaboration-The Lawyer: Six Guns at Sundown-was as big of a thrill, shooting back to the 19th century to pick up the trail blazed by Wayne D. Dundee in Stay of Execution and The Retributioners.
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