Announcements

Who Would You Cast? Announcing Contest Details


Playing “what if” can be a lot of fun and most of the time it’s harmless. So why not try your hand at picking a cast of actors to play the characters in my Thomas Sullivan stories?

The basic premise is some producer with deep pockets and no affiliation with Fox (Browncoats will understand) has bought the rights to my stories.

The only limitations on casting are:


1) The actor/actress has to be alive.

2) They have to physically be able to represent my description of the character – no 5’8″ actors being cast as Sully or Father Nathan for example.

3) The use of makeup, etc, to make the actor/actress resemble the character is not only fine but most likely necessary.


To see who I would cast (if you didn’t read the post in the last Inspector’s Report) just click here.


To enter the contest send me an e-mail with your list of characters and who you would cast to play them. Be sure to include BRIEF explanations of why that actor/actress is the best fit for the character.


Deadline: March 31st


Prizes: 1st Place will receive a signed paperback copy of an Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller of your choice. 2nd Place will receive two Kindle editions of their choice. 3rd Place will receive one Kindle edition of choice.


Judging: I will make the final choice and all decisions are final.


The winners will have their cast selections posted in a future edition of The Inspector’s Report, my author’s FB page, and my website.

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The Universe of Thomas Sullivan, Thoughts on things

If The Inspector Sullivan Series Was On Netflix

It could happen. Stranger things have happened. Of course, as part of my demands I want to be able to have a say in the casting process. So here’s my dream list of actors and the characters they would play if my stories made it on to Netflix.

Inspector Thomas Sullivan: Sully is a tough one to cast. The actual actor has to be BIG. Not fat, tall (6’6” at least) and in great shape. He has to be believable as a hardened tough guy with a hidden heart of gold. The actor also has to be enough of a heartthrob that women still find him attractive in spite of his facial scar and cybernetic eye.

I can tell you for certain who Sully won’t be played by, Tom Cruise. Not because Cruise doesn’t have the acting chops to play any male character I could come up with, but because he’s short. I love the Jack Reacher character and as far as portraying Reacher’s attitude, Cruise was fine. But Reacher is the same size as Sully and Tom Cruise physically wasn’t believable as Jack Reacher.

So, since this is my fantasy, I have three actors in mind. The best fit in my mind is Clint Eastwood. We just need to use a time machine and bring the Clint who played Dirty Harry forward in time to play Sully. Clint has the size, the stare, and best of all, the attitude to play Sully. Besides, I could write cool lines for him to say before he kills the villain.

If I can’t cast Clint, then I want Tom Selleck. He’s big enough, handsome, and while he’s best known for playing another Thomas, Thomas Magnum of Magnum P.I. fame, Selleck can play serious roles.

Since time machines aren’t currently available, I’ll settle for Clint Eastwood’s son, Scott Eastwood. He’s been paying his dues as an actor and if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, everything should be fine. If not, I’ll give Dad a call and have him pay a visit to the set to “motivate” his son.

Sarah: There is only one actress who could possibly play the role of Sarah and that’s scifi geek/nerd Summer Glau. Sarah has a bit of the childish imp of River Tam in her. She also has the cold standoffish nature of Cameron from TSCC. Glau herself is oft described as “adorkable” in person which is the endearing side of Sarah very few people get to see.

Casting Summer would at least generate immediate interest for the series as Summer has an extremely loyal following of fans based on her performances in Firefly (River Tam), Serenity (River Tam), TSCC (Cameron), and other shows.

Summer can handle firearms, is a martial artist, and is a former prima ballerina, all of which are skills and attributes necessary to portray Sarah. Glau has proven she can convey a lot of emotion and information without using a lot of words, another skill necessary to play Sarah. She moves with the grace needed to slip in and out of view as well as the actual athleticism to roam the city rooftops of Capital City.

Father Nathan: This one is a lot tougher. The actor has to be big, like Sully. He has to be cheerful, approachable, and friendly one moment and menacing and deadly the next. While pleasant and funny most of the time, Father Nathan is the character who serves as the conscience of his friends and is the only person who will stand up to Sully every single time when Sully needs to be taken down a peg or two.

I could see Tom Selleck as Father Nathan but I’m not sold on the idea. So at this particular time, I can’t pin down one actor specifically that I would insist on having cast to play Father Nathan.

Just for the fun of it, I’d love to hear suggestion from readers as to who would make a great Father Nathan. My only limiting factor is I insist the actor be tall and in shape.

Markeson: The bent cop and on going villain who is Sully’s nemesis of sorts is a hard one to cast. I finally decided on Ed Harris because he can play the good guy and the dark villain. Markeson may be bent, but he’s not all evil, like real life, he’s neither black nor white, but grey. At times he’s as deadly as any serial killer. If the right circumstances present themselves, Markeson is as effective a cop as Sully. His motivation is usually wrong, but the results are good.

Since the budget is not part of the equation, the production can afford Mr. Harris along with the other stars mentioned.

If Ed Harris is not available, my second choice is Liam Neeson. Neeson is more than capable of playing the killer and has the looks that would appeal to Markeson’s string of bimbos as Sarah likes to call them.

Josephson:  I’m open for suggestions. The actor needs to be able to convey competency and naiveté at the same time. The kid hero worships Sully but needs to be able to grow with the character as the series progresses. He also has to be able to bicker with Sarah like a sibling when appropriate.

Bones: As I mentioned earlier, cost is not a factor since the producers have wisely opened their purses and have a whatever it costs mindset to make sure the show succeeds.

Bones as I see him can only be played by Morgan Freeman. He’s got the voice, the grizzled aged looks of a man who’s seen too much, and he can definitely play the role of a crusty, paranoid medical examiner.

Ralph the cab driver: Steve Buscemi is the only actor I can envision playing Ralph, the ex-con cab driver who is the husband of Alice, the waitress and matriarch of Joe’s Place. Buscemi is the ultimate character actor and is able to add great depth to supporting characters.

Who would you like to see cast in a role in the Netflix (I can only wish) version of The Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller Series?

Drop me an e-mail at SciFiThriller@kcsivils.com and make your suggestions. I’ll share them with my readers. Feel free to make suggestions for characters I haven’t covered yet like Alice or Joe Maynard.

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Announcements, Inspector Thomas Sullivan, News and the Latest Goings On

Death’s Cold Touch to be released soon!

The fifth installment in the Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller series, Death’s Cold Touch, will be released soon! The ebook version will be available from Amazon, Kobo, iBooks and other ebook retailers.

Death's Cold Touch - The fifth installment of the Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller series.
Available on Pre-order from Amazon!

Book description:

Nothing lasts forever.

Certainly not in Capital City on the frozen planet Beta Prime.

Inspector Thomas Sullivan wanted nothing more than dull, routine days of police work. Sullivan’s young partner Sarah wanted to leave her past behind and forge a new life for herself, free from fear.

But a man with a cybernetic right eye and two cybernetic hands who came to Beta Prime to escape his past should know better. So should Sully’s partner, the pretty young clone with secrets of her own.

What starts as random murders escalates into terrorism as four serial killers work together to turn the relative tranquility of Capital City into chaos. As the body count mounts, it becomes clear something else is going on.

If a sinister force has its way, the future of Capital City will be destroyed.

On a frozen planet when death comes for you, there is no escaping its cold touch.

For those who’ve read the previous installments in the series, Death’s Cold Touch is a bit different. The story is narrated by Sarah, the clone who is Sully’s partner.

Coming soon is the sixth installment in the series, City of Broken Lights.

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Beta Prime, The Universe of Thomas Sullivan

THe Real Capital city

I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The local refineries, rail yards, and blues dives all serve as a bit of the inspiration for the mythical Capital City on Beta Prime. Drive to the southeast on I-10 and you’ll be in one of the oldest cities in  the United States and North America, New Orleans.

Baton Rouge may be the state capital of Louisiana, but New Orleans certainly sets the tone for the rest of the state when it comes to the state motto: Let The Good Times Roll!

Both cities are filled with historic buildings, New Orleans in particular. The food is great, the people are friendly, and if you love blues or jazz, then you’ve come to the right cities

While different culturally, the people of both towns like to work hard. Both are oil cities and have extensive refining complexes and shipping facilities

Inspiration for Capital City is also drawn from the film Blade Runner. Instead of rain and total darkness as found in Ridley Scott’s version of the future, Capital City is cold, windblown, and at times covered in snow and ice

The weather can be pleasant, well, at least sunny, in Capital City, but the dangerous blue fog is never far away

In terms of architecture the city ranges from modern, clean designs that are pleasing to the eye and are the domain of the wealthy and elite of Beta Prime. The working class live in neighborhoods built via prefab construction materials. The oldest neighborhoods, such as the one Sully and company live and work were often built using shipping containers, a practice used for construction in current times.

Construction on Beta Prime

It’s not pretty, but it’s fast and apparently fairly easy. In my vision of the future, the initial containers used to ship supplies and equipment to Beta Prime were at the end of their useful lifespan as shipping containers.

Construction using shipping containers

Rather than cut the containers up for scrap, they were used to serve as the basis for living quarters and retail areas. With a facade applied, nobody knows what the building materials were until upon closer examination from the inside of the building.

Not all buildings were built from containers. The large open eating area in Joe’s, which doubles for the night club seating at night, was built in a more traditional method, using different prefab construction methods.

I currently reside in Texas, in a suburb of Houston, another energy city with a wide variety of people, transportation facilities, architecture, and industry. My wife Lisa calls Houston a concrete nightmare. I don’t have to travel far for inspiration for my version of Capital City.

The city itself in most hardboiled noir stories can be viewed as a character. I hope as the series continues that readers who follow Sully and his adventures began to recognize Capital City as such, a unique character in its own right. One that plays an important role in the development of the story.

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Inspector Thomas Sullivan, Thoughts on things

Who Is The Real Sully?

I’m not Sully. Really. I’m not even sure I would want to be Sully. I see parts of myself in Sully and we have some similar life experiences.

But I’m not Sully.

Before Sully ever descended the escalator at the Capital City Spaceport with gun in hand and blew away the perp holding a knife to the throat of the daughter of a wealthy crook named Spencer Devereaux I had a vision of who Sully was.

I knew what Sully looked like, what he liked, how he acted, and most important, how he thinks about life 500 years from now.

Sully is a mixture of some of my favorite tough guy characters from books and film. He’s tall like Clint Eastwood but bulkier. His attitude and penchant for violence as a solution to “certain problems” is not unlike one of Eastwood’s most famous characters, Inspector Harry Callahan, AKA “Dirty Harry.”

There’s a bit of Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in Sully as well. It would seem Sully just can’t help himself at times. Like Spade, Sully feels the need to poke at corrupt authorities and has a weakness for a woman in distress. Even when logic tells Sully to avoid female entanglements.

A man of few words, Sully is not as shallow as his emotional restraint would have one believe. Those the Inspector would call friends are few in number. But to those lucky few, Sully feels a deep sense of responsibility to protect and see to it they flourish as best as possible.

He’s a man with a conscience, who feels guilt over his failings as a man as well as his failures as a cop. Sully is not one who agrees with Tennyson’s quip “Tis better to have loved and lost than to have not loved at all.” The Inspector feels loss with a depth and intensity that can scar a man’s soul.

A long suffering witness to the capacity for evil of both humanity and the individual, it is easy to understand Sully’s ambivalence towards such matters as faith and charity towards his fellow man. For this simple reason, God, who is not done with Sully yet, sends another flawed individual, Father Nathan, to be the thorn in Sully’s side when it comes to matters of faith and ethics.

Father Nathan, a man’s man like Sully, has suffered his share of tragedy and pain in life. In his efforts to make amends for his past, the priest makes Sully into a personal project of sorts. If nothing else, Father Nathan acts as Sully’s conscience at times.

Not much scares Sully.

Those few who know Sully well will tell you with certainty they know what does scare the Inspector. It’s more of a who than a what, though some would argue a clone is precisely that, a what.

Sully’s nightmare has long legs, long brown hair, big brown eyes, a slender but eye-catching figure, and while she stands a full foot shorter than Sully’s intimidating 6’6″ frame, Sarah can be every bit as frightening. A military grade clone with the maturity of a six year old child, Sarah has the looks of a mature woman. Even worse, she’s fully aware of the effects of her charms on men, even if Sarah doesn’t fully understand relationships.

The cybernetic eye and robot hand come from my fascination with the Terminator stories. It allows me a device to show Sully has suffered during his life, that life has harmed him, making him feel less than fully human.

Is there a future for the pair, for Sully and Sarah?

Who knows? Sully frightens Sarah as much as she worries and frightens him. The only difference is Sarah is willing to acknowledge the fact to herself. 

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Announcements

Gift a Book for Christmas! Help Other’s Discover Inspector Sullivan!

Amazon rankings are based on an algorithm. The lower your ranking, based on sales, the higher you turn up in the search results. As you can imagine, the higher a book is on the results, the more sales!

More sales result in even higher rankings. Better yet, consistent sales help the book retain it’s higher ranking.
What has this got to do with Christmas?

In an effort to increase exposure for my Inspector Thomas Sullivan novels, I’m willing to make less per sale now for the increased exposure. So for those who would like to send an inexpensive gift to a friend, the price on all of my Inspector Sullivan novels, Kindle editions, is just .99 cents. This sale can’t go on forever. The prices will all rise to their regular price on December 26th.

If you have friends who would enjoy reading any of the books in the series, please consider gifting a copy! Word of mouth is the absolute best form of marketing or advertising an author cans ask for.

Amazon makes it easy to gift Kindle books to other readers.

Gift a Thomas Sullivan Thriller

The screenshot above is from the purchase options from The Fractured Man’s product page. The “Buy for others” option is how you gift a book to someone.

Gift a copy of The Fractured Man

The above image shows the form that will appear once you click on the Buy for others button. You just fill it in and then click on the Place Your Order button.

The image above will appear to the left of the form you need to fill out to place your order once you click on the Buy for others button. This will allow you to see exactly what you are purchasing for your friend or family member.

The Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller Series Box Set: Hard Boiled Noir From The Future
The Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller Series Box Set: Hard Boiled Noir From The Future

All of my novels will be on sale for .99 cents until December 26th. The Box Set, which contains bonus material consisting of short stories and the first ten chapters of The Fractured Man, will also be on sale for $4.99.

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Thoughts on things

Utopian Society, Human Nature, and Crime

My wife will readily tell anyone who asks that I can be a bit cynical about my fellow man. Truth be told, I will readily admit that fact as well.

There is a concept known as Disruptive Technology. To oversimplify it for this newsletter, the concept states at different periods in human history a new technology will be developed that has a far-reaching impact on humanity, disrupting the world as it was known at that time.

This disruption brings with it many positive changes. These can include improved quality of life, economic opportunity, new jobs, and other new forms of technology.

The disruption can also bring with it quite a few negative changes. To name a few, specific skill sets are made redundant, forever eliminating those jobs. Society can be drastically altered in ways not foreseen. Families can be ripped apart and lives devastated.

The new technology brings change, change that is disruptive to the way we live and work. That disruption is both good and bad.

Economically priced steel and steam power were the technologies that drove the Industrial Revolution. Undreamed of prosperity came about as did many new inventions that made life easier.

The Industrial Revolution saw a rush of humanity from the countryside to the urban areas to take advantage of the newly created jobs in the new factories. With this shift came the problems related to overcrowding in cities: crime, squalor, inadequate schools, and a host of other social and economic issues.

Factory produced goods created new jobs and revenue streams for many. For others, it eliminated jobs and only offered long hours at low wages in return for others.

As I type this newsletter, we are currently going through another period of Disruptive Technology. This time it is the Digital Age. The combination of personal computers, the internet, and digital technology are producing unimagined changes in society.

With the advent of the tech billionaires, we’ve all seen the problems the new technology has created. Are youth are addicted to their iPhones, Social Media, and seldom read like the youth of the past.

Social Media has its pluses. It also has quite a few minuses.

We now live in the age of trolls. Real, living, breathing trolls. They live on the internet.

Much of the political turmoil and upheaval nations around the world are experiencing are made possible and in part often caused by Social Media.

We seem to have forgotten the wise adage of if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. The internet allows us to unleash our inner troll in the safety of anonymity.

The champions of technology love to claim the latest and greatest technology will make humanity’s life better. That we can eliminate all the ills of the past. Technology will set us free from this or that.

Don’t get me wrong.

I like lots of new types of technology. I have an iPhone. I use the internet. I publish my books in both paperback and ebook format. The paperback does not exist until you order it and then it is printed using a technology called print-on-demand. This newsletter is digital and delivered by e-mail.

But I have to shake my head at those who claim this technology and that technology will set man free. From biblical times to the present day, man has shown he is a sinful, broken beast.

We would be far better served to try to learn from the mistakes of the past and determine effective ways to prevent the same cycle of behavior from repeating. Instead, we look to technology as a cure-all.

It’s not. If we want to clean up the mess known as humanity we have to do something about humanity’s broken nature.

Until we do that, not much is going to change.

There is no technology, no utopian social system, or philosophy that will create the perfect social order for mankind to exist together.

But people don’t want to hear that. I guess hope springs eternal for some.

As cynical as it sounds, I’m convinced man’s not going to change much in the future.

Just ask Sully. 500 years in the future mankind is committing the same sins, breaking the same laws, and possessed of the same flaws.

It’s this very aspect of human nature that creates the life experiences and examples of human behavior that led to the development of the crime noir genre.

At least one good thing has come from all of man’s failings!

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Announcements

An Innocent Man is Available for Pre-Order on Amazon

An Innocent Man, the latest installment in the Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller series, is available for pre-order on Amazon.

An Innocent Man

500 years in the future, technology has changed. Humanity has not.

One man’s fate lies in the hands of a team of corrupt prosecutors bent on making their prosecutorial mark for personal gain. Standing in the path of injustice is Inspector Thomas Sullivan and an acquaintance from the past.

Murder, political corruption, greed, and scandal combine for danger in Capital City on the frozen world of Beta Prime. At stake is a man’s life, the very souls of others, and the integrity of the entire Planetary Alliance’s justice system.

Join Sully and his team as they try to free An Innocent Man!

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History and Characteristics of Crime Noir, Inspector Thomas Sullivan

Writing the Hardboiled Detective – Where Did Sully Come From?

Unlike the nosy neighbor who snoops into everyone’s business or the ultra observant detective who knows endless amounts of minutia, the hardboiled detective doesn’t usually solve cases with nothing more than his wits. To be sure, sleuthing is involved, but unlike the aforementioned crime busters, the cynical detective is willing to get his hands dirty.

Less concerned with the law and more concerned with justice, the hardboiled detective doesn’t live in a cozy house or in an estate manor. The detective lives in the city, often in the underbelly where crime and violence are a part of daily life. He might frequent nice parts of town and often does when the sordid events of urban life pay visit to those less familiar with the pain these events bring with them.

Life has been the detective’s most valuable teacher. Events have taught the detective life is neither fair nor just and it most certainly has damaged him in profound ways. But life has not broken him and nor will it. He spends his days risking his life to bring justice to those who cannot find it any other way.

Unlike the puzzle-solving investigator of cozy mysteries and cerebral detective stories written the British style, the hardboiled detective lives life in a very real way. His haunts include dirty city streets where the lowly people live, dive bars, seedy hotels, and the industrial district. He knows people in low places as well as the upper crust of society. His acquaintances include bar keeps, prostitutes, petty criminals, and corrupt politicians. Friends are few in number and having them comes with a high price.

Writing hardboiled crime fiction, often known as crime noir, requires a different perspective than required to write other styles of mystery fiction. Violence is ugly. It knows no limitations, visiting the poor and the rich alike, shattering lives. This very ugliness is part of the appeal of hardboiled detective stories. The story is real life in all of its sordid ugliness.

In his essay, The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler writes at some length about writing mysteries and the differences the author must cope with when writing the hardboiled detective. The likes of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and the Continental Op are a different breed of man. So much so, Chandler felt it necessary to write about the qualities of such fictional men.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in (Chandler).

My own Inspector Sullivan possesses many of the qualities Chandler believes to be essential in the hardboiled detective. It is unlikely, authors of such caliber as Chandler and Hammett could foresee things like a cybernetic eye and hand or crime on an alien planet. Nonetheless, Sully, were he an Earthbound detective, should fit easily into the cities where Spade and Marlowe practiced their craft.

It is good to have something to aim for. One of my own goals as an author is for my stories somehow to approach the quality of Hammett and Chandler, two of my literary heroes. For that to happen, Sully must bear some resemblance to Spade, Marlowe, and the Operative.

Chandler, Raymond. The Simple Art of Murder (Kindle Locations 262-276). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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Announcements, News and the Latest Goings On

A Day At The Museum – The International Sherlock Holmes Exhibition

My wife and I spent the morning at the Museum of Natural Science in the Houston Museum District. We ponied up the money to see the International Sherlock Holmes Exhibition. It was worth every dime!

International Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Entrance

Upon entering the exhibit a member of the museum staff provides you with a small book to record clues you come across. Be forewarned should you visit the exhibit! The minute you set foot in the exhibit, “the game is afoot!”

Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Clue Book

The exhibit begins with some history about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his life and education, and of special importance, the medical professors who trained Doyle. Of particular interest is the photo of Dr. Joseph Bell, the man who taught Doyle how to practice the art of observation.

Dr. Joseph Bell

The display includes several of the original handwritten pages of the classic Holmes story The Hound of Baskervilles. Of the original 178 pages only 30+ pages still exist.

Original manuscript page of The Hound of Baskerville

Also on display is a copy of The Strand

The exhibit is filled with displays of artifacts depicting the forensic and scientific knowledge of the times. A trained medical doctor, Doyle was up to date on the latest discoveries and used them to great advantage in the telling of his stories.

The Strand Magazine

If you live in Houston and love detective stories, you’ll want to take in the exhibition. If not, you’ll want to visit the Exhibitions website for details of where the exhibition will appear next. In fact, I suggest visiting the website regardless. It’s filled with more interesting material for fans of the great detective!

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The Thomas Sullivan Chronicles and Other Stories