Science fiction and classic crime novels have long been favorites of author K.C. Sivils. The combination of film noir and science fiction in director Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into the masterful Harrison Ford vehicle Bladerunner encouraged him to consume as much of both genre’s as possible.
A fan of past noir masters such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Sivils also enjoys the current generation of storytellers like Renee Pawlish and Alex P. Berg.
Author of over twenty non-fiction books, including an Amazon Best Seller, Sivils has now ventured into the realm of fiction with his Inspector Thomas Sullivan series. Married to the former Lisa Green and the father of three children, Sivils is a dog lover and a fan of Classic Rock bands like The Rolling Stones and New Wave rockers The Cars.
Ask yourself, how much trouble can one young woman and a parish priest get into in one night?
In Capital City, on the frozen planet Beta Prime, the answer is…you’ll have to read the story to find out.
My short story, Just One Night, has been included in the newly released anthology, Eight in the Chamber.
Eight in One Chamber
The anthology is collection of noir styled detective and crime fighting stories with a twist. The stories feature superheroes, the supernatural, or science fiction settings. Just One Night focuses on two characters from my Inspector Thomas Sullivan series, the mysterious Sarah and Father Nathan. Readers will also meet Joe Maynard, owner of Joe’s.
Included in the anthology are two of my favorite novels, modern story tellers who have mastered the noir genre, albeit in a bit different manner than expected, Matt Abraham and Alex P. Berg.
Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his team have to solve two homicides.
In a prison. On the aforementioned moon.
In a prison filled with gangs, guards running rackets for profit, and an undercurrent of looming danger, Sullivan has to solve the case quickly.
Oh, and there’s the issue of a clone. A missing clone.
Grey Sky Blues
Grey Sky Blues will be available this November!
Missed the first installment of the Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller series? Download your FREE copy (Kindle or ePub) of The Predator and The Prey by signing up for The Inspector’s Report. Click here to get your copy.
The Inspector is looking for a few good readers to join his reading group. It’s FREE, but Sully says beware, nothing is truly free.
To get your copy Kindle or ePub copy of The Predator and The Prey, along with The Inspector’s Report, you have to surrender your name and e-mail.
The Inspector’s Report will allow you to keep up with what Sully is up to along with the few friends he has on Beta Prime. Things like who is Father Nathan after now, is Sarah safe from those who hunt her and is Josephson is the dog house again.
Short stories, author interviews, back history and news on publishing dates and releases of the latest thrilling adventure of the Inspector and his team.
Brooding, hard-boiled, anti-social loners who take up the profession of detective. It’s the very definition of the male protagonist in classic film noir productions. Think your job is tough? Compare it to the standard working conditions of the noir male lead. His daily life is spent in the toughest part of towns, usually at night and almost always alone, hunting down dangerous individuals who are just as ready to betray our male lead as kill him. Our detective’s world seems to nothing more than a life filled with crime, betrayal, danger and loneliness. The very city our man lives in dehumanizes him with its tall, concrete buildings, shadowy alleyways and rundown neighborhoods.
Caught up in this confusing moral swamp, the male in the noir story is often filled with inner turmoil. What is right? What is wrong? Thus it is that our male lead becomes by necessity his own man. He lives by his own code. So long as he stays true to his code, he is true to himself and what he believes is right, or in many instances, justice.
Given this grey code of truth, the noir detective is often finds it perfectly acceptable to break the law in order to arrive at the truth, protect his client and if there is such a thing, the innocent.
As with any genre, there is leeway in how a character can be written, so long as the basics are adhered too.
Inspector Sullivan is certainly no exception. His past is filled with violence, betrayal and pain. Pain inflicted both by others and himself. Sullivan stands apart to a small degree from the traditional noir lead for he is a man with a conscience. Not one, but two as I would have it, his own and that of the bothersome Anglican priest, Father Nathan, who befriends Sully whether he wants a friend or not.
Sully is capable of incredible violence, some of which he is perfectly indifferent about and other times troubled by his actions. In his mind the moral difference is determined by whether or not justice was served. The law is nice, but justice is what Sully seeks in his world. In his life he has seen far too much injustice with far too few people who seek to provide justice, particularly for those who cannot defend themselves. That source of injustice could be a single criminal or an entire system aligned against the hapless individual.
Life lived alone means a life that has fewer opportunities to be hurt and more important to Sully, fewer opportunities for others to be hurt. Guilt is Sullys constant companion and belies his tough exterior and attitude of indifference. So is his defined sense of responsibility for those who, for better or worse, become part of his life.
It has been Sullivan’s experience that women are trouble, making him the typical noir protagonist. In the case of the mysterious Sarah, Sullivan is at best confused. She certainly has some of the elements of the femme fatale. Sarah is beautiful, mysterious and as the reader learns, potentially dangerous. It turns out Sarah and Sullivan share a painful secret from their past that tortures them both.
Indifference towards Sarah is not possible for any man. In Sullivan’s case, their relationship is a confusing one on a good day. He feels like a father figure towards the strange, aloof young woman yet cannot help but notice her alluring charms. For her part, Sarah sends as many mixed signals as is possible for a woman, all of which seems to draw Sullivan in deeper and closer to the troubled young woman.
As the series unfolds, the pair grows closer in ways neither could have foreseen.
Despite his desire to live his life alone, Sullivan as a character diverges from the norm for a noir protagonist. He develops a few close friends, excluding Sarah, all of which but one are male. His is a male world and Sully likes it that way.
If you like thrillers and classic noir stories, you’ll like the Inspector Thomas Sullivan series.
Author Mercedes Fox was kind enough to interview me recently. The interview can be found on her writer’s blog.
Take a moment if you would and visit Mercedes’ website. She has lots of other author interviews on her site. If you find authors interesting, spend some time browsing what she has made available.
Thomas Sullivan has another case, this one possibly threatening the peace established by the Anti-Cloning Treaty more than thirty years ago. Forced to work with what some would call his nemesis, Sullivan is up to his eyeballs in intergalactic thrills, chills, and mayhem. Unfortunately, due to his own mistakes, he begins to alienate some of his very few friends, resulting in devastating consequences. Last Train to Nowhere by K.C. Sivils is an evolution of the classic good cop/bad cop conflict and reinvents that trope into something totally unique that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else.
I had never read an Inspector Thomas Sullivan book before, but he was an interesting character and the book was a thrilling example of what a good story can be. With a mystery/crime drama mixed with science fiction and lightly coated with a noir quality edge, K.C. Sivils is a talented writer able to blend multiple genres and create a story that fans of all of the above genres will enjoy. The narrative flowed very well and it was easy to understand the plot. I felt driven by both the characters and the interwoven plot threads of the story. There were a LOT of characters, but overall the large cast added a really great sense of a bustling world. If you’re looking for something new and different, make sure to give Last Train to Nowhere a shot. I will definitely be returning to try more in the series.
Each month The Book Designer website (Marin Bookworks) holds a monthly cover design competition. I was excited to learn the design done for The Predator and The Prey by Robin Ludwig of Robin Ludwig Designs earned a Gold Star Award as one of five finalists out of 90 designs!
Books can have a huge impact on an individual’s life. These ten novels each, in their own way, had a huge impact on me as a young reader as well as giving me hours upon hours of entertainment as my imagination took each story and played it out in my own adapted version.
Number One:1984 by George Orwell
Growing up in the Cold War in a family that understood all too well what the ramifications of the west losing Cold War meant, this was a scary novel for me. Orwell, a former Socialist himself, predicted so many things that have come to pass. This novel, despite its namesake year having coming and gone, is still incredibly relevant. Don’t think so? Name a place of business where there is not a television screen playing mindless repetitive news spewing the media’s mantra. Doublespeak? Try political correctness on college campuses and just about everywhere else. If this world is utopia, I think I’ll do without.
1984
Number Two:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick
This one has it all as far as I am concerned. Moral and philosophical issues, replicants, futuristic technology and a fantastic noir atmosphere set in the nightmarish Los Angeles of the future. Decker could have been written by Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler just as easily as Phillip K. Dick.
Do Androids Dream of Electric SheepBladerunner
Number Three:Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
The novel that spawned five movies, two television series and who knows how many comic books. I will never forget the scene where the hunt for the humans starts, in either the novel or the film. What a great twist for the ending as well!
Planet of the Apes
Number Four:The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I loved this story as a young boy and still enjoy reading it. Professor Challenger is a larger than life character and Professor Summerlee it turns out is a match for Challenger. What a grand adventure, going to a hidden land where dinosaurs still live!
The Lost World
Number Five:Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Hard to believe, but this science fiction class, also made into a movie, is anti-war. The novel version though seemed to be pro-military. There is a difference. At any rate, the war with the Bugs makes for great action and some really creepy aliens.
Starship Troopers
Number Six:Dune by Frank Hebert
A masterful creation of a completely new universe to tell a story in. Hebert’s imagination and his ability to bring his vision to life via the printed word is magnificent.
Dune
Number Seven: Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper
A fun story that takes a look at what it means to be a sentient being. Little Fuzzy can’t help it if he’s cute. Piper’s tale also looks at the dark side of human nature as the need to declare the Fuzzies as non-sentient in order to protect profits shows the lengths mankind will go to because of the deadly sin of greed.
Little Fuzzy
Number Eight:Runaway Robot by Lester Del Ray
YA Science fiction and it was a great adventure! A boy and his robot, instead of a boy and his dog. One of the first science fiction books I ever read and I still get a kick out of it.
The Runaway RobotThe Runaway Robot
Number Nine:Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
Jules Verne may have been off with a lot of the science in his novels, but he had a way of predicting things that would come about such as man traveling to the moon and nuclear power. Given that he got those two big ones right, he gets a pass for thinking it was possible to descend into a volcano in Iceland and travel to the center of the planet.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Number Ten:The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndam
Triffids sound horrible if you weren’t blind. I can’t begin to imagine the sheer horror of facing these strange plants with my eyesight being normal. An early story of global disaster without relying on the Cold War theme of a nuclear holocaust.
Signup for The Inspector’s Report Newsletter! Keep up with Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his friends. Get updates on when the next book will be published. Enjoy the occasional short story and read author K.C. Sivils’ musings about science fiction, crime noir and what ever else is on his mind.
It has taken me awhile to get things set-up for my author’s newsletter, The Inspector’s Report. I’m not a particularly computer savvy individual so it’s to be expected I suppose.
The Inspector’s Report will be e-mailed periodically. I promise to NEVER share anyone’s e-mail who signs up.
You can unsubscribe at anytime AND you can not feel guilty about it!
The Inspector’s Report will give updates on the availability of the latest offering in the Universe of Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his friends (enemies too). Back history for characters and places on Beta Prime will be provided to answer those nagging questions readers have about this detail or that.
Short stories will be a part of the newsletter on a semi-regular basis and will often feature supporting characters such as Ralph, Alice or Joe.
If you are a fan of science fiction and/or crime noir/mysteries, I will include my thoughts on a regular basis in the form of lists or reviews of books I have read.
I would love it if readers of The Inspector’s Report would ask questions and contribute content as well.
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