Little Brown’s new crime imprint Mulholland Books has got an interesting and ambitious lineup of titles due out this year - they had my attention at Daniel Woodrell and Duane Swierczynski. What that's not enough? How about new Scudder from Lawrence Block? How about Mark Billingham and Michael Robotham? But well before their first actual books roll into stores, they have started an even more ambitious blog. Several times a week they have interviews, essays and even fiction from an amazing and diverse cast of writers - check out recent posts by Kent Harrington (Dark Ride), Marcia Clark (yeah, that Marcia Clark) and screenwriter Brian Koppelman (Rounders) and you’ll see what I mean.
Without a doubt my favorite attraction they’ve come up with is the weekly serialization of a brand new novel from Ken Bruen. That's right, a whole novel free-like. Black Lens is two installments into I don’t know how many and I’m happy with it. Reeaal happy. Charles Manson, Phil Spector and KB? I'm so there. If the content of the stuff they sell is on par with what they’re giving away, Mulholland oughtta have a great future.
But back to the serial. I loooove a serial. I remember when Stephen King’s The Green Mile was being published in slim, monthly mass-market paperbacks. I pictured the guy bent over his word processor sweating out the next installment, and hoping he hadn’t painted himself into a corner – it seemed like a really ballsy thing for a high-profile writer like him to do, the stakes so high. Maybe he really was. Probably he wasn’t. Most likely it was at least all mapped out ahead of time, but the appeal of serials to me is the feeling of catching up to a runaway train. Serials have to move. They have to hook you with revelations and action each installment while drawing out the bigger themes and character development over the course of the larger story.
If you don't tune in next time, that's completely on the author and that's a lot of weight for a writer to carry which is why I admire anybody who can keep it up.
Serials seem have fallen out of fashion with print publishing, and I understand that – it’s risky, yeah? But that’s also the appeal, amen? There’s a stigma attached perhaps that the serial is a lower form of popular entertainment, but when someone the stature of Bruen or King or Denis Johnson (Nobody Move anyone?) wants to slum in serialization I’m all for it. So whether you’re Alexander Dumas publishing Three Musketeers in like a billion installments, J.J. Abrams on a weekly television show or Seth Harwood doing it in podcasts, I am on your side. You are letting it all hang out and I love that.
So, go get caught up with Ken Bruen’s Black Lens here, or check out Ray Banks’ Wolf Tickets appearing in Needle Magazine – just eat your serial, it’s good for you.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
