Today at Do Some Damage, my good friend Josh Stallings stops by to talk about reading outside of our genre and what we can learn from it:

“At Bouchercon 2015, I attended the “Where Crime and Mystery Meets Horror and the Weird” panel. Chris Holm spoke of using horror techniques in crime novels. He’s a smart guy and so were David Morrell, Reece Hirsch, and John Rector, so I paid attention. Take away – read many styles and genres, then steal their punk asses blind. This is the way to build a large tool-chest. This scam is nothing new. Oxford, Bacon, Derby, and Marlowe all said Shakespeare ripped them off. And criminal Thomas Pluck admitted after the rubber hose was applied that he got a five finger discount on style points from Willa Cather for his atmospheric western monster story, ‘Little Howl on the Prairie.'”

YOUNG AMERICANS by Josh Stallings

Josh knows what he’s talking about. As the author of the exceedingly hardboiled Moses McGuire novels and the forthcoming coming-of-age heist novel, YOUNG AMERICANS, Josh reads widely and isn’t afraid of switching genres if the fancy takes him. And having had the pleasure of reading passages from an early draft of YOUNG AMERICANS, I can tell you we’re all in for a treat when this novel drops on November 20.

About YOUNG AMERICANS: 1976 New Year’s Eve, San Francisco. A Firebird transports a crew of glitter kids away from the city. Forget the trunk full of cash and illegal firearms. Forget the disco heist and sea of felonies left in their wake. They are five friends happily rolling down thunder road with no horizon in sight. They are YOUNG AMERICANS.

You can pre-order YOUNG AMERICANS here.

One Reply to “What’s in a Genre”

  1. Josh Stallings says: November 10, 2015 at 6:58 pm

    Holly your website looks spiffy. I like. Miss you in this So Cali.

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