Book-trailers (again)

 Okay, ask yourself this question: 

What ingredients are needed in order to make a great book-trailer? 

A good trailer is like brewing up your own brand of home-cooked chili. It takes more than tons of chili powder to make a great pot of chili. You need tomato paste. Tomato chunks diced and thrown in. Onions. Various vegetables.  In fact, to make a great chili almost becomes a work of art. There are a gazillion numbers of recipes on how to make a pot chili.

Choose the one that closely matches your taste buds.

Making a book-trailer is essentially the same thing.

A book-trailer essentially has three main ingredients. One, it needs great visuals to visually glue the potential reader to the subject at hand. Two (and probably the most important)  it needs a tight script which instantly captures the possible reader's imagination. Thirdly, the voice of the narrator  has to be spot-on perfect for the subject at hand. A comedian cracking jokes trying to describe a dark noir mystery probably isn't going to work for anyone.

So here we go. I'm sharing my latest book-trailer featuring a book of mine entitled Smitty's Calling Card. (look down the right column featuring my books. You'll find it.)

I'm interested in hearing your opinions.

 

The Chandler/Hammit Debate

Have you ever read something created by the writer, Raymond Chandler? You haven't? 

Oh my . . . 

In my opinion, Raymond Chandler is the inventor of the modern American pulp-fiction detective.  Oh sure, sure. Most pundits would say American pulp-fiction was actually created by a writer by the name of Dashiell Hammit. And indeed, I'll give credit where credit is due. Hammit  arrived on the scene just before the arrival of Chandler. Hammit wrote fast-paced, hard hitting mysteries with bodies dropping on every other page and gun-play that would satisfy any ham-fisted thug. He also filled his pages with dry, sarcastic wordplay that instantly separated his novels from everyone else who came before him.

Raymond Chandler

You can't help but find yourself compelled with Hammit's creations. It seems like everyone on the planet has heard the titles to two of his most famous books, i.e.; The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man.

Two novels which I re-read again and again because they're just that satisfying to do.

But look at it this way.

Comparing the two writers is like comparing the sufferings of a patient with a badly ruptured appendicitis. Do you want this poor fellow to walk into a butcher's shop to get the help he needs?

Or would you prefer seeing the patient walk into the waiting room of a world-class surgeon?

That's the difference between Hammit's style of word-play versus Chandler's. The ham-fisted, shoot first and ask no questions later kind of anti-hero. Versus the delicious word play artistry of a reluctant hero forced to step forward to help those who can't, or won't, help themselves.

I urge you to decide for yourself who was the better of the two. Go out and find a copy of Hammit's The Thin Man and read it. And then find a copy of Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. I'm betting you'll enjoy both. Which one will you enjoy the most?

(And while you're at it, let me know something. Did I misspell Dashiell Hammit's last name? Again?)