Cocaine and Blue Eyes is the best I’ve ever written …

Fred Zackel · 06-17-2010, 12:21 PM

In January 1978 the mystery novelist Ross Macdonald wrote, "Fred Zackel's first novel reminds me of the young Dashiell Hammett's work, not because it is an imitation, but because it is not. It is a powerful and original book made from the lives and language of the people who live in San Francisco today."

My novel Cocaine and Blue Eyes was first published in hard cover by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in 1978.

On 28 November 1978, TIME MAGAZINE described the novel as “A spectrum of sex, aging flower children, mafia money, houseboat life in Sausalito, booze, barbituates, bitterness, incest and greed … as nerve-rattling as a full-throttle auto chase!”

Then it was published in paperback by Berkley Books in 1981 and then reissued in 1983.

Cocaine and Blue Eyes was made into a NBC television movie that first aired 2 January 1983.

A French edition was published by Editions Gallimard in Paris, France, 1986.

A Spanish edition was published in Buenos Aires by Sudamericana sometime in 1993 or 94.

Cocaine and Blue Eyes was re-issued by Point Blank Press in November 2006.

It is now available on Kindle. The price goes up to $2.99 next month.

I firmly believe that the best way to sell a book is by letting people read some of the story. Here is a two paragraph sample from the opening chapter:

“It was almost midnight Christmas, and the runt was spoiling my breakfast. We were the only two customers in the OK truckstop. He said nothing to me, just sat sniffling at the counter. He had the sniffles bad.

“His hair was tied back in a ponytail. Patched blue jeans, a workshirt without buttons, raggedy hiking boots. The California highways were filled with hundreds just like him every summer. Some were raggier, almost all were taller. Just another rammy runt with a runny nose and a shirttail always hanging out …”

Enjoy good writing tonight in the privacy of your home.

Please
click here to reach the Kindle
Shop.

I would be honored by all those who can review me at the Kindle store, if you wish. And at smashwords.

And thank you for reading my writings in this forum.

Best wishes,

Fred Zackel

AnemicOak · 06-17-2010, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Zackel

(No, I regret that I do not yet know how to put a link in to Kindle. Can anybody tell me?)

Just copy and paste the URL from your browsers address bar.

Here you go...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...6791829&sr=1-1

Fred Zackel · 06-17-2010, 05:06 PM

Do you mean this?

Please
click here to reach Amazon, I
think.

Fred Zackel · 06-17-2010, 05:07 PM

I think you mean this.

Please
click here to reach Amazon, I
think.

(I hope.)

Robin O'Neill · 06-17-2010, 08:34 PM

Fred, did you know Ross MacDonald? I recently read his biography which also dealt quite a bit with Margaret Millar. Very interesting dynamic between those two. So I found one of her books on abebooks and had a big surprise at the end. The Listening Walls I think it was titled.

In the future, books won't go out of print, they'll just be in the ether forever which is not a bad thing at all, especially for those of us who already have a backlist.

Robin

Fred Zackel · 06-18-2010, 08:09 AM

Yes, I did know Ross Macdonald. He was a wonderful man and was exceptionally generous to me with my work. And I will tell you as much as I can. I do need a little more time to prep it.

As I said elsewhere, this book has had many lives, all of which fascinate me, the lowly author. And other writers have been alongside me. For them too, I am very grateful.

When C&BE was reprinted in 2006, Loren D. Estleman, the author of the Amos Walker series, including AMERICAN DETECTIVE and NICOTINE KISS said,

"The American private eye story was in the Dumpster when Fred Zackel fished
it out at the point of a gun. He revived the form, electrified readers and
critics, and started the juggernaut that shoved aside the paperback romance
to establish the mystery as the most popular category in the world. Finally,
the generation that grew up since COCAINE AND BLUE EYES has the chance to
meet Michael Brennan. An event like this ought to have a national holiday
connected with it."

Loren Estleman has written 43 novels and, in my humble opinion, is the best private eye writer alive, and I have been working in this field for a long time. 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of Amos Walker series, for instance. And he has other series, too, including Valentino, the film detective, and many wonderful western novels. No other writer has been more consistent in his excellence than Loren. No other writer is worthy of more kudos. That he speaks so highly of my work is a treasure I am in awe of. That he and I have since become friends is even sweeter.

You don't need to buy my work. But you should check out those books of his available on Kindle. You can do no better.

Fred

Robin O'Neill · 06-18-2010, 09:15 AM

Thank you, Fred. I would love to hear about Ross MacDonald. I moved to Santa Barbara (for 2 years) because I had heard of his connection with the writer's group there. I met a good friend that way. He was a terrific writer and I learned so much from reading his work early in my career that I will always be indebted to him.

I'm glad to know more about your work as well. When I saw your initial post for Cocaine, the title sounded so familiar. I thought wasn't there already a book with this title, why did he name it the same? (Not that I didn't wind up doing that recently with renaming one of mine which was why it was at the forefront of my mind.) Obviously it was your book/the movie I was thinking of.

Robin

Fred Zackel · 06-18-2010, 10:08 AM

Thanks, Robin. This weekend I hope to send you something about my first meeting with Ross Macdonald. And sometime after that we can chitchat about the movie.

Not many writers had a real life honest-to-god internationally renown murderer co-produced and star in the movie made from his book?

(A very dubious honor, of course.)

But more later ...

And I love Santa Barbara. We used to go up the mesa and have beakfast burritos at the Coastal Cafe(??) Don't know if it's still there.

I'm hoping that Mobileread will help me connect with European readers.

Best to you this morning ...

Robin O'Neill · 06-18-2010, 12:34 PM

Sounds great, Fred. I'd love to hear about the movie, too. I never had the experience of a murderer produce anything of mine, but I was Mirandized when an acquaintance was murdered.

Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I'm quite sure of that.

Robin

LeeGoldberg · 06-19-2010, 08:43 PM

Fred,

My mother, Jan Curran, was very active at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for decades...handling their publicity, newsletters, etc. One of my most treasured possessions is a copy of THE BLUE HAMMER that she had MacDonald sign for me. I was fortunate enough to speak/teach at the conference a few times myself before it went under.

Did you ever run into my Mom during your years at the conference?

Lee

Fred Zackel · 06-19-2010, 09:12 PM

Hi Lee,

I don't know. I was a little ... spacey there most of the time. And I was a nobody, tagging along like some little kid at the big kids' softball game. But everyone was nice to me. that i remember so well ...

Did you ever read my piece on meeting him at the Conference. It was in January magazine, oh, about ten, a dozen years ago. Here's a link to it.

http://januarymagazine.com/features/zackel.html

"I met Ken Millar in the summer of 1975 at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, the event that author Barnaby Conrad has so wondrously run for all these years. I went to the conference not to meet Millar (a.k.a. Ross Macdonald), but to quit writing.

'I was 29 years old and was giving up. Oh, I had set off five years earlier, determined like every other writer that I was going to produce those words everyone had always been itching to read, only they didn't know it yet ..."

This article turned out so well that it became the piece that got me seriously writing again.

I had wonderful times at the Conference. There was one night, after a pirate workshop, that Irwin Shaw joined us in the bar and started buying drinks for everybody ... then there were the nude tennis matches some big literary stars were having after midnight on the courts ...

But I digress.

Fred

Fred Zackel · 07-05-2010, 08:38 AM

Tom Nolan, author of "Ross Macdonald: A Biography," wrote that "The American private-eye novel enjoyed a resurgence in the 1970s, and Fred Zackel's "Cocaine and Blue Eyes" was a unique part of that literary blossoming. Set in the Bay Area of Northern California, this fast-moving 1978 novel speeds through an eventful Christmas and New Year's season with all the energy of a classic genre bursting with new life. From page one, it's clear the book's author is a born storyteller, one who brings a personal vision to the templates of the past.

"Cocaine and Blue Eyes" - the tough tale of a semi-pro detective hunting high and low in San Francisco society for a missing person who maybe isn't missing, on behalf of a client who is without a doubt dead - evokes some of the tone and terrain of Dashiell Hammett, some of the seductive cadences of Raymond Chandler, and some of the poetic flashes of Ross Macdonald (who enthusiastically supported its publication). What seems most Zackel's own is the sensibility of investigator-protagonist Michael Brennen: a man coming up through the underside, to find his own moral center.

Fred Zackel's novel reads today with the same raw vigor as when it was written. If some of its slang, social-sexual attitudes, and pharmacological lore now ring out of date, such jarring notes only validate the book's integrity as an honest time-machine: a beat-up-cab-ride back some 30 years to when parking-meters took pennies, cigarettes were smoked in restaurants, cocaine was thought to be neither addictive nor fatal; and when - then as now - "Only the lucky solve cases."

dadioflex · 07-05-2010, 03:30 PM

Edit.

Fred Zackel · 07-09-2010, 11:32 AM

Thank you, dadioflex! Thank you for reading my work and buying my book.

Yes, my short story "The Bicycles Were Gravestones" is available on google.

(http://www.storyglossia.com/28/fz_bicycles.html)

I am pleased that you enjoyed it so much. That you said "The turn of phrase in the descriptions was perfect." is wonderful.

And anybody can check it out through google or bing. I hope everybody enjoys it as much as you have, that they enjoy both the story and the writing.

That story is also on Kindle. (And through smashwords. Can I say that here?) As an e-story, it's only 99 cents. So folks can use the Internet or power up their e-reader. (And if you enjoy it, please stop by Aamazon and leave a short review saying why it's so wonderful. (Is my humility wearing off? Oops.)

Also available on google is my nonfiction piece "Frederick Zackel Looks Back at his Mentor" which I mentioned above in a reply. (There I am with my beautiful cat .. who is no longer with us. He would leap up onto my shoulder and ride around like a parrot all day. He is missed every day.)

http://januarymagazine.com/features/zackel.html

Please don't bother with any of those links that promise you the lowdown on me or promise to network with me. They are just scams, and I resent their hints of intimacy with me. They lie. We never met; we never will.

And thank you, too, for buying the paperback of Cocaine and Blue Eyes. But you should have saved money by getting through E-bay or one of Amazon's used book providers. My paperback publisher claims my book has been out of print for the past three years, but keeps selling it on Amazon and won't send me a statement. I have zip sympathy for him.

Anyone without a Kindle: buy the cheap used paper versions until Santy Claus brings all of us our own e-readers.

Again, thank you, dadioflex, for enjoying my work.

I hope to add more as soon as possible.

Fred

It's summer. Be cool.

dadioflex · 07-09-2010, 02:54 PM

Edit.

06-17-2010, 12:21 PM	#1
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Cocaine and Blue Eyes is the best I’ve ever written … In January 1978 the mystery novelist Ross Macdonald wrote, "Fred Zackel's first novel reminds me of the young Dashiell Hammett's work, not because it is an imitation, but because it is not. It is a powerful and original book made from the lives and language of the people who live in San Francisco today." My novel Cocaine and Blue Eyes was first published in hard cover by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in 1978. On 28 November 1978, TIME MAGAZINE described the novel as “A spectrum of sex, aging flower children, mafia money, houseboat life in Sausalito, booze, barbituates, bitterness, incest and greed … as nerve-rattling as a full-throttle auto chase!” Then it was published in paperback by Berkley Books in 1981 and then reissued in 1983. Cocaine and Blue Eyes was made into a NBC television movie that first aired 2 January 1983. A French edition was published by Editions Gallimard in Paris, France, 1986. A Spanish edition was published in Buenos Aires by Sudamericana sometime in 1993 or 94. Cocaine and Blue Eyes was re-issued by Point Blank Press in November 2006. It is now available on Kindle. The price goes up to $2.99 next month. I firmly believe that the best way to sell a book is by letting people read some of the story. Here is a two paragraph sample from the opening chapter: “It was almost midnight Christmas, and the runt was spoiling my breakfast. We were the only two customers in the OK truckstop. He said nothing to me, just sat sniffling at the counter. He had the sniffles bad. “His hair was tied back in a ponytail. Patched blue jeans, a workshirt without buttons, raggedy hiking boots. The California highways were filled with hundreds just like him every summer. Some were raggier, almost all were taller. Just another rammy runt with a runny nose and a shirttail always hanging out …” Enjoy good writing tonight in the privacy of your home. Please click here to reach the Kindle Shop. I would be honored by all those who can review me at the Kindle store, if you wish. And at smashwords. And thank you for reading my writings in this forum. Best wishes, Fred Zackel Last edited by Fred Zackel; 07-26-2010 at 11:33 AM.

06-18-2010, 09:15 AM	#7
Robin O'Neill Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 60900 Join Date: May 2010 Device: PC	Thank you, Fred. I would love to hear about Ross MacDonald. I moved to Santa Barbara (for 2 years) because I had heard of his connection with the writer's group there. I met a good friend that way. He was a terrific writer and I learned so much from reading his work early in my career that I will always be indebted to him. I'm glad to know more about your work as well. When I saw your initial post for Cocaine, the title sounded so familiar. I thought wasn't there already a book with this title, why did he name it the same? (Not that I didn't wind up doing that recently with renaming one of mine which was why it was at the forefront of my mind.) Obviously it was your book/the movie I was thinking of. Robin Last edited by Robin O'Neill; 06-18-2010 at 09:17 AM. Reason: clarification

07-05-2010, 03:30 PM	#13
dadioflex Dyslexic Count Posts: 526 Karma: 5041991 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Palm TX, Advent Vega, iPad, iPod Touch, Kindle	Edit. Last edited by dadioflex; 12-15-2010 at 05:15 PM.

07-09-2010, 02:54 PM	#15
dadioflex Dyslexic Count Posts: 526 Karma: 5041991 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Palm TX, Advent Vega, iPad, iPod Touch, Kindle	Edit. Last edited by dadioflex; 12-15-2010 at 05:15 PM.

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06-17-2010, 05:06 PM	#3
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Do you mean this? Please click here to reach Amazon, I think.

06-17-2010, 05:07 PM	#4
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	I think you mean this. Please click here to reach Amazon, I think. (I hope.)

06-17-2010, 08:34 PM	#5
Robin O'Neill Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 60900 Join Date: May 2010 Device: PC	Fred, did you know Ross MacDonald? I recently read his biography which also dealt quite a bit with Margaret Millar. Very interesting dynamic between those two. So I found one of her books on abebooks and had a big surprise at the end. The Listening Walls I think it was titled. In the future, books won't go out of print, they'll just be in the ether forever which is not a bad thing at all, especially for those of us who already have a backlist. Robin

06-18-2010, 08:09 AM	#6
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Yes, I did know Ross Macdonald. He was a wonderful man and was exceptionally generous to me with my work. And I will tell you as much as I can. I do need a little more time to prep it. As I said elsewhere, this book has had many lives, all of which fascinate me, the lowly author. And other writers have been alongside me. For them too, I am very grateful. When C&BE was reprinted in 2006, Loren D. Estleman, the author of the Amos Walker series, including AMERICAN DETECTIVE and NICOTINE KISS said, "The American private eye story was in the Dumpster when Fred Zackel fished it out at the point of a gun. He revived the form, electrified readers and critics, and started the juggernaut that shoved aside the paperback romance to establish the mystery as the most popular category in the world. Finally, the generation that grew up since COCAINE AND BLUE EYES has the chance to meet Michael Brennan. An event like this ought to have a national holiday connected with it." Loren Estleman has written 43 novels and, in my humble opinion, is the best private eye writer alive, and I have been working in this field for a long time. 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of Amos Walker series, for instance. And he has other series, too, including Valentino, the film detective, and many wonderful western novels. No other writer has been more consistent in his excellence than Loren. No other writer is worthy of more kudos. That he speaks so highly of my work is a treasure I am in awe of. That he and I have since become friends is even sweeter. You don't need to buy my work. But you should check out those books of his available on Kindle. You can do no better. Fred

06-18-2010, 10:08 AM	#8
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Thanks, Robin. This weekend I hope to send you something about my first meeting with Ross Macdonald. And sometime after that we can chitchat about the movie. Not many writers had a real life honest-to-god internationally renown murderer co-produced and star in the movie made from his book? (A very dubious honor, of course.) But more later ... And I love Santa Barbara. We used to go up the mesa and have beakfast burritos at the Coastal Cafe(??) Don't know if it's still there. I'm hoping that Mobileread will help me connect with European readers. Best to you this morning ...

06-18-2010, 12:34 PM	#9
Robin O'Neill Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 60900 Join Date: May 2010 Device: PC	Sounds great, Fred. I'd love to hear about the movie, too. I never had the experience of a murderer produce anything of mine, but I was Mirandized when an acquaintance was murdered. Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I'm quite sure of that. Robin

06-19-2010, 08:43 PM	#10
LeeGoldberg Connoisseur Posts: 82 Karma: 100000 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Los Angeles Device: Kindle	Fred, My mother, Jan Curran, was very active at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for decades...handling their publicity, newsletters, etc. One of my most treasured possessions is a copy of THE BLUE HAMMER that she had MacDonald sign for me. I was fortunate enough to speak/teach at the conference a few times myself before it went under. Did you ever run into my Mom during your years at the conference? Lee

06-19-2010, 09:12 PM	#11
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Hi Lee, I don't know. I was a little ... spacey there most of the time. And I was a nobody, tagging along like some little kid at the big kids' softball game. But everyone was nice to me. that i remember so well ... Did you ever read my piece on meeting him at the Conference. It was in January magazine, oh, about ten, a dozen years ago. Here's a link to it. http://januarymagazine.com/features/zackel.html "I met Ken Millar in the summer of 1975 at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, the event that author Barnaby Conrad has so wondrously run for all these years. I went to the conference not to meet Millar (a.k.a. Ross Macdonald), but to quit writing. 'I was 29 years old and was giving up. Oh, I had set off five years earlier, determined like every other writer that I was going to produce those words everyone had always been itching to read, only they didn't know it yet ..." This article turned out so well that it became the piece that got me seriously writing again. I had wonderful times at the Conference. There was one night, after a pirate workshop, that Irwin Shaw joined us in the bar and started buying drinks for everybody ... then there were the nude tennis matches some big literary stars were having after midnight on the courts ... But I digress. Fred

07-05-2010, 08:38 AM	#12
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Tom Nolan, author of "Ross Macdonald: A Biography," wrote that "The American private-eye novel enjoyed a resurgence in the 1970s, and Fred Zackel's "Cocaine and Blue Eyes" was a unique part of that literary blossoming. Set in the Bay Area of Northern California, this fast-moving 1978 novel speeds through an eventful Christmas and New Year's season with all the energy of a classic genre bursting with new life. From page one, it's clear the book's author is a born storyteller, one who brings a personal vision to the templates of the past. "Cocaine and Blue Eyes" - the tough tale of a semi-pro detective hunting high and low in San Francisco society for a missing person who maybe isn't missing, on behalf of a client who is without a doubt dead - evokes some of the tone and terrain of Dashiell Hammett, some of the seductive cadences of Raymond Chandler, and some of the poetic flashes of Ross Macdonald (who enthusiastically supported its publication). What seems most Zackel's own is the sensibility of investigator-protagonist Michael Brennen: a man coming up through the underside, to find his own moral center. Fred Zackel's novel reads today with the same raw vigor as when it was written. If some of its slang, social-sexual attitudes, and pharmacological lore now ring out of date, such jarring notes only validate the book's integrity as an honest time-machine: a beat-up-cab-ride back some 30 years to when parking-meters took pennies, cigarettes were smoked in restaurants, cocaine was thought to be neither addictive nor fatal; and when - then as now - "Only the lucky solve cases."

07-09-2010, 11:32 AM	#14
Fred Zackel Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 50000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: none	Thank you, dadioflex! Thank you for reading my work and buying my book. Yes, my short story "The Bicycles Were Gravestones" is available on google. (http://www.storyglossia.com/28/fz_bicycles.html) I am pleased that you enjoyed it so much. That you said "The turn of phrase in the descriptions was perfect." is wonderful. And anybody can check it out through google or bing. I hope everybody enjoys it as much as you have, that they enjoy both the story and the writing. That story is also on Kindle. (And through smashwords. Can I say that here?) As an e-story, it's only 99 cents. So folks can use the Internet or power up their e-reader. (And if you enjoy it, please stop by Aamazon and leave a short review saying why it's so wonderful. (Is my humility wearing off? Oops.) Also available on google is my nonfiction piece "Frederick Zackel Looks Back at his Mentor" which I mentioned above in a reply. (There I am with my beautiful cat .. who is no longer with us. He would leap up onto my shoulder and ride around like a parrot all day. He is missed every day.) http://januarymagazine.com/features/zackel.html Please don't bother with any of those links that promise you the lowdown on me or promise to network with me. They are just scams, and I resent their hints of intimacy with me. They lie. We never met; we never will. And thank you, too, for buying the paperback of Cocaine and Blue Eyes. But you should have saved money by getting through E-bay or one of Amazon's used book providers. My paperback publisher claims my book has been out of print for the past three years, but keeps selling it on Amazon and won't send me a statement. I have zip sympathy for him. Anyone without a Kindle: buy the cheap used paper versions until Santy Claus brings all of us our own e-readers. Again, thank you, dadioflex, for enjoying my work. I hope to add more as soon as possible. Fred It's summer. Be cool.