Shameless nepotism? Probably. But I own the place, so I can get away with behavior like this.
My big brother Marcus’s latest novel, The Amateurs, is available at finer retail establishments throughout the universe today, as well as via the electron sea at locales such as Amazon. I strongly urge you to buy it, because I have read it and it is excellent.
The Chicago Tribune called Marcus “the reigning prince of crime fiction,” which was a nice thing to say. Marcus has managed to remain pretty humble despite being a prince. He hasn’t gotten fat or done blow off hookers or anything that you expect princes to do; instead he writes slavishly nearly every day, and when he’s not writing slavishly he tours around the country on his own dime (but at the publisher’s insistence) in his busted-up Acura, visiting bookstores and signing copies of his novels. Having seen how much work it is to be a successful novelist, I count my blessings every day that all I have to do is maintain a freaking blog.
The Amateurs brings his total number of published novels to four, with the first three already snapped up by Hollywood production companies. Ben Affleck’s company got rights to The Blade Itself, his debut. I’ve kind of lost track of who got the others, but I think Tobey Maguire is involved somewhere. The two in the middle – At the City’s Edge and Good People – are also quite lovely. At the City’s Edge is actually dedicated to moi, which makes it the BEST AND MOST IMPORTANT BOOK IN THE WORLD.
You can catch semi-weekly editions of Marcus at The Outfit blog, a gang of Chicago crime novelists who take turns ruminating about writing, rodents, politics, the justice system, and most everything else under the sun.
Marcus will be all aww-shucks when he sees this post, but you gotta support your brother. Plus he’s promised to support me in a life of luxury once he’s got enough to make a money hat.
Enjoy!
No ‘s’ in “moi” ya fake-French speakin’ rascal.
Which reminds me–I used to do a great job of speaking fake French–until I learned the real thing!
There was a great book I used to have called “How to Parlez Franglais” or something like that. It was fun, too.
I am duly chastened. Thanks be to you, Ernest.
That’s great that your brother is enjoying this much success! I can’t imagine how hard it would be to successfully break into the big time as a novelist. I really need to pick up a copy of ‘The Blade Itself’. If the likes of Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire deem it good enough to translate to the big screen, then I’m sure it must be a very enjoyable read!
I keep forgetting to ask: is Marcus still killing off siblings?
Yes, he is. The Amateurs features no deaths of brothers or brother-like figures, which he crowed about for hours. Then, immediately after filing the edits for the novel, he, his good friend and fellow author Sean Chercover, and their wives retreated to the Florida Keys to “write a screenplay… to see if [we] could work together without violence.”
And TO OUR AMAZEMENT, a brother is brutally murdered in it.
One of my friends maintains a visual depiction of my risk; a chart that shows the sharply declining number of pages in each Sakey novel before a brother or brother-like figure meets his untimely end. Marcus is shameless and perverse in this way.
If it were my brother offing literary siblings, I’d watch my back. Just sayin’ 😀
Aww, shucks!
Thanks, Matteo! So enormously appreciated. You are my co-prince. And I promise to try avoiding killing any siblings in this upcoming book, too.
To try.
So Matt, is there a pattern or some relationship between Marcus’s sib-i-cidal tendencies and say….the economy…seasons…lack of good RGPs??? Are you more at risk just after a full moon? Surely you can graph this out and take precautions. I think I am seeing the logic behind your desire for a missile silo in Idaho now.
There is no logic or pattern to it. He just wants me dead. I don’t know why; aside from the usual little-brother crap I’ve never done anything to him.
He also used my greatest phobia (losing my hands) as a trope in his book Good People. There’s a dude in that book who crushes hands by stomping on them with a dress shoe. Marcus thought it was funny. I had nightmares for a month.
Has Marcus always wanted to be an only child? If that’s his reasoning I could totally see that. Or maybe he’s just the bad seed? I think you should step up the acquisition of that silo.
No, as I’ve often said, he got all the good genes out of Mom and Dad before I had a shot at them. He can’t be the bad seed; that has to be me. He just doesn’t like me, I guess.
But at least all this has shown you guys why I like the idea of the missile silo so much.
Okay punk, that’s it. Now I’m definitely working in a fraternal death for book five. Not sure how yet, but just you wait… 😉