Coming slightly out of order in electronic book form, since this was the fourth Thomas Black and the third is still being professionally proofed, here is Fat Tuesday.
It is available at Amazon here and on the Barnes and Noble site for Nook here.
Fat Tuesday was the first bestseller in my quiver, racing up the Northwest paperback charts the summer it came out in paper from Ballantine Books. The paperback version is slightly modified from the original hardback but only by about 1500 words. I did that myself. It was not in response to some monstrous editorial dictum. By and large, my editors have all been pretty good, if not excellent.
I invariably do a title search before using a title. When I researched “Fat Tuesday” it did not exist as a book title. I don’t want to put out a book with a tag that’s already been used a hundred times. Nine years after my Fat Tuesday came out, Sandra Brown brought out with a book titled Fat Tuesday. It was mildly annoying but since titles are not copyright-able, I had no permanent claim to the words and knew it. The fact is, I was surprised somebody hadn’t used the title long before I did. It’s a great title. There are now several other books out with the same title. In those days I did my title searches at the public library using the huge most recent volumes of “Books in Print.” Now, of course, you google it.
As annoying as it was to have Sandra Brown—who sells much better than I ever have— come and take away some of my thunder, something good came out of it. Shortly after her book came out we sold the rights to Fat Tuesday to Italy, my first and only Italian sale. Generally, foreign rights to a title are not sold nine years after pub date. I had a wee suspicion somebody in Italy got the two authors mixed up and believed they were buying the title by Brown when they bought mine. I cashed the check anyway. A very small check. These new covers are being done by Cinelli.
Tell me what you think.
Next and coming soon: Deviant Behavior, which I consider the first of the modern Thomas Blacks.
Fat City Purchased.
Earl, have you ever had the film rights purchased for one of your novels? Long ago, and I am not sure why, I was under the impression that most books had the film rights purchased by someone, just in case it took off.
I am still working on Rainy City.
I love the part where Kathy and Thomas are looking for the Crowell house on the beach:
“None of the houses looked as if they could even be discussed for less than a million”
Earlier you talked about keeping Fontana in the 80’s of you ever wrote a new Fontana book. Stuff like exclusive beach homes would definitely be a new area of retro-research needed.
I am loving rereading the old books. Keep them coming!
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