Background Check On: I, the Jury (Mike Hammer) by Mickey Spillane, adapted for audio by Mike Dennis

Mike Dennis is not only a pretty good writer, he's also the producer of cool audio books. This week he's got the audio adaption coming out of Mickey Spillane's I, The Jury. I asked him all about it...

Q: Please introduce yourself to the readers
I'm Mike Dennis from Key West. I've been narrating and producing audiobooks out of my home studio down here for a couple of years now. Prior to that I was a professional musician (piano/30 years) and a professional poker player (6 years). I also wrote six novels and two novelettes, all in the crime/noir fiction genre. The two novelettes and one of my novels were in the private eye sub-genre.

Q: Tell us about the road to  get I, the Jury done as an audiobook
Last summer, while trolling Amazon one day, I was shocked to discover Mickey Spillane's I, The Jury was not available as a modern downloadable audiobook. This of course was Spillane's first novel and the introduction of Mike Hammer. They had released an audiocassette (remember those?) back in the 1980s, I think, and they were no longer available except used copies from 3rd party vendors on Amazon. Plus, it was heavily abridged. I looked at the other Hammer novels and they were all available in downloadable audio format, with the great Stacy Keach as the narrator. I looked again to be sure I hadn't made a mistake and sure enough, no audiobook for I, The Jury.

Well, I set out to locate the holder of the audio rights and eventually discovered they were in the hands of Simon & Schuster. After much painstaking work, I finally dug up the name of S&S's audiobook division chief (they don't really want you to know who these people are), and I tried calling him on the phone. After many attempts, I finally got him on the line and told him who I was and that I wanted the opportunity to narrate and produce this great Spillane novel.

Naturally, he could've easily told me to get lost. Key West? Home studio? Very little track record? Are you kidding me? Buzz off!

Instead, I told him I had prepared a brief recorded sample from I, The Jury and could I send it to him. He paused, then said, "Okay." I sent it to him immediately and then waited. And waited. And waited.

Did I say I waited?

A couple of months went by and he emailed me back and said he had sent my sample off to the audiobook production chief and she would be listening to it. So I waited again.

After another month or so, the production chief emailed me and requested a finished recording of the entire first chapter. I put it together with great care and sent it off to her.

A month or two later, she wrote back and said they wanted me to do the whole book. Naturally, I was thrilled beyond words. We agreed on the terms, I signed a contract, and I recorded the entire novel. I uploaded it to them around the middle of April. As a result, I will be the new voice of Mike Hammer.

The moral of the story is: cold querying works!

Q: Who are your favorite private eyes?
My favorite PIs are not surprising. Mike Hammer (of course), Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and James Crumley's CW Sughrue.

Q: What challenges do you encounter getting an audiobook done?
The biggest challenge for me in getting an audiobook done is maintaining a consistent sound quality throughout. It takes me many days to actually record a complete novel in "raw file" form, so I have to make sure the conditions are similar each time I sit down to record. My voice has to sound the same and if it doesn't — for example, I might be very tired or slightly congested — I can't record that day. Then in the editing and mastering phases, which I also do, I have to ensure a consistent, seamless sound through the entire novel.

Another big challenge is narrating a poorly written or poorly edited book. It is really tough going if the book is not well-written. Fortunately, of course, that problem didn't exist with I, The Jury.

Q: What is coming up next for you?
Because of my success with I, The Jury, I've cold-queried a few other big novels which I've noticed do not have modern audiobooks attached to them. I'm hoping to hit at least one of them. I'll keep you posted.

Hard Cash (Jack Barnett) by Mike Dennis

I'm always pleased when another PI writer comes out with a novelette. I think the format suits the PI story very well and Mike Dennis proves it with his second Jack Barnett story.
The ex-PI is handed an envelope with a lot of cash by a dying man, victim of a hit-and-run. He could use the money, but as all good knight errants do he decided to go ahead and do the right thing. Too bad that usually involves beatings by tough thugs.
A nice, compact traditional PI  story in a great package.

Temptation Town (Jack Barnett) by Mike Dennis

I'm a big fan of novelettes as ebooks. Mike Dennis shows how much is possible with this format in this one.
Jack Barnett loses his PI license in LA, and fearing criminal prosecution, heads over to Las Vegas.
Over there he is hired to find a missing daughter. He ends up clashing with pimps and encounters his own feelings of guilt.
The story is 12,000 words, nice and short but packs a huge emotional and gritty punch. Who needs a full novel when you can reach so much with a novelette?
This novelette proves Mike Dennis is a crafty writer and a huge asset to the world of PI fiction.

Q & A with Mike Dennis

I interviewed Mike Dennis who just published Temptation Town featuring PI Jack Barnett...

Q: What makes Jack Barnett different from other (unofficial) PIs?
He wants out of the business, but keeps getting dragged back into it. After years of being short-tempered, he finally pushed the wrong guy around and wound up losing his license in LA. Fearing criminal prosecution, he split for Las Vegas in the middle of the night to assume a very low profile playing poker in a downscale casino. He's in constant need of money, so when a PI opportunity shows itself, he reluctantly takes it. Off the books, of course.

Q: How did you come up with the character?
I had thought about doing a PI series for a long time, but I wanted a character who could stand out in this very inflexible format. A couple of years ago, I saw a YouTube video of a really old TV show called Man Against Crime. It was produced all the way back in the late 1940s and the central character was a PI named Mike Barnett. He always worked alone and he never carried a gun, very much a traditional knight in shining armor. I thought about a series built around Mike Barnett's grandson, only with many flaws. After a couple of false starts, I had Temptation Town. The key was really having Jack Barnett be on the run, constantly afraid of being found by the California authorities.

Q: What are your thoughts on the whole ebook revolution?
Ebooks are on their way to taking over the book business, regardless of what New York publishers say. They're pretending ebooks are just another opportunity for them to make money, when they won't allow themselves to see the long-term fatal flaws in their fundamental business model. When the big authors see how much money they're losing by staying with New York, they'll jump ship and New York will painfully make the transition from controlling the book business to controlling the print book business, a much smaller pie. Amazon is the big gun in town right now, and their crafty innovations bring more and more authors into the fold. Apple will probably enter the fray in a more serious fashion, but either way, it means ebooks will be king. It's the tide of history and it cannot be stopped. Cannot even be slowed.

Q: What's next for you and Barnett?
Next up is a short story called Hard Cash. There's a sneak preview of it in the back pages of Temptation Town. After that, I've got a Barnett novel that's in the polishing stages right now. It's called The Downtown Deal. I might add, all these Barnett works are chronological. Temptation Town is set in January, 2002. Hard Cash takes place in February, 2003, and so on. I intend to have Barnett age as the years go on, and the changing face of Las Vegas will be reflected as well.

Q: How do you promote your work?
I have a website, a Facebook page, and I'm all over the blogs. I do interviews like this one and try to get my books reviewed as often as possible on the best websites.

Q: What's your idea about the psychotic sidekick in PI novels like Hawk and Joe Pike?
I think it was a good idea at first, but now the psycho-sidekick has become clichéd. It's a good device, because it allows the PI to remain pristine while the sidekick does all the illegal/crazy stuff, but I think it's been somewhat overdone.

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation?
Those guys will continue to influence future generations. They set the standard, they created and perfected the genre, and we all follow their lead.

Q: Kent Westmoreland came up with the following question: What hidden secret motivates your PI to become involved in the lives of others?
Back in Barnett's past, there was Lyla. She's a tragic figure from his earlier days (the early 1990s) and is only hinted at in Temptation Town, but she clearly haunts Barnett to this day.

Q: What question should we ask every PI writer we interview and what is your answer?
What criteria did you use to choose the setting for your PI?
In my case, I chose Las Vegas. I could've chosen Key West, since I had lived there for over 15 years right before moving to Las Vegas. But I felt a Key West location would be too confining. It's a small town and I thought the constricting PI format would be difficult to pull off without veering into Margaritaville-type clichés, which I wanted to avoid at all costs. Besides, I already had a Key West series working, Key West Nocturnes, a group of standalone noir novels that reveal that island city as a true noir city.
I had only lived in Las Vegas for about three years when I started to write the series, but I had spent time in the grimy parts of town, far from the luxurious Strip, and I had walked the streets well enough to place Jack Barnett in that atmosphere. Remember, he's not from Las Vegas. He's an outsider, too, so he's constantly uncomfortable. The city is big enough to keep the series fresh for a long time. Not only that, there are a lot of outsiders, trying to get by in that bizarre town, so I felt the vibe was right.