Alex Grecian

Pre-order The Black Country

Alex — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:48:55 +0000

The Black Country by Alex Grecian will be released
on May 21, 2013. Preorder The Black Country and you’ll receive a signed bookplate from Alex! Details here: http://bit.ly/YjaQBj

Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad returns, in the stunning new historical thriller from the author of the acclaimed national bestseller The Yard.

The British Midlands. It’s called the “Black Country” for a reason. Bad things happen there.

Pre-order The Black Country by Alex Grecian from one of these retailers

The Yard in paperback

Alex — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:46:59 +0000

The Yard by Alex Grecian is now available in paperback. Order your copy now from one of these book retailers.

Filled with fascinating period detail, and real historical figures, The Yard is the spectacular debut in a new series. The book showcases the depravity of late Victorian London, the advent of criminology, and introduces a stunning new cast of characters sure to appeal to fans of Caleb Carr.

2013 Critical Nominations

Alex — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:51:46 +0000

The Yard has been nominated for Strand Magazine’s 2013 Critics Award; Best Debut Novel.

Recognizing excellence in the field of mystery fiction, the Critics Awards were judged by a select group of book critics and journalists, from news venues such as The Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Sun Times, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, The Guardian, and several other daily papers. The awards will be presented at an invitation-only cocktail party, hosted by The Strand on July 9, 2013.
Read more about the Critics Award from Strand Magazine.

The Yard is nominated for Deadly Pleasures Magazine’s Barry Award for Best First Novel.

In 1997, the editorial staff of Deadly Pleasures decided that since one of the magazine’s stated goals was to search out and report on the best works being published in the field of crime fiction each year, it would be a natural fit to present awards for excellence. Then came the dilemma of what to name the award. At the time all associated with the magazine were still reeling from the untimely death of Barry Gardner, who was arguably the best fan reviewer on the planet, so it was decided to name the award after him so as to keep his memory alive.
Read more about the Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures Magazine.

Book reviews about The Yard

Alex — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:39:42 +0000

The New York Times Sunday Book Review
Nature of the Beast: ‘The Yard’ by Alex Grecian, and More
by Marilyn Stasio
In The New York Times on May 25, 2012

The Yard by Alex Grecian – review
Alex Grecian’s exuberantly grisly serial killer tale set in 1889 London picks up where the Ripper left off
by Allison Flood
In The Observer on June 23, 2012

Books: Alex Grecian’s The Yard Measures Up as Satisfying Mystery
by Michael Giltz
In The Huffington Post on May 29, 2012

USA TODAY Hot Summer Read!
The book staff included The Yard in their Summer Books Preview under Mystery/Suspense.
Summer Books Preview

Popcornreads.com
The Yard by Alex Grecian: Book Review & Giveaway
by MK

goodreads.com
The Yard by Alex Grecian has a nearly 4 out of 5 star rating (3.83 to be exact) from the 200+ ratings. Goodreads.com also has ninety reviews about The Yard.

The Yard is listed on Lost in Books.com‘s Books for Poolside.
Lost in Books
by Becca
on June 13, 2012

Interview on The Yard by Dr. Schillace

Alex — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 20:18:31 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dr. Brandy Schillace about my first novel The Yard, my career as an author, and about the influence of historical research on fictional writing. Dr. Schillace is a medical humanist, author, teacher of literature, young adult fiction, and creative writing at Winona State University, and blogger of bschillace.wordpress.com. The following is an excerpt of this interview.

Author Interview

Question 1: I have always identified with the Asimov quote: “I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn’t, I’d die.” Does this describe you? Could you say a bit about your early writing experiences?

I don’t know that I’d die if I didn’t write. I imagine I’d become so utterly bored and useless that I’d fade into the wallpaper and be forgotten. But I’ll never know because I’ve always written and I’ll never stop writing. It’s something you do because it’s something you do, not a conscious choice. You’re wired for it or you aren’t. It’s a way of looking at the world.

When I was a little boy, my father used to collect old radio shows on giant reels of tape. He’d load them on an old reel-to-reel player and I’d listen to mystery/dramas like The Shadow and The Unexpected, Lights Out and Sherlock Holmes. Then I’d try to write my own stories for those shows that had gone off the air decades before I was even born. I knew they were old, but I had no idea radio plays weren’t a popular form of entertainment anymore. I wrote lots of stories about dinosaurs in subways (despite never having seen a subway) and vampires fighting Sherlock Holmes.

Question 2: Not unlike many an author, I come from an academic background where writing fiction is a somewhat closeted affair. Can you talk about when you decided to “write for real”—that decision to write for publication and give this work the time and energy it so deserves?

I have always always always had an eye open toward eventually becoming a published novelist. I read The World According to Garp in high school and decided that Garp’s life was the one I wanted (except for the mutilations, adulteries, and sudden deaths). I wrote two novels that were absolutely terrible and put them away where nobody would ever see them. Then I wrote two more novels that I’m actually pretty proud of and hope to see published someday. I wrote dozens of short stories. Then I got the opportunity to write graphic novels and did that for a bit (I wrote seven of them, actually). When my agent told me that I ought to write this Scotland Yard idea I had as a prose novel, it was all the encouragement I needed.

Fiction shouldn’t be embarrassing or lesser-than. Sure, it’s meant to entertain, but it’s also a tool for navigating and understanding society. If a piece of fiction is good, it can inspire, uplift, teach, or even just provide a means of escape for a few hours. There’s real value to that, I think.

Read the rest of Alex Grecian’s interview at bschillace.wordpress.com.

Interview on The Yard by LibraryThing

Alex — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 20:43:35 +0000

This is an excerpt from my interview with Jeremy Dibbell of LibraryThing where I discuss the character development and inspiration behind the characters in The Yard among other topics.

Dibbell: For those who might not have yet had the chance to read The Yard, give us just a short introduction to the book, if you would.

Grecian: Jack the Ripper has done his nasty work and disappeared. The citizens of London are terrified and they don’t trust their police anymore. The homicide rate is at an all-time high and police morale is at an all-time low, when Walter Day, the newest detective at Scotland Yard, is assigned to catch a cop-killer. Overwhelmed, Day turns for help to an eccentric doctor named Kingsley who is well on his way to becoming the first forensics scientist in England.

Dibbell: What first interested you about the post-Jack the Ripper period in London police history?

Grecian: The actual Ripper murders have been talked about to death (so to speak). Jack the Ripper’s fascinating, of course, but I don’t feel like there’s much left to say on the subject. At least, not by me. But the impact he left on the people around him had to have been enormous. Something that devastating and that frightening doesn’t happen in a vacuum. He didn’t kill those five women, and then disappear and life went back to normal for everyone. He permanently changed London—and the world—and that is fertile ground for an entire series of stories.

Read the rest of this interview at www.librarything.com.

Pre-order The Yard in paperback

Alex — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:18:02 +0000

The Yard by Alex Grecian is coming out in paperback on April 2, 2013. Pre-order your copy now from one of these book retailers.

They Say You Learn Something New Every Day

Alex — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:47:12 +0000

They say you learn something new every day.

It’s a cliché, sure, but it sounds right to me. Since I began writing about Victorian England I’ve acquired a library of history books here in my office and a huge vintage map of London for my wall.

I never thought of The Yard as a book of historical fiction, though I suppose it qualifies. The Victorian era was simply an exotic setting for my thriller. Never mind that I’m writing about a place and time thousands of miles and more than a century away from where I live.

If my book had been set here and now, I still would have done as much research as possible in an effort to get the details right. And setting The Yard in Victorian England gave me the opportunity to learn more about an era that’s always fascinated me.

And every day I learn something new.

For instance, did you know that more than a hundred years ago mammoth ivory was plentiful and less expensive than elephant ivory? Herds of woolly mammoth corpses were found frozen in remote Russia. Nobody bothered to preserve them for study. Instead, their tusks were harvested and shipped off to Europe where they were made into umbrella handles and cufflinks and letter openers.

If you installed a bathroom in your home, you were expected to throw a party and show off your new toilet.

Children went to work when they were four years old, cleaning chimneys from the inside.

Secret tunnels were built under London’s streets so that aristocrats could sneak about without being seen. Criminals discovered those tunnels and took them over as hideouts.

The tunnels are still there.

I don’t know what’s in them now, but I know they’re there. And now so do you. Guess it’s true what they say.

Catch Alex at Comicon

Admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:09:21 +0000

I’m happy to announce I will be appearing at Trickster! July 12-15 during Comic-Con International in San Diego.

“The TR!CKSTER mission is one of positivity and sharing, in looking for the best way to showcase, promote, and share talent and ideas in the fields of comics, graphic arts and beyond.

The TR!CKSTER brain trust hails from the East, West and Central United States. We have been involved in comics, animation, fine art and toys as designers, artists, writers, self-publishers, and performers.”

Interview on Proof: Endangered #1

Admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 01:51:41 +0000

This is an excerpt from my interview on iFanboy where I talk about the return of the sasquatch character John Prufrock…

Josh Flanagan: Proof: Endangered #1 is back out in December. Was it always a sure thing that you were going to come back to Proof?

Alex Grecian: Oh, yeah! Some other cool opportunities were presented to both Riley (Proof artist) and me and we ended up not saying “no” to anything and getting completely bogged down. The book started running late and Image suggested to us that we take a few months to get caught up and then relaunch.

Image always wanted the book back on the schedule and we’re glad of that because, although we’ve had a good run on Proof, we haven’t finished the story we set out to tell. I’ve always said that we could probably keep going forever on this book, but that there’s a definite arc we’re telling here.

So, we’re absolutely going to finish the story we set out to tell over the next couple of years and then see where things stand, how tired we are, and how much demand there might be for more stories set in this world we’ve created.

JF: Was this story always part of the overall Proof story?

AG: Well, even though I was just talking about having a goal in mind with the overall story, I’m a little hazy on the middle bits. There are definite beats we need to hit along the way in order to get where we’re going and those beats are clear in my mind. But getting to the end wouldn’t be nearly as much fun (for me) if I knew every step we were going to take along the way.

So there are things that are happening in Proof: Endangered that were planned from the beginning, but there are other things happening that have been a complete surprise to me.

One advantage of having some wiggle room in the middle of the overall story is that we can decide how to present the story in order to get the attention of both old readers and new. We’ve been able to ratchet up the action and suspense in this arc and pull out some pretty big surprises. Of course, the biggest coolest moments were planned all along, but there’s a new villain in this arc who just stunned me. She gets introduced in a cool and pretty grizzly way and I think readers are going to be pleasantly surprised. (And then later they’ll be pretty mad at us.)

JF: What’s something you really enjoy about writing the character, John Prufrock?

AG: Mostly I find Proof to be enjoyable company. He’s the sort of guy I’d sit down with and we’d discuss literature over a good brandy. He’s a gentleman. In that sense, he’s much much cooler than I’ll ever be and it’s fun to write someone who’s an idealized version of some aspects of my own self that I wish were more refined.

Right now, it’s also fun to start tearing down his cool exterior and getting at the angry frustrated guy who’s been sort of dicked around for the last couple of centuries and is ready to nail someone to the wall. That’s an idealized version of some aspects of myself too.

JF: Are there any characters who organically became a bigger part of the story than you originally envisioned?

AG: Sure. That’s one of the advantages of leaving the middle part of the overall story loose. We have room to explore some things and let some characters grow naturally and do what they would do if we gave them some rope.

Elvis was sort of famously slated to die way back in #2, but he zigged where I meant for him to zag and somebody else died in his place. When that happened, a whole new rule about how chupacabras operate got established and then Elvis went on to become an important part of the ongoing story. He sort of became the stand-in for Riley and me, a relatively normal guy caught up in this bizarre world.

The chupacabra that was supposed to kill him became a larger character too. She ended up in an old lady’s body, an old lady named Nadine, and now she’s become sort of the litmus stick for all the weirdness in the book. She plays a surprising part in Proof: Endangered.

And so does Colonel Dachshund, another of the bad guys. Really, all the villains in Proof have expanded their roles a lot because it’s incredibly fun to explore their motivations. They all want things that are very logical human things to want, they just go about getting those things in ways that aren’t really socially acceptable. Which is what makes them fascinating to write about.

Read the full interview here