Award-winning Long Beach writer Frank X. Gaspar returns with ‘Stealing Fatima’

God knows it’s been a rough decade for the Catholic Church. That whole molestation-cover-up thing transformed the once-stoic religion into the weird fourth-grader who gets beaten up for eating his boogers. Bullies don’t want to punch these freaks; they have to. And for nearly a [...]

Tyler Dilts’ crime fiction debut ‘A King of Infinite Space’ travels familiar territory: Our own city

With his rumpled and weary protagonist Danny Beckett—Long Beach Police Department detective, widower, attempted alcoholic, Bruce Springsteen fan—it seems author Tyler Dilts aims for modern-day Philip Marlowe (Marlowe has chess and poetry; Beckett watches Jeopardy! and reads Shakespeare) but lands [...]

Jim Tully was a famous writer in the ’20s and ’30s. Now, he’s being rediscovered
Jim Tully’s people and places are gone now. Tully himself is dead 50 years—which doesn’t help the career—and 10 of his 12 books are out of print. But 2008 could be Tully’s big year. Or 2009.
Tully’s been called the missing link [...]

National Novel Writing Month is here; no more excuses
Proust lined his bedroom with cork panels, muffling any outside noises that might distract him. Trollope got up at the crack of dawn, seven days a week, pounding out 2,500 words before starting his day job at the post office. Hemingway caroused all night and then let [...]

Novelist Dan Fante is still inspired by his famous dad
There’s a fine line between a good poetry reading and a bad one. Fortunately, the rare appearance of LA-native/Arizona-based writer Dan Fante at {open}’s “Readings From a Burning Shore” last week falls into the former category. Fante’s real-life persona stands in stark contrast to the characters [...]