Welcome to The Rock

I'm no the most prolific fictioneer so I'm perhaps overly excited every time I see a new story in print, but I think I can claim a certain amount of objectivity when I say that Hard Sentences is the best book of crime fiction inspired by Alcatraz ever published.

Edited by David James Keaton and Joe Clifford, it also features contributions by N@B alum Glenn Gray, Matthew McBride and Les Edgerton plus Johnny Shaw, Gabino Iglesias, Max Booth III, Nik Korpon, Nick Mamatas, Rory Costello, Rob Hart, Mark Rapacz, Joshua Chaplinsky, Amber Sparks, Nick Kolakowski, Leah Rhyne, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Carrie Laben and Dino Parenti.

My contribution, Clean Shot, is a fictionalized account of the first escape attempt by the hapless Joseph Bowers, an inmate who sotle $16 from the U.S. Mail. I had a lot of fun researching the story and Alcatraz in general - a rich vein to mine for inspiration - and from the stories I've read so far (about half) it looks like everybody else did too.