Have you seen The Third Man? If not, watch it next time you’re in the mood for a movie. It’s film noire, set in post-WWII Vienna, starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime and Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins. It’s got beautiful cinematography and a lovely original soundtrack by Anton Karas. The plot and dialogue are wonderful. Really, there’s nothing like it!

If you’re in the mood for music, here’s a bit from the movie:

One scene in the movie kept coming back to me when I first started to write Grievous Deeds.  Major Calloway is trying to persuade Holly Martins to help him arrest Harry Lime. He glances down at Lime’s picture on his desk.

“In the last war, a general would hang his opponent’s picture on the wall,” Calloway murmured. “He got to know him that way. I’m beginning to know Lime.”

I wanted to get to know Dave Edwards. He fascinated me–not always in a good way. Could anybody really know this mercurial character? You didn’t know what you’d get from one moment to the next.

So I borrowed this idea of Major Calloway’s. I had Dave’s mugshot blown up into a poster. I put it on the wall by my desk where I’d see him every day. Whenever I got stuck, I’d look at him and wonder.

He’s still there tonight, awaiting the debut of his book.

Dave did some horrible, unforgivable things. I understand how someone could dismiss him at that, but you may conclude there was more to him. No matter what you think, I want to hear about it!

One last thing! It’s not news but it is a good omen! Amazon assigns multiple categories to books. There are thousands of categories and they’re different in each country. A good book can rank highly in many categories.

Book rankings continuously change throughout the day and authors aren’t notified about it. Even if your book hit #1 in a big category like Action Thrillers, you’d never know it unless you happened to look. I like to read the reviews people write but I always forget about the rankings. Fortunately, my best friend, Kristin Sherry, is a best-selling author of career books and children’s books and she’s very savvy with Amazon. She sent this screenshot this evening. Do you believe it? All four of my books are in the top 10 for Turn of the Century U.S. History. I’m mystified about why but I’m taking it as a good sign for Grievous Deeds!

Less than two days until the book release!