Tuesday 18 November 2008

Charles Ardai - Guest Blog


Hard Case Crime came into existence five years ago after Max Phillips and I had one too many at a neighborhood watering hole and goaded each other into starting a publishing company. Since then, we've published 50 books, with another dozen in the pipeline; have won the Edgar and Shamus Awards (and been nominated multiple times for both, as well as the Barry, the Anthony, and more); have been written up in every major newspaper in America and most major magazines; have been featured on CBS televison and NPR radio; have been called "the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade"; and have had the privilege to work with giants of our field such as Mickey Spillane and Stephen King and Robert McGinnis. It's been a wild ride. And when Gerard suggested we come to CSNI to celebrate our "50th anniversary," I jumped at the chance. What a terrific chance to spend a little time both looking back and looking ahead! Over the next few days, we'll be hearing from some of our authors about their Hard Case Crime experience and from Gerard about his impressions of our special anniversary title, FIFTY-TO-ONE, and I'll be spilling the beans about some of what's coming up next year. Meanwhile, if you've got any questions, feel free to post 'em in the comments section and I'll do my best to tackle them.

--Charles Ardai, Editor

Hard Case Crime

5 comments:

Michael Stone said...

I just had a quick look at the Hard Case website. That's one hell of an impressive line-up you have there, Charles. Look forward to reading more posts.

Stuart Neville said...

Ooh, this'll be good. I enjoyed the BUST trilogy to the extent that it was almost unhealthy, and I have a couple more HCC books in my TBR pile. It's a great imprint.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, guys. Max and I launched the line purely for our own pleasure -- we didn't know whether anyone else on earth would have an interest in books like these. Hearing from people who love them as much as we do makes it all worthwhile...

Colin said...

Maybe someone should mention one of my books to him - I can't get bloody arrested in America. Oh.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Colin -- I'm always glad to look at submissions, from anywhere in the world. We published Al Guthrie, and he's in Scotland; we published Donald Hamilton when he was living in Sweden; and so on. The competition is fierce -- something like 1,000 submissions per year chasing only 4 or 5 slots that we have available for original fiction (as opposed to reprints), but it never hurts to take a shot if you have something you think might be a good fit.