Seth Harwood's 'This Is Life' & 'Czechmate'

If you haven't already listened to Seth Harwood's first Jack Palms Novel, Jack Wakes Up, you should. It's well worth your time.

I've reviewed it here, and I couldn't wait to hear the rest of the story, told in Jack Palms II: This Is Life, and Jack Palms III: Czechmate.


JPII picks up a few months after JWU, and launches back into the action before you've got time to smell the scent of arson in Jack's house. From there until, well, the end of JPIII, the pace doesn't let up.

Harwood takes his washed-up, deadbeat actor Jack Palms, who is just trying to make something halfway respectable out of his life, and hurls him back into a world of gangsters, corrupt cops and politicians, and international crime rings. With every chapter, the tension is notched up, again and again. Jack Palms realises that its not enough for him to have once been an action hero on the silver screen; this is life, and if he's going to survive the mess that he's got himself into, he's going to have to become that hero.

Harwood is a remarkable writer, blending an action-packed thriller with a surprisingly hard-hitting emotional drama, as Jack Palms struggles with the demons of his past, of his failure, and of who he wants to be. As sequels go, JPII takes this series in a very satisfying direction.

JPIII: Czechmate, is the logical conclusion to the trilogy, and sees the return of the ex-KGB Czech gangsters from JWU. Now on the run from the police and the feds, Jack Palms and the Czechs set out to deal with the unresolved issues from the first two books, and bite off more than they can chew.

JPIII has some of the best action sequences I've heard in all the podcasts I've listened to, including a fantastic chase sequence through San Francisco's Chinatown, as well as what is possibly the smartest grift scene I've heard since Drew Beatty's Lost Gods, when Jack Palms pulls a bit of Jack Nicholson out of his hat. Great writing, great performance. Had me laughing out loud and cheering (which looks a bit odd in public...).

I was also very pleased to hear multiple voice talents in the mix in these two books, especially in the female parts, which lends the storytelling a lot of credibility. Harwood remains light on the sound effects, lending a gunshot here and there, but mostly lets the story tell the story, and at this he excels. The choice of the present tense as his dramatic medium works well, giving the book a sense of immediacy and urgency that suits the conflict.

These books are a great listen. The plotline is complex enough to throw twists at the reader on a regular basis, the writing is punchy and delivers an extra emotional kick in the guts where it's needed, and the audio production is well above par.

Both these books are complete and available for free from sethharwood.com or podiobooks.com (or just click on the images above).

I'm giving This Is Life and Czechmate 4.5 Stars each.

Nice work, Seth. Next stop: Young Junius.

Jack Wakes Up is available from Amazon.com, and can be found in bookstores across the USA.

Warning: The Dark has been Unleashed

Today is the official release date for JC Hutchins' Personal Effects: Dark Art in US Bookstores. My copy is shipping from Amazon very shortly, and I can't wait to get my hands on it and sift through all that mystery goodness - oh, and to read it, of course.

If you've been living under a rock for the past few months and don't know what PE:DA is all about, start by watching this video by the author:



And if you're not already, then you should be listening to the exclusive Prequel Novella, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood.

Hutchins is also regularly updating his site today as PE:DA marches up the chart, with an all day online party. If you're in the US and can get to a bookstore, go grab your copy and email JC a photo of your with your book, so he can add it to the growing page of happy fans.

But there's another very important thing to remember here: For a few years now, writers like JC Hutchins, Scott Sigler, Mur Lafferty and others have been entertaining their growing fanbases by releasing their work for free as podcast novels. Creating anything as involved as an audiodrama takes a huge amount of effort, energy, time and passion, and all of this for virtually no reward in the short term. Getting a book deal is more than just a payday for these writers - it's a vindication. It's proof that the fans who are so willing to gobble up their stories for free also want to see these writers succeed, so that they can put their day jobs aside and focus, full-time (instead of at between 10pm and 3am), on writing more great stories to entertain those fans.

That's what this is all about. There is a nut here to be cracked, and it's not just about Hutchins, or PE:DA. It's about showing the publishing world that there is some good to be acheived by relinquishing their greedy clutches on writers' material, and adopting new business models that make the most of today's wired society.

I know that I wouldn't be writing this blog had it not been for my stumbling across the free (and stunning) Audiobook Drama Hoad's Grim by Jack Kincaid late last year, and I wouldn't have bought PE:DA either, because I never would've heard about it.

Hutchins et al are at the forefront of a revolution of published fiction as we know it. We'll look back on these heady days in years to come and be inspired by their vision and their sacrifice.

This is the future of fiction, folks. Make yourself a part of it.

Review: "Jack Wakes Up" by Seth Harwood

Originally Published at Freshly Ground on May 7th 2009

To celebrate Seth Harwood's novel Jack Wakes Up being released into bookstores across the USA this week, I took it upon myself to listen to the entire podcast over the past two days and throw out my thoughts on it.
Jack Wakes Up is a bit of a step away from my usual cup of tea, being a crime novel and not in the slightest bit fantasy, horror, or science fiction. But it stood out to me, as crime fiction goes, in that the protagonist was not a cop or an ex-marine, but rather a washed-up actor.

Jack Palms has been on the wagon after his drug- and alcohol-fueled fall from grace some years earlier, which saw his marriage fall apart under the watching eyes of the public and the media. He's now cleaned himself up but is completely broke. A dodgy character from his past life entices him into doing one last big drug deal to set himself up for a while and make a new start.

As Jack gets drawn deeper into San Francisco's shady underworld, however, things quickly go from bad to worse.

Jack Wakes Up would fall somewhere between Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and 2 Fast 2 Furious, were it to have been a film. There are drug deals, murders, gun fights, car chases, betrayals, and strip bars - everything you expect from a high-octane, fast-paced action story.

This was fun to listen to. In the world of action storytelling, JWU was an invigorating tale, a cracking good yarn with plenty of good laughs thrown in. If my impression is that this was perhaps a bit lighter than Harwood intended, it's only because last night I also finished listening to Scott Sigler's Nocturnal, which completely blew me away (and will be reviewed very shortly, I promise). By comparison, JWU was good relief.

The audio production was clean and uncluttered. Harwood obviously made a choice not to use any sound effects (or if he did, they were so well done that I didn't even notice them), and relied on his own delivery to carry the pace of the story. There is no music or atmos in the soundtrack apart from chapter breaks, but I don't think the production suffered for this at all. The writing itself is tidy and precise, and Harwood's diction is mostly faultless (apart from the occasional stumble which hasn't been edited out), so following the story is never an issue.

I played this podcast through my computer speakers in a busy workshop, and was very rarely either a) unclear as to what was going on, or b) suddenly aware that I had lost the thread. I was kept engaged throughout the reading, even with distractions, and always felt like I knew what was going on and where the characters were. This is a testament to Harwood's writing and delivery, since this podcast is really just the author reading his own story, with all the passion he can muster.

Nice one.

Overall I rate Jack Wakes Up at 4 Stars.

Recommended to anyone who likes a good gangster or crime story, or a bit of action. Jack Wakes Up is complete at 19 Chapters, plus a Q&A with Seventh Son author JC Hutchins, which is both entertaining and informative.

You can listen to the first chapter here. The rest of the podcast can be found at Harwood's website, totally free. The book is also available in US bookstores and online.

While we're talking about Seth Harwood, he has posted a really helpful video about how to go about recording a podcast, which I also recommend for the three minutes it'll take you, if that sounds like something you might be thinking about.

Jack Wakes Up is available from Amazon.com, and can be found in bookstores across the USA.