It’s difficult to talk about Dan Fante without at least first mentioning his father, John Fante. John Fante is now most famous for his novel Ask The Dust, but he languished in obscurity for decades until championed by Charles Bukowski. Dan Fante followed in his father’s footsteps as a writer, and in Bukowski’s as a chronicler of the alcoholic underworld. Fante’s work always involved crime—it would necessarily have to, given the excesses of his semi-autobiographical characters—but was more correctly understood as confessional fiction. With the publication of his memoir, Fante, Dan has vanquished the demons and embraced the art of crime fiction. Naturally, some of his concerns won’t be changing, as the excerpt we’re pleased to have from his forthcoming novel Point Doom demonstrates…

We’re also thrilled to offer “The Man Who Loved Birds” from Mar Preston, a new writer who has self-published two mystery novels via CreateSpace. Preston was introduced to us by our friend Anonymous‑9 (see “Triangulation” from the March 2012 issue) and is a great find. Often self-publication tells us that the author isn’t quite ready for a real publisher; in this case we think the problem is that real publishers aren’t quite ready for Mar Preston.

Speaking of publishing, Tom Piccirilli is back with his latest column, and in it he lets us know just what it’s like to be part of a major publisher’s midlist these days. Like our cover photo hints, it ain’t pretty.

If this is your first time with us, you can now buy the eBook of issue one for only $1. Head on over to the shop and buy a copy.

We hope you enjoy this issue of The Big Click, and thank you for buying our ebook edition. A note to those who asked about subscriptions: Basically, we have to sell a certain number of copies consistently over the course of a few issues to convince ebook retailers to give us a subscription line, so the best thing to do is to buy issues as they come out, and to encourage your friends to do so as well. Next issue, we have great stories from underground crime legend Jim Nisbet (Lethal Injection, Dark Companion) and dark suspense author Wayne Allen Sallee. Till then, keep clickin’!

—The Editors