More good reviews

These are some more pre-pub reviews for Oregon Hill. (They like it.  They really like it.) I'm lining up signings and readings now. 

Booklist  June 1, 2012

Oregon Hill.  Owen, Howard (Author), Jul 2012. 240 p., Permanent Press, hardcover, $28.00. (9781579622084).

Willie Black, a reporter who’s about as close to washed up as a guy can get while still being employed, stumbles onto the story of his career when a young woman’s decapitated body is discovered, and Willie, unlike nearly everyone else involved in the case, doesn’t believe that the man arrested for the crime is the killer. Owen, whose first book, 1994’s Littlejohn, may also be his most well known, is a careful, precise writer, creating characters so real that we have to keep reminding themselves they’re fictional, and stories

so haunting that they stay with the reader long after the books are back on the shelf. As usual, his latest has a stellar cast: down-and-almost-out Willie; shifty local cop (and Willie’s antagonist) David Junior Shiflett; the dead girl’s father, who receives his daughter’s head in a UPS box; Martin Fell, the accused killer (whose name, not to put too fine a point on it, suggests he might be a fall guy). Character-driven crime fiction executed with style.           — David Pitt

New York Journal of Books

Oregon Hill is a wondrous trip into the world of sarcastic newspaper reporters, bad cops, and murder most foul.

Having worked as a newspaper reporter, Mr. Owen writes in a captivating voice, his acute observations granting authenticity to the bullet-speed pace of the story. Newspaperman Willie Black is masterfully created, ink and dark humor coursing through his hardboiled veins. It is hoped that this is the beginning of a series of books staring Willie and crew. Bring on the sequel!

Small Press Reviews

In Oregon Hill, Howard Owen pulls double-duty by crafting a compelling page-turner

and offering commentary on the dying art of investigative journalism. His protagonist

is an aging reporter named Willie Black who's recently been assigned to cover the night

cops' beat—a demotion that places him squarely at the center of a murder investigation

even as his career teeters on the brink of oblivion. Shortly after a missing co-ed turns

up decapitated in the South Anna River, Willie is as relieved as anyone in Oregon Hill

when the apparent murderer is apprehended. Haunted by a miscarriage of justice he

witnessed in his younger days, however, Willie can't leave well enough alone, and his

investigation leads him into increasingly dangerous territory. Meanwhile, his best friend

is under investigation for robbery, his mother's lover is drifting deep into senility, and his

latest ex-wife is hounding him for the rent. In short, Willie has struck the perfect work-

life balance insofar as his work and his life are equally thorny. Indeed, that Willie has

so much to juggle speaks volumes for the author's prowess as a storyteller: Owen never

misses a beat or leaves a narrative thread untended for too long.

While the narrative is certainly compelling, what gives ​Oregon Hill​ a degree of heft

is its commentary on the fate of print journalism in the digital age. To an extent, the

novel decries the sad state of affairs created by the dwindling readership for traditional

newspapers. At the same time, however, Owen is careful not to indulge in too much

hand-wringing, as his protagonist is quick to recognize the value of so-called "new

media" even if he's somewhat reluctant to embrace it. In this sense, ​Oregon Hill​ looks

forward as much as it looks back, and offers a fairly complex look at our culture's current

relationship with journalism.

Reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen's ​Basket Case, ​Oregon Hill​ is as smart as it is thrilling, a

true literary page-turner.

—Marc Schuster

Gooood review

It's always a relief to get a good pre-publication review from Publishers Weekly. What you really want is one that says good stuff without a "but" or a "however" in sight, and the review for "Oregon Hill" was all that.  (I've attached it to the bottom of the info about the book on the web site.)  It gives me a mainline shot of enthusiasm and encouragement as I work on the final part of the first draft of the next one.
I'm lining up some readings and signings and will put those here as soon as everything is firmed up.

Levon Helm

Sorry to see that Levon Helm has passed. In a world with a better perspective, he'd have a more prominent obituary than Dick Clark.  Newspapers always worry about how to play obits.  How do you gauge someone's worth after he or she has died?  I was working for the newspaper in Richmond when Jerry Garcia and Mickey Mantle died within (my memory) a week.  I think we played the Mick a little higher, but what a quandary: Many of the Grateful Dead fans probably didn't know who the hell Mantle was, and a whole slew of Yankees fans probably thought Garcia was the guy who founded Ben and Jerry's!

Sleep when I'm dead

One of the more interesting things about being a novelist--or at least doing it the way I do it--is that you are sometimes juggling three books at once.
 Right now, for example, I am getting closer to the pub date for Oregon Hill, which means I just received the bound galleys, which go out to pre-publication reviewers and others. I check those for the kind of glitches that can happen even after reading it five or six times already. (Once, an entire chapter was missing from the bound galleys.  Somebody neglected to click and drag that chapter, I guess.) I'm also lining up readings/signings for August and September.
At the same time, I'm coming closer to the end of the first draft of the sequel to Oregon Hill.  I hope to finish it this summer, after which my wife and most trusted editor, Karen, will read it. Then, I'll act on (most of) her suggestions and polish it.
And, if things are flowing well, by the time I'm through doing all it the readings and signings for Oregon Hill, I will have sent the next manuscript to a publisher.
And it will be time to start assembling the pieces for the one after that, which I'm already thinking about.
At the same time, I'm working on a couple of short stories for two collections.
I do this between about 6:45 and 8:30 most mornings (have to stop then and get ready for work), with occasional longer stretches on weekends.
I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Oregon Hill coming up in July

Willie Black has squandered a lot of things in this life—his liver, his lungs, a couple of former wives and a floundering daughter can all attest to his abuse. He’s lucky to be employed, having managed to drink and smart-talk his way out of a nice, cushy job covering (and partying with) the politicians down at the capitol.

Now, he’s back on the night cops beat, right where he started when he came to work for the paper almost 30 years ago.  The thing Willie’s always had going for him, though,  all the way back to his hardscrabble days as a mixed-race kid on Oregon Hill, where white was the primary color and fighting was everyone’s favorite leisure pastime, was grit. His mother, the drug-addled Peggy, gave him that if nothing else. He never backed down then, and he shows no signs of changing.

When a co-ed at the local university where Willie’s daughter is a perpetual student is murdered, her headless body found along the South Anna River, the hapless alleged killer is arrested within days.  Everyone but Willie seems to think: Case closed.  But Willie, against the orders and advice of his bosses at the paper, the police and just about everyone else, doesn’t think it’s closed at all. He embarks on a one-man crusade to do what he’s always done: Get the story. On the way, he runs afoul of a nightmare from his youth, a city cop named David Shiflett, and another dark force, one everyone thought disappeared a long time ago. And a score born in an Oregon Hill beer joint’s parking lot 40 years ago will finally be settled.

Thomas McNeill Bulla on Memorial Day weekend

I'm a newspaper editor by day, and most of the hundred or so e-mails I get every day are from somebody trying to sell a story or get what amounts to free advertising.
The one I got Tuesday morning was different. The name popped out at me: Thomas McNeill Bulla. It isn't that common a name.  The only Thomas McNeill Bulla I knew of was a distant cousin. We had the same great-great grandfather.  He grew up on the same patch of land where I was reared, in Vander, North Carolina, but he was long gone by then.  I knew he was a chaplain in the Army, and he was killed in World War I. Whatever old stories my parents or grandparents told about him have long been forgotten. I thought, if I thought of him at all, that he probably died of pneumonia or something equally ridiculous.
Turns out, he was something of a hero. The e-mail press release was from Fort Pickett, an Army post down in Southside Virginia best known to National Guard weekend warriors. The news: They were dedicating a chapel there to Chaplain (1st Lt.) Thomas McNeill Bulla, who died from combat wounds in World War I.
Thomas McNeill Bulla was born on Jan. 4, 1881.  He was graduated from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, then took a job as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Emporia, Va., in 1911. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, The Rev. Bulla volunteered for the 4th Virginia Infantry and was appointed in the rank of first lieutenant. Along with the 116th Infantry of the 29th "Blue and Gray" Division, he sailed to France in June of 1918. His unit suffered only light casualties.  Then, on Oct. 8, the division became part of the massive Allied operation known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. In the early days, Chaplain Bulla was said to have repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire by moving across “no man’s land” helping wounded soldiers to safety, something not required or expected of an Army chaplain.
Then, on the morning of Oct. 15, the 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry was the lead element for yet another attack in the area known as the Molleville Farm. During the attack, Chaplain Bulla, again helping wounded soldiers, was struck by enemy fire and mortally wounded. He was evacuated to an Army hospital at Petite Mejoy where he died of his wounds on October 17, 25 days before they stopped shooting.      
From the press release, I learned that there's a stained glass window in the First Presbyterian Church in Emporia dedicated to him; that the American Legion Post 46 in Emporia adopted the name “Bulla Post” in 1924; that he is cited among the 23 Army chaplains who died during World War I on a monument at Arlington National Cemetery; and that in 1999 the Commonwealth of Virginia erected a roadside historical marker on the grounds of his church in Emporia.
I never knew any of that. I've driven within a couple of miles of that church probably 200 times over the years, going back and forth from Virginia to visit my parents. 
We were mostly a family of farmers and farmers' wives.  Only as the Great Depression was ending did college and sit-down jobs become possibilities for most of us. Thomas McNeill Bulla came from that quiet world, where work and church filled the week so full there was little room for dreaming, and then he somehow took himself to seminary and the ministry, and then to death and heroism in a forgotten field in France. It makes me believe there are wonders in the world about which I have no clue.

Welcome to my blog

I'm a writer and a newspaper editor.  I've been writing fiction since 1988 and have seen nine novels published since 1992. Every writer has a different story and a different style.  Some major in English and go straight into the world of Capital-W Writing, maybe getting an MFA along the way, maybe making a few bucks as a graduate assistant or adjunct at some college.
Not a bad way to do it.  Maybe I should have gone that route.  But I  didn't.  I majored in journalism because I believe that old saw that says find something you love doing and you'll never have to work again.  I love journalism.  Sometimes, these days, it doesn't always love us back, but it's honest, rewarding, creative work, and I laugh a lot most days. And if you screw up, there's always the next edition in which to get it right.
But there came a point, when I was about 40, when I wanted something else.  A lot of people tell themselves that someday they're going to write a novel.  At 40, I thought it was time to find out if that was possible.  It took me a couple of months to put together the characters and setting and the outline of a plot for my first novel, and the first draft took 100 days.  Recently, when I gave my papers to Virginia Commonwealth University and was going through early drafts, I realized that the first novel, Littlejohn, was rewritten a lot more than I'd remembered. I found six different versions, with three different titles. As with childbirth, you forget the pain, I guess.
Anyhow, I got an agent, the agent sold the book to The Permanent Press, which sold it to Random House after it got some good reviews, and I was off and running. 
My 10th novel will be out in June of 2012 ("Oregon Hill"), and I'm working on No. 11.  I don't take sabatticals, and I've worked for newspapers non-stop except for vacations and weekends through the whole time.  My 'secret' is one hour a day, every day. You can do practically anything in 365 hours a year.  The key is writing every day, though.  When I don't do that, things turn to crap.
Karen and I have been married 37 years, and we have a very active social life.  You can write and have a life, too. All it takes is a lot of consistency and a good imagination.
More later.