KRAD's Inaccurate Guide to Life

This weekend will be the launch of Tales from Dragon Precinct, the fourth book in my series of fantasy police procedurals. In addition to those, I've mixed cops and fantastical stuff in my SCPD series, as well as in two Spider-Man novels (Venom's Wrath, Down These Mean Streets), one Buffy novel (Blackout), one Supernatural novel (Nevermore), and a couple of short stories ("An Evening in the Bronx with Venom" in The Ultimate Spider-Man, "Improper Procedure" in The Ultimate Silver Surfer). I've also written one mystery novel (CSI: NY: Four Walls).

While there are many influences on my cop writing, one of the strongest is the David Simon HBO series The Wire. In honor of that great show, I'm going to do this week some music from it. While the show never used incidental music (except during season-ending montages), music people listened to still played a part in the narrative. We'll start with this Pogues song, which was played during a wake for a cop who died, "The Body of an American."

Here's both the original song, as well as the scene from the "Dead Soldiers" episode of The Wire that first used it (it was used again in the final episode "-30-").

On Tor.com, the good (Simon Pegg), the bad (Peter Weller), and the ugly (the script) of Star Trek Into Darkness, with plenty of spoilers, plus why Benedict Cumberbatch is more awesome than you.

An excerpt:

The acting here is first-rate. As with the previous film, the actors embody the characters they’re playing without spilling over into parody. In particular Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto do an excellent job with characters who are both the same and different from their alternate-timeline counterparts played by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, because Kirk and Spock are the characters who were most changed by Nero’s time-travel shenanigans in the last film—the former lost his father, the latter lost his world.

As has become traditional, Dark Quest Books is doing a big-ass book launch at Baltcon 47. One of the books being catapulted into existence is Tales from Dragon Precinct, a collection of short stories that have been brought together into the fourth book in the acclaimed series of fantasy police procedurals.

The party will be held at Frankie & Vinnie's in the Hunt Valley Inn in Hunt Valley, Maryland on Sunday 26 May 2013 from 7-9pm. There'll be food and drink and merriment and readings and an auction of Cool Stuff.

Books being launched include:

The Redcaps' Queen: A Bad-Ass Faerie Tale by Danielle Ackley-McPhail
Ending: The Fourth Book in the Laurian Pentology by Danny Birt
Three Chords of Chaos: A Bad-Ass Faerie Tale by James Chambers
Tales from Dragon Precinct by Keith R.A. DeCandido
Fantastic Futures 13, edited by Robert E. Waters & James R. Stratton

Plus other DQB releases:
A Legacy of Stars by Danielle Ackley-McPhail
Flesh and Iron, edited by Michael Amorel & Neal Levin
Ending an Ending, Beginning, and Beginning an Ending by Danny Birt
Tales from the Pulp Side by Michael A. Black & Ray Lovato, John L. French, and Patrick Thomas
Dragon Precinct, Unicorn Precinct, and Goblin Precinct by Keith R.A. DeCandido
The Devil of Harbor City by John L. French
To Hell in a Fast Car, edited by John L. French
Defending the Future: Best-Laid Plans, edited by Mike McPhail

Most of the above-listed authors are scheduled to be there, as well as several contributors to the various anthologies, among them Jack Campbell, Myke Cole, Judi Fleming, Charles E. Gannon, Elektra Hammond, Eric V. Hardenbrook, C.J. Henderson, Bernie Mojzies, Christine Norris, KT Pinto, James Daniel Ross, Alex Shvartsman, Maria V. Snyder, John C. Wright, and Jeff Young.