Five on Friday - Gar Anthony Haywood

It's that time of the week again! Hope everyone has had a great week, filled with great reading. What's on your plates for the weekend? I've been doing reading lately for the panels I'm moderating at Bouchercon. I just started Carla Buckley's THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE. Who's read this one already?

Speaking of Bouchercon, you can see the full programming schedule now on the Bouchercon website. Hope to see some of you there.

At Criminal Element, they are voting on The Girl Trouble cover. Pop over and tell them which cover you like best.

That's it for updates this week, so let's move on to an author I discovered only a couple years ago. Mind you he's been writing much longer, I was just under a rock. Gar Anthony Haywood is simply amazing. His writing is dark and gritty, poetic and soul-searching, at times humorous and at times startling.

I've been fortunate to meet and spend some time with Gar, so I also know that he's convivial and entertaining. He's a genuinely good soul. Hopefully that won't tarnish any crime-writing reputation!

It is my distinct pleasure to have Gar join us today.

Gar and his son on vacation in the Galapagos Islands

I consider Muhammad Ali a hero because he talked the talk and walked the walk. The Champ could be boorish and sometimes cruel in the course of promoting himself and his sport, but ultimately he was a scrupled man who, as the world watched, risked his fame and fortune to do what he felt was morally right.

The last book I recommended to someone was Bruce DeSilva's CLIFF WALK. There's got to be room for improvement in this man's writing somewhere, but hell if I can find it. Great stuff.

Five songs on my iPod/music player right now are:

• Main Theme from the Sherlock soundtrack
• Burden In My Hand by Soundgarden
• Yellow by Coldplay
• The Three of Us by Ben Harper
• Thank U by Alanis Morissette

My favorite t-shirt (that I own) is from the BOOK 'EM mystery bookstore in South Pasadena, CA.

The #1 item on my bucket list right now is learning to speak Spanish. I'm half Latino, but my grandmother never taught my mother to speak Spanish so the language never got passed down to me, and I've always felt somewhat incomplete as a result. My goal right now is to be relatively conversant by my next "big" birthday, but I've got a long, long way to go.

By my standards, that's an ambitious goal! I still have memories of trying to learn French in high school. If you haven't experienced Gar's writing, I highly encourage you to do so. You can see what I had to say about Gar's latest two books, CEMETERY ROAD and ASSUME NOTHING. And while a number of Gar's early works went out of print, the nice people at Open Road Media and Mysterious Press released his Aaron Gunner series as ebooks earlier this year.

You can also catch Gar blogging at the Murderati Blog on alternate Wednesdays. And I want to thank Gar for making time to play in our sandbox today!

Have a great weekend everyone and happy reading!