E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

As an author, I have had a long and complicated love and hate affair with eBooks, and know this will sound self-serving, but my first mystery novel, Hour of the Manatee , was the very first book ever published in electronic format. It happened like this: I'd been doing a reading of my second Tony Lowell Mystery, Eye of the Gator at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in St. Petersburg, Florida, when a man came up to me afterwards and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. His name was Don something (real name best forgotten in any case) and he claimed to have invented the first eBook reader. Moreover, he had a working model to prove it. The year was 1997. What Don wanted was a book that had some public visibility to convert onto his reader as a demo, and my first book, as a national book award winner and still selling well, would suit his purpose perfectly, and I could see no down side at the time. So I agreed. Don's business plan, such as it was, was to publish eBooks in mini-...

Recently, the film Anonymous attempted to make a case that Shakespeare was a fraud--a premise I support in my own book Il Libro Segreto di Shakespeare --but with different conclusions as to who the true author really was. I'd say read the book, but unless you are fluent in Italian, Russian, Czech, or Polish you can't, until an English language publisher is finally willing to step forward and put this book out there. Thus far they won't, making this the first book in literary history to be a bestseller in foreign translation, and not published in the author's native language. Apart from the fraud part, I take issue with Roland Emmerich's film primarily because it is irrelevant. Unfortunately, he and his producers spent $30 million trying to convince an uncaring filmgoing public that William Shakespeare was actually the 17th Earl of Oxford, the Elizabethan equivalent to Donald Trump. Or rather, it was like trying to convince American readers that Michael Moore is rea...

I have a conundrum that may be unique in the annals of the literary expose. I just received via parcel post a package of books from Russia (see below). They are in Russian, of course, and published by Ekmo, a Russian publisher. They look very cool, actually, a nice hardcover edition with an embossed color illustration, as you can see. I am the author of this book, and have no idea what the Russian title is, but my original title was The Shakespeare Chronicles , written by me under the pseudonym John Underwood: my paternal great-grandfather's name, and also the name of one of Shakespeare's Boon Companions. Here's the thing: there is no English language version of this book. (Full disclosure: there is an obscure nonfiction trade book by the same title and a different pseudonym of Desmond Lewis. This is actually the basis of my book, and is part of the plot). My foreign agent Danny Baror sold rights to my book to Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian and Italian publishers back i...

Back in Jane Austen's time people used to laugh, and sing happy songs like ‘now we don our gay apparel.’ But now gay means getting murdered in rural Wyoming like Matthew Shepard, or flogged in Teheran, or at best having to be secretive, or at least pretty brave, if you choose to come out anywhere outside of, say, the West Village or West Hollywood. But to me, I keep wondering just what all the fuss is all about. It’s like the old saying, ‘some of my best friends are Jews.’ Or in this case, ‘gays.’ Relatives too. Even favorite ones. Having worked in the arts, music, Hollywood and literary worlds my whole life, I was bound to meet one or two of them. And it’s hard to understand why all this anathema from the rest of us. Most of the gays I’ve met are very nice, well educated, well dressed, polite people who wash their hands, and have excellent taste in most matters. Every town or city I’ve ever lived in was improved once gays moved in: art galleries were opened, good restaurants, thea...

My current favorite TV show is Boston Public. It’s an often humorous, usually outrageous, and over-the-top, but still thoughtful look at our so-called justice system. One of the key elements about the legal system is how often it has nothing to do with justice. Not so the mystery genre, in which I write. In the real world, justice depends on who’s in charge, who calls the shots, who can afford the best lawyers (Denny Crane) or the best lobbyists. Only in a theoretical world, a world of right and wrong, of clear distinctions, where ‘might makes right’ is a falsehood, where the good guy always wins, is there true justice. Which, unfortunately, is mostly a world of imagination and fiction. Maybe this is why this kind of fiction is so popular, anad why justice is what I like best to write about. It's what too few people get, in their lives. They hope things will be better in Heaven, of course. It's why they believe in Heaven. Because too often there is none here in our world. Those...