#BlogTour #GuestPost: Dead Man’s Badge by Robert E. Dunn @WritingDead @annecater #DeadMansBadge #RandomThingsTours

I’m excited to be on the blog tour for Dead Man’s Badge by Robert E Dunn today.  This looks like a great book and I look forward to reading it soon.

You can buy a copy of this book in ebook or paperback here.

Before I share my guest post with you here is a little about the book.

Book Blurb:

When you dig your own grave, it always ends up ragged and shallow.

Career criminal Longview Moody, on the run from killers, assumes his dead, twin brother’s identity as the new Chief of Police of a Texas town that’s being terrorized by a Mexican drug cartel. To pull off the deadly deception, Longview desperately works to become the kind of cop and man that his brother was. But when the two lives he’s living converge, he’s forced to embrace the violence within him to get justice…and vengeance.

PRAISE FOR “DEAD MAN’S BADGE”

“It’s terrific. It’s lean and smart and very good. I say, check it out.” Joe Lansdale

“Brutal, vivid, and unforgettable…a modern-day western morality tale in crime-novel wrapping with a blood-red bow. This one will haunt you.” Lee Goldberg, #1 NY Times bestselling author

“Robert Dunn unloads both barrels – Dead Man’s Badge is a fast, furious shootout from beginning to end. This tale of corrupt cops, cartel killers, and one bad guy just trying to make good, lingers like gun smoke. Bloody, dark, and pistol-whip smart, it’s Border noir at its best.” J. Todd Scott, author of THE FAR EMPTY

“Riveting thriller about coming back from the dead, revenge and redemption. The pages fly by even faster than the bodies pile up. DEAD MAN’S BADGE establishes Robert E. Dunn as a formidable new name in hard-boiled fiction.” R.G. Belsky. author of YESTERDAY’S NEWS

Guest Post by Robert E. Dunn

BONES

After you write a few books you begin to learn things. Your writing does not only speak to readers. It whispers to you. In truth writing novels releases an inner voice that at times is telling you all the things you already know. Other times it is a stranger that knows the secrets you hid from yourself. One of the most revealing things, the non-boring and non-weird things your writing shows are the bones of your personal style.

Writers like to talk a lot about voice in writing. It is the personal print of ourselves that we leave woven into the words. Most of us don’t know what our voice is until we are comfortable enough to get out of our own way and let it come. Often it comes but we don’t even see it until we have some books we can point to and say, there it is—that works.

I would like to tell you a little about the bones of my voice. It came by letting go of I want and embracing I am. Growing up I wanted to write science fiction and horror stories. I loved the pulpy adventures and the intriguing science and all the what if’s. I have written a few horror novels and horror with science fiction themes to some degree of success.

One thing I noticed as I was writing these books was my heavy reliance on location as character. I paid so much attention to the environment my people operated in it was hard to imagine the same story working in a different place.
There were other kinds of books I enjoyed growing up too. Actually I would read just about anything, but some kept showing up in my hands no matter what I thought I was in to at the time. These were mysteries. It started with Hardy Boys and kept growing from there. Then one day I discovered James Lee Burke. It was by chance I noticed the title, IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH CONFEDERATE DEAD, on a library shelf.
Now when I was growing up and reading all those books that helped shape me, I was living in the Missouri Ozarks. I had a connection to the place and the people from the hillbilly cliché to the colorful Branson show culture. The Ozarks have a compelling darkness under the branches of walnut and oak. They a wild and bloody history. And they have a shape. The eroded plateau of limestone is gouged by water and riddle with caves. How could it not seep into a young man’s bones?
I think you see where I’m going.

Discovering other authors who infuse location so vividly in their writing led me to search more of them out. It led me also to let my own world come even more strongly into my writing. I had wanted to write a particular kind of book. But I discovered that I was a particular kind of person. I that be my guide.

In 2015 I wrote a book called A Living Grave. It was a mystery featuring Katrina “Hurricane” Williams, a female sheriff’s detective in the Ozarks. She—it—worked. I worked. The bones of my voice knitted. Katrina gave me my first multi book contract and my second.
The question then became, will that voice hold up in other environments?
In my life I have been geographically blessed. I mentioned growing up in the Ozarks. The truth is that was where we ended up. I was an Army brat. We moved around. Once I was old enough to get out on my own I felt that itch in my heel and got to moving. For a long time I had a job that took me all over the world. So I had a personal library to choose from when thought about a new book. A favorite place is south Texas. I wanted to write about that. I wanted to drape the border over my personal bones.

That particular ground is littered with bones. From westerns to modern border noir, so many other authors have staked out claims on that dirt. That was certainly on my mind as I wrote DEAD MAN’S BADGE. So much as a matter of fact I named the fictional town the story is set in, Lansdale, Texas. Joe Lansdale is a writer I admire. He has a deep, literary stamp on the Texas landscape. To make matters worse for me, as I was writing, J. Todd Scott released a novel, set on the same stretch of ground as my Lansdale, TX. His book, THE FAR EMPTY was such a big hit I refused to read it until I was finished with DEAD MAN’S BADGE. I feared being intimidated by the quality and of falling into the trap of imitating. I had good cause to fear comparison by quality. Todd’s book is amazing. I have had the pleasure of talking with him on social media and told him so many times.

So did my bones hold up under the weight of Texas? I won’t presume to tell you. That’s for you to decide after reading the book. I will tell you that both Joe Lansdale and J. Todd Scott read my book and commented for the back cover. Now that’s a proud moment for me.

I hope you do read DEAD MAN’S BADGE. I hope also, that this peak at the bones of my voice help you understand and enjoy the book a tiny bit more. Look for me on social media and tell me how I did. Careful though, I might tell you another long story about how I write.

Thank you very much Robert for writing this fascinating guest post.  I wish you lots of luck with your book.

About The Author:

Robert E. Dunn was born an Army brat and grew up in the Missouri Ozarks. He wrote his first book at age eleven turning a series of Jack Kirby comic books into a hand written novel. Over many years in the, mostly, honest work of video and film production he produced everything from documentaries, to training films and his favorite, travelogues. He returned to writing mystery, horror, and fantasy fiction for publication after the turn of the century. It seemed like a good time for change even if the changes were not always his choice.

In addition to DEAD MAN’S BADGE, Mr. Dunn is the author of the horror novels, THE RED HIGHWAY, MOTORMAN, and THE HARROWING, as well as the Katrina Williams mystery/thriller series, A LIVING GRAVE, A PARTICULAR DARKNESS, and the upcoming A MOMENTARY LIFE.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my post please follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.