My name, James Phoenix, is constantly being paired with my great hero and role model, the late, Robert B. Parker and his Spencer & Hawk Mystery series.
We see this is 99% of our rave reviews and of course we’re constantly getting feed back from our readers saying the exact same thing.
Why? Because, just like Parker, or for that matter, Parker’s great hero and role model, the late Raymond Chandler, best known to us for his long running Philip Marlowe mystery series, my Fenway Burke Mystery series is what they call dialogue driven with minimal flowery description.
With the dialog driven writing style we get to know the characters by what they say, and that’s how the story unfolds as well. If it’s done properly, it’s almost as if you’re watching a stage play or movie rather than reading a book and this formula makes for a very quick fun read.
With my work and the two giants of the genre who came before me, both Chandler and Parker, you’re into the story by page two and the action doesn’t let up until you turn the very last page.
What the reviewers are saying and they happen to be absolutely right is:
“As Chandler was to Parker, so Parker is to Phoenix. James Phoenix is #3 in the succession.”
Our novels are not thought provoking. None of us have any great point or moral we’re trying to get across. They are nothing but pure entertainments, books that you read when you don’t want to think, when you really need a break, as everyone does.
And now for the spooky part...My given name is James Brown, but I couldn’t very well use that as a pen name because I felt it should be reserved exclusively for the other “Hardest Working Man In Show Business, the Godfather of Soul, the Late, Great, James Brown.”
I had a number of reverses in my career as so selected Phoenix Brown as my nom de plume, doing the Phoenix rising from the ashes thing.
But somewhere along the line, someone suggested I go with James Phoenix instead as I was used to people calling me Jim. Made sense, I switched over.
Now the die is cast, I have a three-book contract on the Fenway Burke Mystery Series and a spin off series in the works as well, all under the name of James Phoenix.
A couple of weeks ago I was on my hero, Robert B. Parker’s Facebook page and made one very startling discovery...Turns out the B stands for B-R-O-W-N!
But it gets better...Parker’s long-term agent was Helen Brann.
Brann is a derivation of Braun, which is of course German for B-R-O-W-N.
And my mother’s name, if you can handle it, was Helen.
Told you it was spooky.
Had I known this in advance, there’s no way I ever would have switched over to James Phoenix...I would forever have been known as Phoenix Brown.
Oh well, a rose by any other name...
Later,
James Phoenix
We see this is 99% of our rave reviews and of course we’re constantly getting feed back from our readers saying the exact same thing.
Why? Because, just like Parker, or for that matter, Parker’s great hero and role model, the late Raymond Chandler, best known to us for his long running Philip Marlowe mystery series, my Fenway Burke Mystery series is what they call dialogue driven with minimal flowery description.
With the dialog driven writing style we get to know the characters by what they say, and that’s how the story unfolds as well. If it’s done properly, it’s almost as if you’re watching a stage play or movie rather than reading a book and this formula makes for a very quick fun read.
With my work and the two giants of the genre who came before me, both Chandler and Parker, you’re into the story by page two and the action doesn’t let up until you turn the very last page.
What the reviewers are saying and they happen to be absolutely right is:
“As Chandler was to Parker, so Parker is to Phoenix. James Phoenix is #3 in the succession.”
Our novels are not thought provoking. None of us have any great point or moral we’re trying to get across. They are nothing but pure entertainments, books that you read when you don’t want to think, when you really need a break, as everyone does.
And now for the spooky part...My given name is James Brown, but I couldn’t very well use that as a pen name because I felt it should be reserved exclusively for the other “Hardest Working Man In Show Business, the Godfather of Soul, the Late, Great, James Brown.”
I had a number of reverses in my career as so selected Phoenix Brown as my nom de plume, doing the Phoenix rising from the ashes thing.
But somewhere along the line, someone suggested I go with James Phoenix instead as I was used to people calling me Jim. Made sense, I switched over.
Now the die is cast, I have a three-book contract on the Fenway Burke Mystery Series and a spin off series in the works as well, all under the name of James Phoenix.
A couple of weeks ago I was on my hero, Robert B. Parker’s Facebook page and made one very startling discovery...Turns out the B stands for B-R-O-W-N!
But it gets better...Parker’s long-term agent was Helen Brann.
Brann is a derivation of Braun, which is of course German for B-R-O-W-N.
And my mother’s name, if you can handle it, was Helen.
Told you it was spooky.
Had I known this in advance, there’s no way I ever would have switched over to James Phoenix...I would forever have been known as Phoenix Brown.
Oh well, a rose by any other name...
Later,
James Phoenix
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