You heard me right the first time. Played a game of chess against Bobby Fischer, the late, great, crazy-as-a-coot former World Champion. Bobby beat me, slaughtered me in fact, though I held on and kept playing despite the fact that I had few pieces left…
Back in the late 1980s I was managing editor of Watermark Press, a small literary publishing company located upstairs from Watermark Books, an independent bookstore in Wichita. We had great dreams of creating the kind of publishing experience City Lights created in San Francisco, only…
Happily here is a Sunday, August 11, 2013Wichita Eagle Feature Arts piece about mywork with Premier Digital Publishing, new books, and some “old stuff” too. Take a look at: http://www.kansas.com/2013/08/11/2936345/longtime-wichita-writer-gaylord.html Longtime Wichita writer Gaylord Dold investigates e-publishing By BOB CURTRIGHT Eagle correspondent Is there a…
When I was a kid growing up in a tiny ranching and citrus community in southern California, I loved science fiction movies. I didn’t read sci-fi, but I went to all the Big Bug Movies like “Them” and I loved the outer space adventures that…
During the early and mid-1980’s I was an attorney in private practice. Little by little I gravitated towards criminal law, which seemed to offer more glamorous and action-packed opportunities than the old grind-it-out prospects of business law, divorce or, worse yet, real estate. My clients…
I think James W. Hall is a terrific poet and his “Bones of Coral” featuring Thorne, his protagonist, one of the best Florida crime novels ever written. We’ve corresponded over the years and he shared my publisher. I lived in Ft. Lauderdale for a while…
Here’s a short piece of video which aired on a local news station many years ago. It describes the genesis of Mitch Roberts with some panache, I think. KWCH Gaylord Dold – On the Trail of Mitch Roberts 1987 from Mike Carroll on Vimeo.
Once you’ve read everything written by Raymond Chandler twice or three times a sense of melancholy intrudes. You wish there were more but there isn’t. There are a number of fine works about Chandler, including the distinguished biography written in 1976 by Frank McShane, and…
In the beginning is the struggle to find a title for your book and to name the characters. It is said that Raymond Chandler chose the surname Marlow for his famous private detective after the Renaissance playwright and spy who was a contemporary of Shakespeare….
A real book comes into being from nothingness, without even the biological roadmap of sperm, egg and instinct that guide much of animal life on the planet. Many books—commercial trash, series fiction, many mysteries, romance novels, guidebooks and shelf after shelf of others, exist…