WELCOME!

                                             

 

                               Welcome Everyone to Chasing Elmore! 

I want to give everyone a very warm welcome to Chasing Elmore the blog for the podcast I will be starting very soon. It will be focusing as the name implies on following the works of Elmore Leonard. I will be concentrating mostly on his crime fiction for the time being, but that is not to say I will not get into his Western work down the road. I am currently working on the introduction episode and the first full episode that will be an overview of one of his novels. I will be mentioning which novel in the intro episode so can't wait for you to hear that one!

I have been a long time fan of Elmore Leonard's work. I also live in Michigan where he lived and a lot of his novels take place. Which makes it such a cool experience when I read his books and how he talks about the Motor City and our State. His characters and dialogue are so vivid and real. It is one of the major things that has always drawn me to his work. No one quite talks about Detroit like him though either. They always called him the Dickens of Detroit. I have always been fascinated with locations from books or films. One of the first things I do when I am getting ready for a trip is make a list of film and book locations that I want to visit. Elmore's books already having built in locations I might already have been to or ones I could go to on my day off. He references Greenfield Village, the Fox theater, he talks about Livonia. These are all are all places I have known since growing up so it makes it special to read. It also makes it pretty neat to know that people that don't know anything about Michigan might get to know some of these things through his work! 

I was very lucky to meet Elmore twice. The picture above is the from the first time I was able to meet him at Signing and Reading at the Borders Bookstore on 8 Mile and Woodward in Birmingham, the city where Mr. Leonard had his Home. The Borders Bookstores sadly no longer exist these days. I have some other photos of this event that I will post later on. It was very special to meet him and see him read from his novel Djibouti, which was being released at the time. Elmore was very kind with everyone, hilarious, deadpan humor of course and he really spent a lot of time with everyone. I had several of my books signed by him and got to speak with him. Wonderful. One of those great experiences. The second time I got to see him was with his Son Peter Leonard at the Plymouth District Library in Plymouth Township. I came about being able to go to this is I worked at that Library for 17 years as Circulation Clerk and when this came across an event I signed up right away. I took my Dad with me to it. My Mother at the time was having a lot of health issues and he had not been able to get out much, so it was a great thing to do together. It was not long before Elmore passed and he was having some memory issues, but he was so good he was making jokes about the memory problems! His Son Peter was also really good with him. It was so cool to hear him speak about how much he enjoyed Justified.

So in closing, I just wanted to say I really want to start a dialogue out there with everyone. I want hear your ideas, criticism, things I have no idea about and just talk about how much we love his novels, movies, short stories and screenplays! So to that end I am going to be starting a Facebook and an Instagram for Chasing Elmore. When those are up and running I will make a post on the blog about them. Right now and always you can email me at majestykdavid@gmail.com