Friday, December 14, 2012

JKS Presents: "Ticket to Hollywood" by Gary Reilly

I just finished reading Ticket to Hollywood (and you can see the review here) by Gary Reilly (who is, tragically, now deceased). Now, learn a bit more about both the book and the writer! First, a bit more information about Ticket to Hollywood:


BOOK DETAILS

Paperback: $14.95, eBook, $9.99
ISBN: 978-0-9847860-1-5
Comic Fiction, 216 pages
Running Meter Press / Big Earth Publishing
Dec. 3, 2012



In Ticket to Hollywood, the second of 11 comic novels about Denver cab driver Brendan Murphy, a.k.a “Murph,” a young woman on the way to a showing of The Great Gatsby leaves her purse behind in Murph’s Rocky Mountain Taxi Cab #127—and then goes missing. Murph finds himself confronted by police and loses his job. He becomes entangled with filmmakers and makes his way to Los Angeles in search of the lost woman and in desperate need to restore his reputation and regain normalcy, which in Murph’s case means doing as little as possible.

Ticket to Hollywood follows the June 2012 debut of The Asphalt Warrior. The first volume of Murph’s adventures rose to No. 3 on The Denver Post best-seller list.


Twitter    @Asphalt_Warrior   Facebook   The Asphalt Warrior  Goodreads  Gary Reilly


Gary Reilly
Author Biography

Gary Reilly was a writer.

Simply stated, that was the essence of the man.

Born in Arkansas City, Kansas he spent his early years in Kansas and Colorado in a large Irish-Catholic family of seven brothers and sisters. The family moved to Denver where Gary attended parochial high school, graduating in 1967.

He served two years in the army, including a tour in Vietnam as a military policeman.

After discharge, Gary majored in English at Colorado State University and continued studies at the Denver campus of the University of Colorado.

All along, his overarching ambition was to write fiction. And he did, prodigiously. His first published short story, The Biography Man, was included in the Pushcart Prize Award anthology in 1979.

Later he turned to novels, several based on his army experiences. While he wrote both serious and genre fiction, his greatest invention was the character, Murph, a likable, bohemian Denver cab driver. Starting with The Asphalt Warrior, Gary cranked out eleven Murph novels.

His dedication to writing did not include self-promotion. Instead of seeking agents and publishers, he focused on his craft, writing and rewriting, polishing to perfection. He wrote well over twenty novels before he thought he was ready to make his work public.

Unfortunately, he passed away in March 2011, before he could realize that dream.

Friends and family remember Gary as a fun-loving, generous soul who always had time for other writers, helping them shape their work, getting it ready for print.

Now, through Running Meter Press and Big Earth Publishing in Boulder, Colorado, Gary’s fiction is finally coming to bookstores in Colorado and across the nation.



Twitter    @Asphalt_Warrior   Facebook   The Asphalt Warrior  Goodreads  Gary Reilly


6 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It really was - I am planning to pick up the first book, "The Asphalt Warrior", as soon as I can. This guy was majorly talented - what a shame they're only being published posthumously. Still, he wrote 20 books, so we'll have more to look forward to.

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  2. Sounds like a book I would enjoy. My favorite genre is mysteries but just give me a good book and I'm happy. Sounds like a good book.

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    1. There isn't a lot of mystery to this one, but it's a lot of fun to read, and what more can you really ask for?

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  3. Makes me sad when people are on the path to their dreams but don't get to enjoy that success.

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    1. I know, and the guy was seriously talented, too. Definitely check out his books - they're really good (or at least this one was)

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