Gary Reilly excerpts - embedded videos

I learned today that there were a couple readings of Gary Reilly's books on YouTube, read by Dennis Gallagher, who is the City Auditor for Denver. By the way, a little birdie tells me that Ticket to Hollywood is a finalist for the 2013 Colorado Book Award, so best wishes that the book will win. These are awesome books. Before I let you watch the videos, let me link you to my reviews for Gary Reilly's books: Asphalt Warrior, review here; Ticket to Hollywood, review here; The Heart of Darkness Club, review here. By the way, there are two books scheduled for release in November! Home for the Holidays and Dr. Lovebeads, so I'm very excited for that; that means I, for one, will have a happy holiday if I receive those two books! If you do a search through my blog, I have several other posts featuring the Gary Reilly books and providing more info about the series and the man, so feel free to dig around!

Now, without further ado, here we go. First an excerpt from Ticket to Hollywood, followed by an excerpt from The Heart of Darkness Club, both read by Dennis Gallagher.

"The Heart of Darkness Club" book feature plus author biography

BOOK DETAILS

Paperback: $14.95, eBook, $9.99

ISBN: 978-0984786022

Comic Fiction, 194 pages

Running Meter Press / Big Earth Publishing

May 28, 2013

MEET DENVERITE BRENDAN MURPHY...

Or “Murph” as he’s known to the rest of the world.

That world consists mostly of fares and doormen and fellow hacks from the Rocky Mountain Taxicab Company. He lives alone in his crow’s nest apartment, fries a hamburger for every meal, does his dish, then channel surfs for reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

He’s a radical minimalist.

Murph has two main goals in life. First, to earn no more from driving his cab than it takes to keep his bohemian lifestyle afloat. Second, never and under any circumstances get involved in the lives of his fares. He’s not very good with the first issue and spectacularly bad with the second.

The Heart of Darkness Club is the third book of The Asphalt Warrior series, following The Asphalt Warrior and Ticket to Hollywood. In The Heart of Darkness Club, Murph encounters a mysterious nihilist who may or may not be leaving him cryptic handwritten notes on five-dollar bills.

Come prowl the mean streets of Denver with Murph and ponder the meaning of the world and all sorts of deep questions, such as “Why would anyone want to DO anything?”

Website: TheAsphaltWarrior.com

   Twitter @Asphalt_Warrior     Facebook The Asphalt Warrior   Goodreads Gary Reilly

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.

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.

Website: TheAsphaltWarrior.com

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.

Website: TheAsphaltWarrior.com

Twitter    @Asphalt_Warrior   Facebook   The Asphalt Warrior  Goodreads  Gary Reilly