The charity anthology Off the Record 2: At the Movies, which includes my story “American Beauty,” has earned some (very deserved) good press.
Crime Fiction Lover calls it “almost 400 pages of top-notch writing” and includes the very first bit of a review ever directed toward my fiction (very kindly putting me between two far more accomplished writers):
“Noir comes courtesy of a raft of amazing American writers. Eric Beetner’s version of The Graduate sees a young man taking an alternate route to maturity and finding the path very painful, and in Erik Arneson’s American Beauty a washed up ex-wrestler is violently brought to book for past misdeeds. Special mention to Jaws by Chris Rhatigan for taking us somewhere not often explored; inside the mind of corporate psychopath, which a seriously unpleasant place to be.”
Over at Z-7’s Headquarters, they gush in a similar vein: “It would take me more space than I can devote to praise all of these tales.”
You can get Off the Record 2: At the Movies at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Smashwords (where a reviewer called it “a fantastic read and a terrific cause”), or Lulu.com.
Related, sort of: Luca Veste, editor of OTR2, has been posting a quite enjoyable series of “top 5 books of 2012” lists at his blog. So far, lists have come in from AJ Hayes, Patti Abbott, Thomas Pluck, James Everington, Maxim Jakubowski and Paul D. Brazill.
In other news, I sold a copy of NEEDLE: A Magazine of Noir to a co-worker yesterday. Later, he emailed to say that he enjoyed my story (“Mess With Me”), and although he was “not a huge fan of the ending,” “the rest of the story was brilliance. The pithy, almost rhythmic style and humorous interjections between the quotes were really well done.”
I’m considering hiring him as a publicist, if we can come to agreement on the brilliance of the ending.
Finally, I spent part of yesterday evening browsing this list of Snubnose Press ebooks which are on sale for $0.99 and buying a few books from it. There’s a lot of great stuff on that list, but I strongly recommend the short story collections by Eric Beetner (Bouquet of Bullets) and Dan O’Shea (Old School), along with the novels by Andrew Nette (Ghost Money) and Chad Rohrbacher (Karma Backlash).
Happy Black Friday! The Kindle edition of my short story collection THE THROES OF CRIME is on sale for 99 cents! (That’s 80% off, and less than 4 cents per short story.)
NUMBER TWO: 
Erik Arneson 