Shaker: A novel

Sophia, Lukas, and Stella, along with my wife, Jennifer, have for many years put up with a level of madness, mania, and interference on my part that no one should ever have to deal with. I can only hope that your certain knowledge that my love for all of you is constant and unbounded is somehow mitigating. It’s been a lot of fun so far. For me, any

Beth Swofford, who has helped me fashion a film career that is somehow now going on thirty-one years. While Beth occasionally protects me from the bad guys, she far more often protects me from myself, a nearly impossible gig, as you have probably gathered.

my literary agent, Andrew Wylie, who has far more important clients, yet still somehow manages the patience to answer what I’m sure are the dumbest questions he hears on any given day. Bless you both.

Master and Commander. Somehow during our first meeting we got to talking about street gangs in L.A., and the book was born again.

Cathy Colman was one of them. It was in the early nineties, while sitting with a dozen other creative

Roy reached out, grabbed Joe Mills by the good arm, and said, “I’m so proud of you, Captain.” Joe Mills looked at him in disgust and said, “Fucking hell, Lance.”

Kelly, overcome with a feeling that she couldn’t quite define, sat down beside the kid and put her arm around him. She took a deep breath as he then leaned into her and began to sob loudly. Not so much sob as howl. She could feel him shaking and wrapped her other arm around him as well. They sat like this for a full ten minutes before her phone ran

Though he had a pretty good idea he would never leave the stadium alive. Looking around it now, breathing in the warm afternoon air as the Dodgers held the Cards to one hit at the top of the first, he thought that he should have moved to L.A. a long time ago.

Evan somehow managed to sit up, the whites of his eyes visible in a now otherwise red and misshapen face, and reached out with a bloody and broken arm, the gold Rolex Daytona the mayor had bought him after the election the only recognizable thing about him, before the crowd once more trampled him back into the ground.