Hello. I'm Clifford Irving, author of many books. "Daddy's Girl," the story of a bizarre Houston double murder and the ensuing trials, is the # 1 best seller in the Amazon Kindle category of Courts and Law. My novels, "Final Argument" and "Trial," keep moving around in the list of Kindle's top ten best-sellers in Legal Thrillers. "The Angel of Zin" is currently Kindle's # 1 in Historical Thrillers and also # 1 in American-Jewish literature.
My epic novel, "Tom Mix and Pancho Villa," received 5-star media reviews that any writer would envy. But it sells few copies and aficionados are an exclusive club. Nevertheless, I'd be proud if on my gravestone these words were carved: "Author of TOM MIX & PANCHO VILLA."
Try the book on Kindle or Nook. If you don't like it, let me know and I'll send you a check for whatever you paid for it. (I can't make the same offer for hardback copies because they are rare; when I last looked they were selling for $80 and up, when available.)
I've had a long and event-filled life. I traveled twice around the world before most people living in it today were born, stood guard in an Israeli kibbutz, crewed on a three-masted schooner that sailed from Mexico to France, and one spring I lived on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir from where I rode horseback into Tibet.
Later I was on the cover of Time Magazine and got thrown into federal prison for writing the hoax "Autobiography of Howard Hughes," which pilloried Richard Nixon (among others). A few years ago Lasse Hallström made a movie about that part of my life, with Richard Gere playing me. The movie wasn't particularly good and it was ridiculously inaccurate.
Growing up as a Manhattan street kid, I studied painting at the High School of Music & Art, then continued on to Cornell University where I rowed on the crew, wrote romantic poetry, decided I wasn't an outstanding artist and instead determined to become an outstanding writer.
After working as a copy-boy at the New York Times, in 1953 I sailed to Europe to turn dream into reality. I hiked across the Pyrenees from France to Spain; settled on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza; hunkered down into the expat life (in those years, an American could live comfortably in Europe for $60 a month), and wrote my first novel.
I sent it to a literary agent in New York. Miraculously, so it seemed to me, she took iit on, and Putnam published it. Was it really as easy and as quick as that? Of course not. I was lucky as well as dogged.
After teaching at UCLA graduate extension school in 1961, with Betsy Drake and Cary Grant among my pupils, I became a correspondent to the Middle East for NBC.
And I kept writing books.
In 1970, I created a writing event which turned into the notorious Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax, Michael Drosnin, in his biography "Citizen Hughes," claimed that the threat of the book's publication caused President Nixon to worry so much about Hughes' accusations of bribery that the White House instigated the Watergate break-in. My reward, in any case, was 16 months in three federal prisons.
Of my novel, "Trial," the Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote: "Don't begin this book at bedtime or you'll be up all night ... it's made by a master." William Safire in the New York Times called it "the novel of the year."
Of "Final Argument," Donald Westlake wrote in the New York Times: "Every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!"
If writers tell you that they're indifferent to great reviews, they're lying or dead.
Most recently, out of the blue, four Italian publishers bid for the right to translate "The Angel of Zin," my holocaust/SS novel - probably because it's a story that will be haunting us forever. ("Absolutely compelling ... a totally engrossing thriller," wrote Thomas Keneally, author of "Schindler's List.") It was published in January 2015.
My entire archive of manuscripts, notes, journals and correspondence is now stored by the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, which acquired it from me in 2013.
Check out my website: cliffordirving.com. As I said earlier, if you don't like "Tom Mix and Pancho Villa," I'll personally refund your Kindle or Nook purchase price.
What am I doing now? I have three grown sons and a devoted Aussie wife. Recently I finished a screenplay called "The Devil at Yale" and began a novel about a homeless man and a memoir called "Storyteller." Writing is all I know how to do.
Thanks, best wishes, and good luck ... which none of us can do without.
Clifford Irving
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