Lansdale is amazing. I've been saying it for years - he's the hardboiled, Texas Mark Twain. He is a brilliant author - genre or not. And he writes everything from horror (The Drive-In) to mystery/crime (Cold in July, Freezer Burn), and from comedy (Bubba Ho-Tep, Godzilla's Twelve Step Program)to shit you just can't believe (Drive-In Date) and pure Americana (The Bottoms, A Fine Dark Line, The Boar), in and out of genre fiction. He starts where every other author stops in terms of the places he goes when he goes dark.

But he also has a heart, and he's written a couple of YA novels.

And he's just a cool dude. He invented his own style of martial arts which he teaches at his dojo, and he's in the martial arts hall of fame.

He is the modern day Hemingway or Twain (although I like his stories a lot more, and his writing is just as good) - a man's man who is also a brilliant author with an insightful mind, and one who is not afraid to just tell a rippin' story. Basically, if anyone loves to read fiction of any kind, and they're not reading Lansdale, they're missing out on a living national treasure.