N@B 2013 Newsletter vol. 4

Kyle Minor - Is poised to take over the world with his second collection of short fiction, Praying Drunk, set for release in February. I'm not sure what the status of his novel The Sex Lives of Missionaries is, neither do I know about the non-fiction Haitian book's status except to say they're gonna be pretty fucking powerful and I can't wait to read them. 

Aaron Michael Morales - Morales's next book Eat Your Children is somewhere in the works/edits/sales/publishes stage and regardless of subject matter, I have a prediction... incisive, and emotionally un-sparing. By the way, the last time I saw Morales... he was with Funk.

Derek Nikitas - Has written a dark YA time travel adventure novel The Pastime Project and a satire called Exploiting Tragedy. Far as I know darling Nikitas is still crotch-deep in his massive tome about Aleister Crowley, H.P. Lovecraft and W. B. Yeats (fiction, if that wasn't clear), and I'm still anxious to read it. 

J. David Osborne - Man... fuck this guy. Young, handsome, ambitious and talented too, just to make him absolutely insufferable. If I didn't dig him so much, I'd fuckin haaaate him. I almost do anyway. I'm just that shallow. Not only did he write one of the best books of the year - the Spartan noir Low Down Death Right Easy, he also published a bunch of year-end best-of picks with his brannew press Broken River. Yeah, so not only do I have to compete with him for a slice of the attention, as an author, but any attention that I do grab, I end up owing it to him anyway (since he published my novel Peckerwood) - and every time I want to just say "Well, obviously he has amazing taste - that's why he published my book," he says something along the lines of 'Tom Waits, meh' or 'Kanye West, bully!). And because he's an opinionated cuss and don't give no nevermind to dinosaur concepts of publishing decorum and the fig leaf of a pseudonym he published a collection of his own short fiction thru Broken River, Our Blood in its Blind Circuit, and plans to publish LDDRE's sequel Black Gum Godless Heathen as well as another of his own novels Gods Fare No Better. Man... fuck this guy.

Dan O'Shea - Aside from having the sequel to 2013's Penance changed from Mammon to Greed, I'm very much looking forward to 2014 in O'Shea land. I read Penance at the pool this summer and I heard the sultry, smoky tones of the author's own voice reading the words in my mind which made it officially the sexiest book at the pool - yeah you heard that right, 50-Shades. O'Shea's blend of skullduggery firmly rooted in Chicago dirt and ballistics descriptions that would give Stephen Hunter a chubby at a hundred yards make the John Lynch books no brainers for me.

Ande Parks - The writer of crime comics like Union Station and Capote in Kansas and an artist in the DC and Marvel universi, it's actually Parks' prose novel that I'm most eagerly anticipating. He read a murdery bit from the WWII-set book at N@B that got me a little hot under the collar for more period shit set in Kansas. 

Scott Phillips - The king of perverted period shit set in Kansas has a new one out in 2014. Hop Alley is historical fiction, but not set in Kansas. This one deals with Bill Ogden (who you may know from Cottonwood) on the run from a murder rap (in Kansas) and traipsing the plains with a new name and whole new set of problems. Bill is delighted to be the bane of spiritualists, health nuts, prudes and lynch mobs, but he may actually lend a helping hand to a mentally-under-whelming young lad and an old woman when they want to y'know, kill somebody. Gah! I've said too much. Coming in May. 

Robert J. Randisi - After 500 odd books dealing with sex and violence and detectives and gunfighters, Randisi releases his first ever 'crime book' as he defines it - a novel with a criminal protagonist. Old dog, new tricks, eh? Does the last of the pulp writers have a burgeoning new series on his hands?

John Rector - Has published four novels in as many years (plus a novella, plus a short story collection) each one outdoing the last (or at least doing it on another level) in the horror/crime tightrope act he's turning into a helluva career. Hey, John, that's me waving in your rearview. Consider me hitched to your wagon.

Caleb J. Ross - Made his first appearance in Thuglit this year. It was like mixing my prescriptions again, only this time I didn't end up hocking my lip collection to pay for therapy afterwards. Here's hoping we can get CJR back to St. Louis or I can see him in KC some time this year. It's been too long. I need a fix.

Theresa Schwegel - Is back with The Good Boy, her first book in four years. So that's what all the noise was about. Not sure what the new year holds for Schwegel, but this good boy deserves a new book.