hardboiled wonderland

Classy Ass

2012-01-31T07:54:00.000-08:00

This sign was posted in a neighbor's yard about two blocks from my house. Reminded me just how few words are required to speak volumes. Of course, the fact that I made my wife drive back home so we could collect the camera, swing back around, get out of the car and trespass in order to get this peachy pic speaks a lot too. So, here's where I live.

February 28th N@B reader Kevin Lynn Helmick's latest - Heartland Gothic - was just released from Trestle Press, so you've got a few weeks to tenderize your sensibilities before he smacks your smug mug, but good at the live event. And shit, as long as we're putting the 'goo' in 'good taste' you could drop a buck on Jason Makansi's short story Trophy Wife and perhaps he'll sign your Kindle on February 21st while that asshat trying to get Robert Randisi's scrawl on 75 Gunsmith books holds up the proceedings.

Over at Ransom Notes today I'm lamenting my slipping down the list of January shit I've not read yet - one of them being N@B (Los Angeles) alum Robert Ward's latest The Best Bad Dream and it's making me wonder if he's penning any memoirs? Cause I'd be all over those like white on the GOP. Last week, at Ransom Notes, I looked at a few franchise film casting moves that went both ways. Never know what's gonna work, is all I took away from that piece. Well, that and I found out that the Tom Cruise as Lee Child's Jack Reacher adaptation One Shot is directed by Christopher McQuarrie and co-written by McQuarrie and Josh Olson (A History of Violence). Shit, I guess I'll be seeing that one after all. Say whatcha wanna about the source material or star, I'll give McQarrie a fair shake on anything after Way of the Gun... Check out this sweet-ass George Pelecanos essay on the John Flynn's The Outfit from Richard Stark's novel, that one and the Jim Brown as Parker vehicle The Split top my got-to-find-them movies from books to catch up on. This year, we've got some hot shit book to film adaptations to looksee like Lee Daniel's take on Pete Dexter's The Paperboy, Oliver Stone's Savages from Don Winslow's book, (dunno what happened to the Michael Mann-manned Winter of Frankie Machine movie - oh well, can't wait to check out the Mann/David Milch project Luck on HBO), and oh, what's that other one... Oh yeah, Julian Grant's Fuckload of Scotch Tape - I'm looking forward to that one. And did I see that Jame Franco is directing the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Child of God? Okay. I've been intending to revisit Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses - I just re-read the book and seem to recall that there was a director's cut floating around out there supposed to have another hour or so attached. I'd give that a shot.

We Need to Talk About Kevin and Alan

2012-01-25T22:42:00.000-08:00

Night number 2 of our February N@B double header features Caleb J. Ross, the sicko at the center of the latest Booked Podcast. Robb and Livius give a whole hour to Ross's books I Didn't Mean To Be Kevin and As a Machine in Parts. Get your mitts on a copy and get that sucker vandalized by the author Feb. 28th!

You know another podcast that caught my ear this week? The Other People podcast hosted by Brad Listi interviewed Alan Heathcock who confesses for the record (about fifteen minutes in) that he regretted he didn't make it to St. Louis in 2011 for Noir at the Bar. Y'know what, Al? Me too. So, c'mon, don't be sorry like Heathcock, get your ass to Meshuggah Cafe in St. Louis for a N@B event whenever the hell they happen.

And a big heartfelt congratulations to N@B star Matthew McBride whose Frank Sinatra in a Blender will be released (in print!) by New Pulp Press later in 2012. That's fuckin sweet, dude. Y'know what else is? Eddie Vega and Cort McMeel's Bare Knuckle Press have plans to publish not one, not two, but three Scott Wolven novellas electronically with a print omnibus to follow. If that's not a hot cuppa for your worn, chapped soul, you're reading the wrong damn blog.

The Wrong Kind of Write

2012-01-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Oky-doke kiddos, here's the official lineup for the N@B double header coming your way late in February. Two nights of walking on the dark side in St. Louis. First up, February 21st, Robert Randisi has been added to the the lineup alongside Benjamin Whitmer, Sonia Coney and Jason Makansi, so that's fantastic. How many people do you know who've read over five hundred books, let alone written that many, let alone published that many? Sure, somebody in the near future will probably take a big ol' dump all over the internets with their self-published titles and get up into the hundreds like that, but Randisi has done it the hard way, the ultimate pulp writer kids. That cat goes through keyboards faster than I go through underwear, and tossing 'em when he's worn the letters off the keys. Take that, James Patterson.

And just about the time that hangover is wearing off, it'll be time to tie one on all over again. February 28 Caleb J. Ross and Gordon Highland will be joined by Mark W. Tiedemann and Kevin Lynn Helmick for some serious transgression and boundary crossing. Man, we can't even see good taste from over here. Ross and Highland are passing through St. Louis from Kansas City on their way to Chicago for the AWP, and I just may get up there my own self.

I'm not an academic, so why the hell would I bother? Well maybe for some of this shits -

Looka that! N@B alum Anthony Neil Smith, Kyle Minor and Pinckney Benedict joined by David James Keaton, John Weagly, Nikki Dolson, Robin Becker and Sean O'Kane. Yeah, that sounds like a reason to make a trip. Looks like the place to be on March 1st is The Galway Arms.

Oh man, while I'm hypothetically up there I'd love to run into folks like Kent Gowran, Richard Thomas, Nik Korpon, Elizabeth White, Josh Converse, Jason Stuart, Thomas Pluck, plus Livius Nedin and Robb Olson from the Booked Podcast and all the other like-minded perverts on the attending list on the Face Book. Sounds like a blast.

Of course if I'm in Chicagoland, I'll have to drop in on Julian Grant and take a gander at the Fuckload of Scotch Tape rough cut. Yeah, I think that seals it. I've gotta get to Chi-town.

Later this Spring or Summer N@B is hoping to host Jake Hinkson whose debut Hell On Church Street is pretty fuckin great. Really, just a sweet-ass book that I'm officially jealous over. Do yourself a favor and put down that bloated best-seller you're chipping away at and order you a copy of this refuse-to-blink, yeah-it-just-went-there story of a con-man in an Arkansas Baptist Church. You'll finish it in one or two sittings, I bet and if it leaves you desperate for more of that southern-fried bad religion, order you a copy of Heath Lowrance's The Bastard Hand or Jesus Angel Garcia's Badbadbad. Hmmm, we already had Garcia at a N@B event, maybe we can seduce Lowrance down from Detroit for one when Hinkson comes through? That would be a helluva good lineup I believe. For more thoughts on Hinkson's book check out what I had to say at Ransom Notes. But don't take my word for it, go check out these reviews of Hell On Church Street, John Rector's Already Gone, Reed Farrel Coleman's Hurt Machine and Alan Glyn's Bloodland at the Los Angeles Review of Books by Cullen Gallagher - 'cause he knows his shit. Speaking of Senor Coleman, I see he'll be in St. Louis in April along with Sara J. Henry and N@B alum Duane Swierczynski and Frank Bill. Guess I'll be there too. Shit, that's a healthy lineup.

Today at Ransom Notes, I'm getting a little Nordic in my diet. Checking out Quentin Bates' books and briefly mentioning that a couple weeks ago, I read a Jo Nesbo book to my kids. They loved it and I guess we'll be going for the next one in the series soon.

Noir at the Bar is Real

2012-01-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

Over at Ransom Notes last week I posted on Daniel O'Malley's debut, The Rook, which reminded me of Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives big time, but I enjoyed both enough to have them peacefully co-exist, but today at Ransom Notes I'm enjoying the slightly less speculative history of a mob hit man in the latest from RJ Ellory, A Quiet Vendetta and another New Orleans post/Katrina missing persons bit Storm Damage by Ed Kovacs. I just picked up Cathi Unsworth's Bad Penny Blues, Dan Chaon's Stay Awake, Joe R. Lansdale's Edge of Dark Water and Sean Doolittle's Lake Country - so it's been a kick-ass week for bookery in St. Louis. Really looking forward to more January sweetness from Ryan David Jahn's The Dispatcher and George Pelecanos's What it Was which you can take a gander at in the new issue of Playboy with some kick-ass artwork (or you can sample both online right here by 'liking' the page on Facebook.)

Have you checked out the five minute sequence from Steven Soderbergh's latest Haywire? You can access it, like I did, through them handsome fellas over at The Criminal Complex. Now, I'm pretty pumped for it. Looks badass. That Gina Carano has the physicality for it (we'll see about the acting, hard to tell how that'll go over just from this clip - better, I suspect than Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience - and hey, it's already the single best Channing Tatum performance ever), and she's supported by a deep bench, so yeah, count me in.

Soooo, you've cleared your calendars for Tuesday, February 28's N@B with Gordon Highland (Major Inversions) and Caleb J. Ross, (Stranger Will) right? Well, it just got sweeter. Mark W. Tiedemann, the author of speculative and horror fiction (Diva, Remains) is joining the lineup and he won't raise the bar, he'll drop it on your head. Now you need to go ahead and clear the Tuesday before as well, because February 21st, N@B will host Benjamin Whitmer whose Satan is Real: The Ballad of Louvin Brothers is catching some mighty fine reviews and attention, and whose Pike pretty much blotted out the sun around here in 2010, and somebody I'm pretty confident you're gonna get to know soon, Sonia Coney will shock and offend you (me anyhow) for no extra fee. Yeah, February is chock-full of ooey-gooiness which more than likely will be found to contain human DNA. More names to drop for those events soon.

In N@B charter news, it seems them L.A. boys have rounded up another sweet-ass event with Robert Ward, Aaron Phillip Clark, AJ Hayes and Stephen Blackmoore for January 22. Man, wish I could be there. They're racking up a great track record betwixt Blackmoore, Aldo Calcagno and Eric Beetner (whose Dig Two Graves sounds like some uber-righteous hardboiled nasty right up my very own alley), and I'd love to visit one of their throwdowns, so we'll see, maybe I can swing a trip to Los Angeles some time this year...

Paul Von Stoetzel is moving forward with his short film adaptation of my short story Viscosity and I've now seen a script, so it feels like it's gonna happen soon. Anybody who's read Viscosity knows that the piece is nothing but dialogue and unattributed at that, and I don't know if that makes things easier or harder from a directorial standpoint, but it does mean that there's serious leaning on the actors. So, looking forward to this one and interested to hear the actors' performances.

The End Begins Big

2012-01-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

Hey lookit, kids: Crime Factory is back like they mean it. Tom Piccirilli, Johnny Shaw, Benjamin Whitmer, The Black Nerd, Ray Banks, Andrew Nette, Kenneth Loosli, Chris Benton, Paul D. Brazill, Chris Deal and dirty ol' N@B bastards like Daniel B. O'Shea, Matthew C. Funk and a previously unpublished interview with Scott Phillips. Plus Frank Wheeler Jr. gives the Noir at the Bar anthology an attentive read with detailed comments on contributions by Matthew McBride, Cameron Ashley, O'Shea, Dennis Tafoya, Kyle Minor, Pinckney Benedict, Sean Doolittle and in a first and most likely last, my own: Tenks, Franks. Wowzer. In case you can't follow the link on your CF download you can use THIS ONE to Subterranean Books - the ONLY PLACE IN THE WORLD to get a copy of the book.

Y'know who else reviews books? Donald Ray Pollock. Take a gander at his thoughts on The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell and tell me that ain't sweet. Now compare thems to my comments today at Ransom Notes where I'm all about Stephen Blackmoore's debut City of the Lost and you'll see clearly how short the stick is Blackmoore drew in that little match-up. But, don't hold my inferiorities against Stevie's horror/crime zombie pulp-up, cause it's a lotta fun.

Speaking of all things zombie, Rob Zombie is in production (or maybe post by now) on his latest film The Lords of Salem which I'm assuming is inspired by his song of the same name or at least by the same muse. And shit, if the movie is as scary as the video, it's gonna kick ass. Great cast of course - Zombie regulars Sheri Moon and Sid Haig are joined by classic creepies Clint Howard, Lisa Marie, Udo Kier, Michael Berryman, Billy Drago and Dee Wallace. I'm also excited to see Maria Conchita Alonso in a prominent role (I wrote a song once called Maria Conchita Alonso - Yes I did - she'd caught my eye early on appearing in a bunch of my favorites from my time spent in the eighties - The Running Man, Extreme Prejudice, Colors, Fear City and that batshit Nic Cage flick Vampire's Kiss). Anyhow, the song's video runs on a parallel track to what I envision as a novel length adaptation of my story The Adversary from Surreal South '11 - not quite the same, but similar enough to make me wanna drop everything and write it.

And while we're on movie stuffs and gnarly graphics go check out some of Julian Grant's tests for the visual style of Fuckload of Scotch Tape at the FLOST Facebook Page. He's even dabbling with publishing a promotional graphic novel which would look something about like this.

Swell. Can't wait to be able to announce where you can see this beast.

Finally, mark up your brand new calendars for Tuesday, February 28 'cause it's time for N@B. There, I said it. Lineup is still filling out, but we've got Caleb J. Ross and Gordon Highland locked in.

Dexter is Delicious

2011-12-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

Want to finish 2011 on a high anticipatory note? I did, and now I can thanks in part to Jimmy Callaway and the fine folks at The Criminal Complex for breaking the news to me that Pete Dexter's The Paperboy is coming to the screen in 2012, directed by Lee Daniels, (whose Shadowboxer is low-grade notorious for its WTF factor, and who produced tough-hearted shit like The Woodsman, Monster's Ball and Precious). It will star Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack and Matthew McConaughey and check this here poster the hell out. Sahweet. 'Course it all starts with Dexter for me. That cat is badass, and if you don't know his work, take this as my enthusi-fucking-astic endorsement of his particular brand of rough/perty prose and hardnard story stuffs. Yeah, color me excited.

Speaking of Dexter-level wordsmiths, I had to include Rick DeMarinis's Mama's Boy on my 2011 favorite novels list at Ransom Notes even though it weren't technically no mystery book. DeMarinis does write crime, but yeah, it was a stretch to put that particular book on a mystery blog. Please avail yerself of DeMarinis through his novels or short stories (he's got like three collections of shorts - fantastic) and tell your friends and neighbors to as well. He deserves a much more prominent place in the reading public's consciousness. That particular list is, I think, a helluva good showing for the last year. Even with penalizing some of my favorite books like Craig McDonald's El Gavilan, John Rector's Already Gone and Scott Phillips' The Adjustment for their authors having appeared on my 2010 list, it's some strong ass shit. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Even more lists to come. Just cause. See you at the end of the world.

Pain in Debut

2011-12-26T13:02:00.000-08:00

What a sorry cliche. Just made a list of my favorite debuts of 2011 only to realize that they were all penned by men. So, I completely changed my list and made it more PC... Or no, I didn't, but I did make a second list of books that I read in 2011 by lady writers that were my first exposure to them (the odd short story aside). I really hate to ghettoize female writers, and if that's exactly what I've done by adding a second list then... write a kick-ass book and entice me to read it, I dunno what else to say. Anyhow, both lists are up today at Ransom Notes. Go take a look and tell me what a jackass I am. Incidentally, it's not a 'first novel' list or you might've seen names like Donald Ray Pollock or Benjamin Percy up there - it's a first book of fiction list, so collections by Rusty Barnes, Alan Heathcock and Frank Bill are included.

Julian Grant and company have wrapped up the Fuckload of Scotch Tape shoot, and that's damned exciting. I'll be headed to Chicago late in January and hope to catch a WIP screening.

Friggin Keith Rawson man. Been doin those interviews 'n shit. You see his latest one with William Gay? Says we'll finally see The Lost Country in 2012... Hope so.

Watched season two of Justified last week. Dunno if I've ever seen a more dramatic improvement from first to second season of a television show. Liked the first season enough to check out the second, but hot damn I really enjoyed the second. Lot of that had to do with the emmy-worthy performances of Margo Martindale, Jeremy Davies, Brad William Henke and Joseph Lyle Taylor as the Bennett clan. Walton Goggins, Raymond J. Barry, Damon Herriman, Jere Burns, David Meunier and Kevin Rankin are good to watch too, and the more the show leans on them the stronger it is.

Putin on the Ritz

2011-12-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

Holy shit, despots of the world beware; 2011 still has teeth. Osama Bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi, and now Kim Jong Il... Is it mere coincidence that D*CKED is now on sale for the holidays? Pick it up before another one bites the dust... and rises again, and brings about Armageddon for reals. Suck It, my story from that collection is very... unlike anything I've ever published, reckless and irresponsible speculation leavened with cheap shots at stars of the world stage aside. It features an exclusive blood club formed by the former VP, KJI and Vladimir Putin. Vampiric themes abound in D*CKED, but for more Vlad-the-I'm-Paler fun check out VLAD, Liam Cassidy's official Putin fanzine.

Meanwhile, year-end best-of lists abound and I'm adding to the collective ignorance with giddy enthusiasm. Today at Ransom Notes I posted on my favorite first entries in new series, and last week I had fun with the list My Year in Villains which featured evil little shits from a distinguished list of authors including N@B alum Scott Phillips, Jane Bradley, John Rector, Duane Swierczynski and (honorary N@B dude 'cause Corydon was more or less the N@B road show yeah?), Donald Ray Pollock.

Been reading some horror and sci-fi tinged stuffs lately - Stephen Blackmoore's City of the Lost, Chris F. Holm's Dead Harvest and at the moment, William Gibson's Zero History which, if nothing else, is making me want to revisit Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel. I encounter very little affection for that one wherever I see it mentioned, but have a foggy, dreamy fondness for it myself. Also has me wanting to re-experience Olivier Assayas' Boarding Gate which I have a great gushing love for. Hmmm, Asia Argento was in both of those, weren't she? Dunno how much that has to do with my opinions, but how about that Assayas dude? Demonlover, Boarding Gate, Carlos... That's a helluva decade.

FLOST - Pics From the Set

2011-12-12T13:23:00.001-08:00

So, Julian Grant and crew are quickly approaching the wrap of shooting Fuckload of Scotch Tape. I'm pleased as hell with the stills I've seen from the location shoots. Thought I'd post some here for your whetting benefit.

The above is from Exit Chicago - the set for my fictional strip club The Beaver Cleaver. I'm told that JG (in the hat) keeps his clothes on.

Louie Lawless as Chuck. Watch out.

Hannah Phelps as Trish. Poor, poor Trish.

More Exit atmosphere.

The titular fuckload of tape.

Graham Jenkins as Benji. Benji, come home.

It's all fun and games till somebody loses a limb.

Graham Jenkins, Ben Nicholson and Julian Grant between takes at Carl's Bad Tavern (Gold Star Bar)

Vaughnj The Chameleon brings a Road Warrior vibe to The Beaver Cleaver.

Stay tuned for more progress reports.

In tangential news, Paul Von Stoetzel has locked in a DP for his short film based on my story Viscosity (Out of the Gutter #6) to begin shooting soon. Can't wait to see this one too.

Borders Closing

2011-12-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

Over at Ransom Notes I'm talking border books. Specifically Sebastian Rotella's Triple Crossing, Tricia Fields' The Territory and the brand new stand alone from Craig McDonald, El Gavilan. I think Craig's taken a big ol' step forward with this one. It's not technically a border book as it's set in Ohio, but it revolves around illegal immigration and the sticky spot people from any point in the political spectrum are placed in when the neat and tidy policies they've constructed in the abstract are tested on the ground and they are face to face with the reality of human beings with an instinct to survive. The Hector books are fun, but this one gets down and nasty in a way that's difficult to take too seriously when it's Hemingway, or some other person of historical note doing the dirt.

I swear I was thinking of Ry Cooder while reading El Gavilan long before there's a mention of him near the end of the book. I just heard some of those shimmery guitar sounds echoing around the prose - probably, now that I think about it, has something to do with the fact that he composed the score for the 1982 Tony Richardson film The Border with Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel. I watched it again a little over a year ago and it hadn't aged well, but that soundtrack made an impression. Another movie I thought of while reading El Gavilan was John Sayles' Lonestar. Something about McDonald's salty dog sheriff Able Hawk conjured pictures of Kris Kristofferson in my mind and I thought of his great evil turn in that picture from 1996. Bet I haven't watched it in over ten years, but it's one I think of often and fondly. Oughtta revisit it soon.

Last week at Ransom Notes I was going on a bit about repo men as protagonists - why they seem such a natural for edgy crime shit - and wondering why the hell I couldn't think of more of them. Yeah, I mentioned Harry Dean Stanton in Alex Cox's Repo Man, Fritz Brown from James Ellroy's Brown's Requiem and even Jude Law and crew from last year's underrated Repo Men (Blade Runner rip-off, Brazil rip-off, cheap gimmicky one-trick-pony? Don't care. I really liked it). The whole thing was sparked off by my reading Rick Gavin's muy fun Ranchero about a Dixie repo man tearing ass through Mississippi after the asswipe who brained him with a shovel on the job (think I compared it to Hap & Leonard crashing a Cannonball Run movie, and maybe that's not doing it any favors, but it was quick, easy reading). Bryon Quertermous brought Joe Gores' Dan Kearney into the conversation and Lynn Kostoff offered up Mike Magnuson's Gunnar and Dewey from The Right Man For the Job, so thanks guys for those. I'll have to give em a looksee. Still... that seems like an awfully low count.

Anybody see Marilyn Stasio's Notable Crime Books of 2011 list in the New York Times? Some good picks there, including George Pelecanos, James Sallis, Phillip Kerr, Michael Koryta and her 'favorite noir'? Scott Phillips' The Adjustment. Fuckin A.

Julian Grant reports cops crashing the set of F*ckload during shooting the other night. The issue? Sound like, uh shooting. Guerilla film makers are no strangers to this kind of thing. Dunno how many times the Mosquito Kingdom sets were struck and stowed, packed or abandoned to avoid the law, but it were more than I cared for. Sounds like they're on track to wrap up production before Christmas. Can't wait.

Give Me More Melbournian Dipshits

2011-11-30T21:11:00.000-08:00

You have a good holiday last week? I spent mine in the land of Charles Portis, William Harrison, John Hornor Jacobs and Don Lee - and the personal punching bag of Steve Weddle - Arkansas. Does that do anything to your cockles? You likey the mythological American South? Can you just taste the eminent publication of William Gay's The Lost Country? Y'know what you might be looking for? Fall Line by Joe Samuel Starnes. I'm taking my time with it, 'cause it's not in a hurry, and I'm liking that juuuuuust fine. I'm sure I'll have more to say when I'm through, but yeah, I think I'm way safe recommending it to you. Especially now that it's gettin nippy out. I'm finding more time to read for some reason.

In Fayetteville I availed myself of the ridiculously awesome Dickson Street Bookstore as well as Nightbird Books (also on Dickson) and betwixt the two and a handful of good mails this week, I acquired titles by N@B authors - Sean Doolittle and Jane Bradley as well as Craig McDonald, Daniel Woodrell, Benjamin Percy, James Sallis, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Chris F. Holm, Josh Bazell, Cara Black, Martin Limon, Colin Cotterill and Andre Gelasimov. Also got me mitts on the Versus Anthology edited by Josh Woods and featuring N@B kids like Kyle Minor & the Benedicts P&L.

Over at Ransom Notes I got into Leonard Fritz's book In Nine Kinds of Pain, the latest from Jon Bassoff's New Pulp Press, and it's a wild one. Really some interesting choices coming out of NPP. Can't wait for Jake Hinkson's Hell on Church Street and Jonathan Woods' A Death in Mexico next year.

Ken Russell died... shit. Altered States, The Devils, multiple D.H. Lawrence adaptations... Never cared much for Tommy era Who, so didn't ever see it, but maybe I should now.

Cameron Ashley has a new piece up at Beat to a Pulp. He's quickly become one of my favorite short story writers. His contributions to the two volumes I edited this year certainly helped bring that about - One Fine Bird from Noir at the Bar is a sharply twisty tale of the Eggman who made his debut in the Plots With Guns story Blood & Bone in Bambooland, and Codename: Balladeer from D*CKED is just a painfully funny story of the weaponizing of bad music - something that really gets to the root of all fears musicians like myself harbor. And you know, his N@B appearance and delivery of Dog's Breakfast went just a little ways to helping establish my fandom. Cam's latest, Papercut Pete's Blood-Stained MacGuffin is another Melbournian-dipshits-fucking-around-out-of-their-depth tale set in the same universe as B&BnB, Bird and Breakfast... Come to think of it, these'd make for a nice collection.

Over at Spinetingler you can check out some poster art n shit from Julian Grant's Fuckload of Scotch Tape production. Three weeks left to shoot on that monster and Julian promises to be 'balls deep' in editing when I head to Chicago in January to hold him accountable. Looks boss so far. Eager to hear Kevin Quain put to Julian's images.

The Conversation

2011-11-28T08:14:00.000-08:00

The following is a transcription of a conference call between Greg Bardsley, Kieran Shea and Jedidiah Ayres – editors of D*CKED: Dark Fiction Inspired by Dick Cheney.

Jedidiah Ayres: Hello?

Greg Bardsley: Hey, I’m on.

Kieran Shea: Present.

JA: Uhhh…

GB: Shall we start?

KS: Jed?

JA: Right… Sooooo, D*CKED… Y'know, something that kind of surprised me with this whole project was approaching potential participants who were nervous about the possible fall out of being associated with a project like this? Did you get that much?

GB: Yeah, I heard some of that. But not a lot.

KS: When we first approached writers and agents at Indy's Bouchercon, sure, and often it seemed to play out like this. "That's so cool! I'm in! Uhh, (pause) you know what? Let me think about it..." which I'm fairly confident we all took for a 'no.'

GB: What surprised me most were established writers who signed up eagerly, even helped us recruit other authors, and then later excused themselves from writing their own stories. They never said it was because of the possible political fallout; but we did have a lot of bigger names excuse themselves after first demonstrating considerable enthusiasm. Maybe some of that was borne from a developing concern about a fallout. I still think that in most cases, it was because they’d gotten overloaded with deadlines for novels and other stories.

KS: It's weird, people have this illusion of far reaching tentacles which, in and of itself, is a testament to our ravaged national psyche.

GB: End of the day, folks had a right to decline us any and all reasons. One thing we made clear was that we wanted a spectrum of stories, including what some might call “hero” pieces. We gunned hard for a romance piece by an established writer in that field, but struck out. We didn’t want the book to be polarizing for readers. Ultimately, we’re happy that the final product offers a variety of perspectives on Cheney and his influence. We didn’t get Rush Limbaugh to write a story for us, but we were able to publish a real range of pieces.

KS: Perhaps they thought we were playing with matches in a gas-soaked shack, I mean, who were we? A bunch of scrappers and upstarts? As the former VP has said on more than one occasion, pillorying comes with the territory of public office.

JA: Scrappers and upstarts... Yeah, what the hell did we think we were doing? Incidentally, do you hear that clicking on the line? Is it just my phone?

KS: I just finished reading How to Disappear by real life skip tracer Frank M. Ahearn. Welcome to the 21st Century, dude. We're all being tracked.

JA: I keep hearing from people who've put together anthologies that they are absolutely finished with them. Never again. What's your temperature on future projects?

KS: There are some noble efforts out there on the anthology front. Good people keeping the crime/mystery and even the beloved western genres alive for the shorter attention spans – but, God, Jed, we were so lost. Thank goodness we had Bardsley banging the drum on point.

GB: My temperature on developing future anthologies is probably pretty low. It was rewarding, and I feel great about the final product. That said, developing and producing D*CKED required far more work and time than any one of us ever anticipated, and we all have our real jobs and primary fiction projects.

JA: Gary Phillips suggested ‘Rove Noir,’ which I’d love to read, but yeah… somebody else is gonna have to put it together.

GB: What do they say? "Fools rush in"? The only thing is, we rushed in for all the right reasons, I think -- the chance to do something pretty cool, with a lot of really cool artists and writers. I'll never regret that. But let's admit it. The three of us -- Jed, Kieran and Greg? We're writers.

KS: Back in Ireland a lot of my relatives on my grandfather's side were and still are shepherds. Let's just say, I'm not one of them...although I do make a mean carré d'agneau.

JA: Why were you so up for D*CKED?

KS: As anthologies go, the concept wasn't like anything else out there. We have the cops and the amateur sleuths, the noirs and the thrillers, the supernatural and the dystopian...so why not take big old stick and stir a new pot? And the focal inspiration, the character of Cheney himself---just so polarizing and mysterious. Sure I could wade through the chickenhawk hubris, the bitter tide of recent history, and the ruthless, jaw-dropping corporate cronyism but that could take all day, so let me just say this. The man had his property on the Eastern Shore of Maryland scrubbed from Google Earth and he shot a dude in the face. As a writer, how could you not take a crack at that?

JA: You can't not. I couldn't.

KS: By the way, did you know Greg makes a terrific latte?

(GB audibly blushes)

JA: Seriously, you don’t hear that clicking?

KS: I stayed with his family for a day or so out during San Francisco's B'con, and when I crawled away from the inflate-a-bed in his office he asked me if I wanted a cup of joe. I said sure, expecting the usual drip. The dude does the steamed foam and everything.

GB: ... Thanks?

JA: Right... My favorite part of the whole gig was just hearing people's ideas. They seemed endless and popped immediately into people's minds, Dick was such a great muse. Greg's piece put Cheney in that uniquely Bardsley reality, Kieran’s story’s description just about made me pee my pants, Eric Beetner's piece is a fantastic concept -

GB: Yeah, there were some really good ideas, including the ones that made it to the book.

Hilary Davidson slays

JA: - and Hilary Davidson absolutely killed reading her story during Noir at the Bar... I guess my dream contribution would've been James Ellroy doing one of his 'bad white man' stories... Do you recall any great ideas that never made it to the publication?

KS: No, because it was an egalitarian effort from the start. But I will say it was heartbreaking to push back on some. There were some really gonzo ideas percolating out there.

GB: I agree regarding Beetner’s concept. There are a few ideas that had great promise, but the authors never turned in the stories. One was to do a Dick vampire story; that would have been a riot, to have him sucking on people’s necks and living that life. Another idea we received (from a literary agent) was to include a romance piece by a true romance author (you know, Dick between the sheets, between two satin sheets), but we couldn’t recruit anyone from those ranks. Another author had Dick as a con planning a jailbreak, which I would have loved to read –

KS: I only wish we could have had more.

GB: I still laugh from the imagery of Dick on the bus from Speed, and of Dick turning into a woodsy survivalist in the Alaskan wilderness, wrestling bears and eating insects. That imagery still cracks me up, and I'm glad those stories are in the book.

KS: I did relish taking an alternate slant on a movie so iconic. If anybody else wants to try assembling a collection like that I'd be interested in contributing for sure. Like, you know, instead of using the jump off point of Speed in my story for D*CKED we see Quint from Jaws brawling in Singapore, all salty New England patois and spittle. Or Lieutenant Frank Bullitt with a flat tire in the Haight and throwing down. God, can you imagine what one could do with Patrick Swayze's Dalton character from Road House? Or hey! Cartoons! Quick-Draw McGraw in his vigilante "El Kabong" outfit taking on the Mexican drug cartels and losing horribly...oh, so horribly -

(Soft 'thnnnk' sound)

GB: K? ....

JA: I think he got disconnected...

(Loud crashing sound on the phone)

GB: What the?

JA: Greg? You okay? Guys? Hello? ……. Guess we got cut off. Weird. Is that somebody on the roof?

END OF TAPE

D*CKED is available in Print or as an eReader. Buy one if you dare.

Just For the Halibut

2011-11-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Scott Phillips and I were interviewed on the KDHX program Literature For the Halibut this week. If you really, really want to you can listen to an archived recording of that hour long interview by following this link and selecting the November 14 option, but it'll be gone in two weeks. Some of the highlights include Scott singing a song he wrote and reading Roger Smith's blurb for Noir at the Bar in a South African accent. He also read from his N@B contribution, The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones and I read my story The Adversary from Surreal South '11 (the most radio-friendly story I've ever written - no edits! I thought it would be fun to read a really foul-mouthed story and lay sound effects over all the swears, but had mercy on Jason Braun - nobody should have to do that much work).

You wanna stream another buncha crimey, drinky blow-hards talking writing, publishing and all that jazz? Right here you got Les Edgerton, Cort McMeel, Eddie Vega, Sandra Ruttan and Brian Lindenmuth doing just that. Speaking of interviews, good gracious The Nerd of Noir just busted his cherry all over Allan Guthrie over at Spinetingler. Go check out the mess. If Pete keeps doing interviews, I can just stop.

Over at Ransom Notes I'm throwing around opinions on Grant Jerkins' new one At the End of the Road - a tasty slice of nasty that you're not likely to forget anytime soon. If you read his debut A Very Simple Crime, you've got some idea of the depraved places he can send you, though this one doesn't feature any first person observations from the monster and thus doesn't have the humorous bent that I really enjoyed in Simple, (wait, you thought it was funny too, right?).

Just got a copy of Pulp Modern vol. 1 the new pulp journal from Alec Cicak and it's chock-fulla-nuts. N@B alum Chris La Tray and Glenn Gray have a piece of this one, as do new best pals Jimmy Callaway, David James Keaton, Thomas Pluck and John Kenyon. Also on board are Edward A. Grainger, Sandra Seamans, Garnett Elliott, Stephen D. Rogers, while Copper Smith, James Duncan, Yarrow Paisley, C.J. Edwards, Melissa Embry, Matthew Pizzoloto and some guy named Lawrence Block. Y'know, I think some of those people are in my copy of Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled too.

Also in the mails this week: new Elmore Leonard, Stephen Blackmoore, Owen Laukkanen and a new collection of early stories by Daphne Du Maurier. And for those of you with an eReading predilection N@B legend Malachi Stone's twisted novels Wicked King Dick, Devil's Toll, Conjuror's Death and Private Showings are now available to make your Kindle whimper. Buncha N@B folks have had eShort Story collections published this year John Hornor Jacobs' Fierce as the Grave, Scott's Rum, Sodomy & False Eyelashes, John Rector's The Walls Around Us and Richard Thomas has published so damn many online this year alone it seems like he has, (three Pushcart noms in a single year?).

A Fuckload of Scotch Tape: My kind of musical

Things are rolling along on the Fuckload of Scotch Tape production, though I hear a title change may be coming. You know what? It's not for why you'd thunk either. Seems legal has some concern over the brand name in the title, so.... we'll see how that shakes out. Regardless, the sickest musical ever (yes, sicker than Meet the Feebles) has a Flickr page now and Julian Grant keeps posting lil' snippets of production. I'm tantalized. How could I not be?

Thanks Glenn Gray and Kieran Shea for the care packages, they gave me a little boost for sure. You guys rock.

Friends of Carlotta

2011-11-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

How weird is this? Benoit Lelievre asked me to contribute a piece to his blog Dead End Follies regarding the book that sparked my shit whatever that may've been. That was easy - White Jazz by James Ellroy were that fer me - only I was afeared that he'd be gettin a glut of like entries, so I used the opportunity to talk more about me than about the book. S'what I do. Taking the circuitous route to Jazz I digressed just a smidge on Carl Reiner's silly masterpiece (it just gets better every time I see it) Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid starring Steve Martin as hardboiled dick Rigby Reardon interacting in increasingly bizarre ways with clips from classic film noir clips. You can read my contribution to My Dark Pages today. Coincidentally, over at Ransom Notes I'm riffing on the Q.R. Markham plagiarism scandal and invoking the spirit of Reiner and Martin in the process. Sure, I've loved the movie for a long time, and if you happen to have a signed copy of one of my pseudononymously published novel from a decade back there may even be an inked invocation of Rigby Reardon, but I've never written about that film before and now, what do you know, twice in one day! Another coincidence - my Ransom Notes plagiarism piece had me linking to Jonathan Lethem's brilliant essay The Ecstasy of Influence at Harpers and I had no idea, he'd just released another collection of essays (that one being the titular selection no less), which I've simply got to get my hands on. Loved and was inexplicably moved by his first collection The Disappointment Artist.

Speaking of Lethem, two of his books made Thomas Mullen's My Five Favorite Hard-Boiled With a Twist Novels over at the Mulholland Books blog where this week Dennis Tafoya chatted up Cortright McMeel the author of Short and the publisher of Murdaland about his new gig as editor for Noir Nation the exciting new electronic multi-media international noir magazine. It's a good time to have an eReader. If I were inclined toward that kind of thing, I'd be reading All the Young Warriors by Anthony Neil Smith or Dead Money by Ray Banks or one of their other Blasted Heath compatriots right about now. Buuuut, I'm not, so I'm not.

No, I'm still not an eReader. I like, I more than like, the physicality of books, which is why the Noir at the Bar anthology is only available in print. Those of you who've got one, I think you can testify that it's a helluva nice object and that it'd make a helluva good gift for somebody you know who likes our kind of thing. But don't take my word for it, check out what Elizabeth White had to say at her Musings of an All Purpose Monkey blog. Seems she's zeroed in on several of the original stories in the collection as favorites - Deviances by Frank Bill, Vampires Are Pussies by Chris La Tray and Outside Lou's by David Cirillo, (previously published work by Daniel O'Shea and Matthew McBride get nods too). Sound like a gift you'd like to give somebody? Where can you get a copy? Only at Subterranean Books.

Lost in Quaid

2011-11-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

Over at Ransom Notes I'm all about Hell & Gone, the new Duane Swierczynski prison novel that's part two of his Charlie Hardy trilogy. Trust me, it takes something from every prison novel ever written and is like no prison novel you've ever read. It also features a character named Jed which I don't think happens often enough. However, after Megan Abbott's The End of Everything, maybe it's becoming a thing. Also at Ransom Notes is a list of uh, lists that I've enjoyed of late from folks like Duane, Matthew C. Funk, David James Keaton and Jordan Harper. Hey, Jordan - please tell me you're including Weird Al Yankovic's Good Old Days on your Murder Ballad a Day list - really quite unsettling. Do you remember sweet Michelle?

Fuckload of Scotch Tape is now three days into production! Julian Grant and Co began shooting that beast Friday, and yeah, I'm pretty excited. Check out some production stills and behind the scenes shots (like this one) at the FLOST FaceBook page.

Whoa. Did the temperature just drop?

Got my copies of Surreal South '11 in the mail Saturday. Good shit. I'm officially recommending it to you. Did you know I had a contribution to this ghosts & monsters collection? Yup, me and N@B folks like Anthony Neil Smith, John Hornor Jacobs, Pinckney Benedict, Laura Benedict and Sophie Littlefield (she was totally at the last one - you missed it). Hey, it's also got swell writers like Nik Korpon, Josh Woods and J.T. Ellison, so, yeah, what are you waiting for?

Finished season three of Sons of Anarchy over the weekend, a show I'm conflicted over like nothing else. On the one hand I think it's one of the richest set ups on TV, and one of the best opportunities to explore outlaw life in modernity to come along... ever. As much as I love The Sopranos, I'm really not drawn to organized crime with that level of sophistication as much as I am to the cowboy spirit of biker gangs, plus hey, staging Hamlet on bikes is inspired, and I'm willing to go through the soap-opera-ish relational dynamics in support of the heightened reality that that kind of theme implies... but the characters tend to feel inconsistent rather than complex and too often the badassedness comes off comical rather than y'know, badass. While season three saw Jax get thankfully more coldblooded, it also saw Tara kill two people (who didn't even have it coming) and... have no real effect on her mood let alone her life. The finale did what it was supposed to - took a few bold steps that got me interested enough to tune back in for season four, but I still feel it could be a lot more than what it's given me so far.

Anthology Pathology

2011-10-31T09:26:00.001-07:00

Check it out. Just look at that poster. Gives me chills, but maybe that's because I know the awfulness that awaits Benji Metcalf the hapless fucktard whose story A Fuckload of Scotch Tape is. I wrote that story trying, just trying to make someone who does something absolutely indefensible and unforgivable in the opening paragraph an object of pity. More than an object of pity. An identifiable and get-behindable protagonist who you want to see succeed... or at least escape unscathed. Did I succeed? I think so. Julian Grant thinks so. But I tell you what - reading a brief description of Benji's transgressions in a short story and watching them take place on screen are two far different experiences. When I read Julian's script, I thought, WTF? Did I write that? This is really awful territory to be hanging around in. Julian's film Fuckload of Scotch Tape is going to be an acid bath for your soul... with singing. Yeah, it's a musical. Yeah, I'm soooo good with that. In fact, thanks Julian for introducing me to the stylings of Kevin Quain and thanks Kevin for consenting to let Julian use your music to tell this pitch black (and hopefully funny) story. And hey, thanks, Graham Jenkins for donning such a terrible mustache (a plot point for my intersecting stories Fuckload and Mahogany & Monogamy). Vanity is not your name. Shooting starts this week!

Meanwhile, had a great time in Carbondale Friday where I participated in SIUC's annual Lit-festival, The Devil's Kitchen. I was on a panel titled The Anthology Pathology with Pinckney Benedict, Laura Benedict and Josh Woods discussing the anthologies we'd edited. So believe that I pimped Noir at the Bar and D*CKED with a bawm-chicka-wow-wow soundtrack and everything. I'd never met Woods before, but was familiar with him through the Surreal South books that the Benedicts have put together every other year since '07, and I was eager to meet him. Do yourself a favor and turn to his entries early whenever you come across his work. I picked up a copy of the new anthology he edited - The Book of Villains - that's just out from Main Street Rag, while I was there and the first thing I'm doing is finishing the story he read part of at the event about the unsuccessful retirement of Blackbeard the pirate.

Took the Nerd of Noir's advice and watched Paul Andrew Williams's London to Brighton over the weekend. Brilliant film. Talk about grabbing at your tender bits from the opening shot... Fantastic performances from Lorraine Stanley as Kelly, a London prostitute who takes runaway Georgia Groome (in the third excellent portrayal of a teenager by a teenager I've seen lately - the others being Alex Shaffer in Thomas McCarthy's Win Win, and James Frecheville in David Michod's Animal Kingdom, hey writers, guess what? They're teenagers, not frustrated grad students). All we need to know about either character is observable literally on their face and in their actions. Also excellent in that cast is Johnny Harris as Kelly's pimp - sleazy goes without saying, but desperate and human to boot makes him all the more terrifying. The only odd note is Sam Spruell as the heavy hunting them down. He's effectively creepy, holding the screen like a DNA side project of Dylan Baker, Willem Dafoe and David Bowie, but the tone of his character I dunno, maybe belongs to a different movie, (like Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds). Still, with an 86 minute running time (and I do mean running) it's as stripped down and fight-ready as anything I've seen in a long time. Thanks, Nerd. Do yourself a favor and pay attention to the Nerd's crime flick double feature pieces in each issue of Crime Factory.

At Ransom Notes, I'm talking to John Rector about his latest, Already Gone and... damn. That's three kick ass books in under a year and a half from his Nebraska hidey hole. Guys like him make me feel pathetic. You know somebody else who's getting shit done these days? Nik Korpon. Less than a year since his first book Stay God was released, he's published two novellas, the excellent Old Ghosts last spring and the brand new By the Nails of the Warpriest now-ish... In Print! I'm happy for authors who are getting exposure and making some money with eBooks and I'm pleased as hell that people are reading them, but it's still pretty special to have an object to read. Check out David Cranmer's interview with Nik over at the Gutter Books site.

May get out to see Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene this week (or perhaps Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter) and I'm feeling the need to re-watch Martin McDonagh's In Bruges. Otherwise, getting through Sons of Anarchy's third season which has a pretty laughable trip to Ireland - I just keep thinking of The Brady Bunch on vacation in Hawaii - but still just enough interest to keep going. Enjoyed Stephen King's cameo early in the season and WTF with all the Deadwood cast members? I mean, good for them, but it's a weird reunion, and not the one I'd really like to see them do, but I especially love anytime Robin Weigert is onscreen.

Cook Book

2011-10-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

Over at Ransom Notes, I had fun last week posting on my favorite crime fiction macguffins including inspired by Simon Logan's terrific Katja From the Punk Band, (think Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch - or Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown if you don't read - and Allan Guthrie's Savage Night set in a vaguely eastern European industrial-atrophy, acid rain-soaked setting and scored by Trent Reznor's skeezy uncle). My number one macguffin? The head from Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. I'm not so un-self-aware that I don't notice the ridiculously lopsided nature of the list - that most of the examples I mention are under twenty years old, but go ahead, leave a comment and edjumicate my ignorance.

Today at Ransom Notes I'm sticking with the urban decay and talking Derek Raymond and the re-release of The Factory novels from Melville House, (featuring new introductions by James Sallis on He Died With His Eyes Open and Will Self on I Was Dora Suarez).

Holy craps, but it's a big week for electronic crime journals with brand new issues of Crime Factory and Plots With Guns. PWG features N@B alum Matthew C. Funk as well as Stephen Graham Jones, Pete Risley, Patricia Abbott, Ryan Jackson, Thomas Pluck M. James Blood, Chris Gordon, Art Taylor and Charles Dodd White, while CF has got pieces by Funk (he's everywhere), Nik Korpon, Seth Harwood, David James Keaton, Heath Lowrance, Doc O'Donnell, Nick Quantrill, Matthew Finn, Julia Madeleine, Andrew Nette, Michael Peck and Addam Duke interviewing Jake Adelstein.

The Nerd of Noir's crime double feature for this issue is Andrew Williams' London to Brighton which I haven't seen, but will very soon, believe it, and Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace which I have and need to see again. Really, really need to watch again. It was a most unusual experience and I'm eager to have another go. Based on the strength of Terrace, Wheatley's next Kill List is way up top of my anticipated films list. Incidentally, I first heard of Terrace from the Ray Banks, who has usually got a keen eye for quality, but take a gander at his counter-brilliance take on Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive over at the always worthwhile Norma Desmond's Monkey. How wrong he is. How wrong. Well, he's backed up his opinions with some words that are worth reading even if they're off the mark.

Sorry, Ray, your points seem to be too much about what the book might've become onscreen, (and hell yeah, I was excited to hear Neil Marshall was doing it) instead of what the film is as its own entity. I never did read James Sallis's novel, but I've read the original short story that became the novel, (from the sadly out of print Measures of Poison - what a hell of a good book if you ever come across one, do not blink, pick it up) and was still able to leave things like Driver's backstory sketches out of the movie experience... because they're not in the movie, which means they don't exist. As portrayed in the film, Driver may be a PTSD war vet or fucked up suburban kid, who knows, all we've got is what's on screen.

Driver's experience of the film's events are like the star of his own movie - his posing, his walk, his toothpick, his fuckin scorpion jacket, his dialogue ('shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you'), and of course his driving. I think the movie world he exists in is fairly meta or just seriously delusional (which could account for touches like the strippers' stock-still postures while he assaults Chris with a hammer - like something out of a Robert Palmer video - and his weird fetishy need to don the creepy mask and the soundtrack that must be playing in his own head) and as for the driving not being anything we haven't seen before, I'd love to hear a recording of some executive trying to make him shoot that second chase's climax outside in a wide shot instead of through the back window to the side of Christina Hendricks' face - really a brilliant shot. So, style to burn.

Sounds like the source material would support several solid takes, but dismissing what we've got for what could've been just wont fly this time, (I reserve the right to do that any time I want to BTW. 'Cause I do, I know. A lot.) Any way, Norma Desmond's Monkey is a helluva good movie blog if you don't follow it you're missing good shit, and meanwhile Ray's got hisself quite a blurb from none other than Lee Child - check that shit out!

Speaking of style to burn, Julian Grant looses more style when he blows his nose than McG could ape in a dozen unwanted theatrical adaptations of vintage television shows, and I can't wait to see what the hell he does with FLOST... 10 days till shooting begins.

And Friday I'll be in Carbondale with Josh Woods, Pinckney and Laura Benedict... and I'll be thirsty.

Ketchum If You Can

2011-10-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

So I came across the artwork for the Surreal South '11 anthology online the other day. Looks spooky nice. Really excited to be part of it. Could, at this point, launch into a long-winded 'you've come a long way, baby' back pat here, but that would be unseemly. You, on the other hand, are welcome to go on and on about me. Really, just being included in this collection is a big ol' sloppy smooch to my ego. The lineup is great - N@B alum like Laura Benedict, Pinckney Benedict, Anthony Neil Smith and John Hornor Jacobs, plus Sophie Littlefield, Nik Korpon, Brad Green, J.T. Ellison, Sheryl Monks, John McManus and and and... Yeah, a buncha goodness/badness. On October 28, I'll be headed out to Carbondale, Il for the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival at SIUC where I'll join Laura, Pinckney and Josh Woods on a panel called The Anthology Pathology. Come say 'hi' if you're around.

Over at Ransom Notes I'm getting into some of those seasonally appropriate creepy books that I've enjoyed in the last couple of years. One that landed on my desk recently was the Joe Lansdale edited Horror Hall of Fame anthology featuring Bram Stoker Award winning short stories from the likes of David Morrell, Harlan Ellison, George R.R. Martin and somebody I've had my eye snagged on for a while now, Jack Ketchum. Dammit, it's time for me to read some of that.

Tom Piccirilli posted this sweet lil' recommendation for Noir at the Bar on his blog. Thanks, Tom. John Kenyon also had some nice things to say about it and D*CKED too over at the web presence for his new baby, Grift Magazine. Hell between Grift and the brand new Criminal Complex online journal, exciting things are happening in publishing, (good shit from Jay Tomio, Jimmy Callaway, Cameron Ashley, Matthew C. Funk, Josh Converse, Johnny-99 and Keith Rawson.) And shit, the latest issue of Needle is live. Steve Weddle - there I said it - and company have put together another great lineup of new fiction including the conclusion to Ray Banks' Wolf Tickets - can't wait. You can buy that shit right here. I wish I had more time to writes, 'cause I'd be terribly pleased to contribute here, there and everywhere.

Just a reminder that Daniel Woodrell will be appearing Friday at COCA in University City for an event hosted by Subterranean Books in support of his terrific new short story collection The Outlaw Album. Tickets must be purchased for this event and will cover the price of the book and secure you a seat for the screening of Winter's Bone. So, yeah, it's a no-brainer to buy a ticket - you're gonna love the book. I gave a little rundown of some of my favorite pieces included over at Ransom Notes last week.

Keeping Up With Jones

2011-10-12T04:41:00.000-07:00

Lookie there, the folks over at the Mulholland Books blog are spotlighting the Crime Factory anthology – nice – and they’re even giving away a free sample of what you’ll find inside. S’right, one of the stories from the antho is available to be read for free at the Mulholland site and it’s… mine?

Cool. If you’d like to read my story Amateurs, for goodness sake don’t go buy the book, (unless you wanna show your support for N@B alum like Dennis Tafoya, Jonathan Woods, Hilary Davidson, Frank Bill and Cameron Ashley, or else you dig folks like Roger Smith, Ken Bruen, Charlie Stella, Adrian McKinty, Scott Wolven, Craig McDonald, Dave Zeltserman, Greg Bardsley, Kieran Shea, Keith Rawson, Jimmy Callaway, Andrew Nette, Leigh Redhead, Patricia Abbott, Josh Converse, Liam Jose, Nate Flexer, Chad Eagleton, Steve Weddle, Anonymous-9, Dave White and Chris F. Holm), just head on over to Mulholland.

Those folks from Mulholland are awful busy with the whole publishing thing, and not just brand new titles. They’ve been making some good outta print shit available again and hopefully introducing some worthy and underexposed titles and talent to a new audience. One of my favorites reads of the summer was one of those – A Single Shot by Matthew F. Jones. It’s hardcore, kiddos. Not for the faint. But if it’s something you’re interested in, leave a comment on this here blog post and Friday I’ll choose somebody to send a copy to.

After A Single Shot, I’m looking for more Jones and hell, Brian Lindenmuth had some damn good words for Boot Tracks, so I’ve got my eyes peeled special for that one. And Rusty Barnes said Deepwater was the shit, so I’m on to that one too. Oooh, lookit – Deepwater was made into a movie too directed by David S. Marfield. Damn. I’ve got a lot to be looking for. I get especially excited about these small crime films because at their low-budget level nobody is losing too much money by making them hardcore, bleak, uncompromising or y’know… better.

Watched a great little crime flick this week, Ed Gass-Donnelly's Small Town Murder Songs starring the ever-watchable Peter Stormare as a middle-aged, small-town police chief investigating his first murder, though apparently not the first killing he's had ties to. Its measured pace, stately composition and bracingly spiritual soundtrack help, but it's the performances by the whole cast and especially Stormare, Martha Plimpton, Jill Hennessey and Stephen Eric McIntyre, (he was in Nicolas Winding Refn's Fear X and Scott Frank's The Lookout? Really? Hmm) that really give the picture weight. It's a brooder, but not a plodding one. The central investigation is refreshingly straight-forward and simple while the interpersonal dynamics are the complex main story. I'll have to check out Gass-Donnelly's This Beautiful City soon.

A bit more than three weeks before shooting begins on another micro-budget crime film I'm excited about: Julian Grant's FLOST, a noir musical based on my short story A Fuckload of Scotch Tape. Grant calls the project "a two fisted, no apologies love letter to James Ellroy, Busby Berkley, poverty row cinema and the genius of Edgar Ulmer." You can keep up with FLOST at the production website.

Just so happens that the other story I had published in Out of the Gutter (#6), Viscosity is also being made into a film - though this one's a short where Fuckload's a feature, (nobody wants a feature length adaptation of Viscosity, trust me). Paul von Stoetzel, (yeah, the guy doing the Dennis Tafoya adaptation How to Jail) is shooting this one and I'm really interested to see how it turns out. I hope you laugh. And cry. And don't try anything you learn about, while watching it, at home.

At Ransom Notes I'm listing some upcoming reads to get excited about including a non-fiction book by Christopher Goffard called You Will See Fire. It's untangling the story of a shotgun-toting missionary in Kenya and his death. Sounds awesome, after all Goffard's the dude what wrote Snitch Jacket don't you know? There's a weird convergence of things it's reminding me of: the new Marc Forster flick Machine Gun Preacher, the two forthcoming Kyle Minor books - The Sexual Lives of Missionaries and the true crime-ish A Kidnapping in Haiti, (I can't recall if it has a name, or if I just pulled that outta my posterior) and Elmore Leonard's Pagan Babies. I'm sure I'm doing it a terrible disservice with this sort of reductive exercise, but it amuses me.

On the Money

2011-10-04T00:29:00.000-07:00

Over at Ransom Notes, I'm talking 'bout Christa Faust's latest, sawed-off, hardboiled, pump-action, pulp-shooter Choke Hold. Really dug it. Reminded me of the reasons I like Anthony Neil Smith's Billy Lafitte books - real characters in really fucked up situations, responding in emotionally honest ways to wild-ass shit. That, plus they're series books that don't feel like series books. Yes, there's a benefit to reading the preceding books, but they stand on their own and are not at all a retread of the first.

Have you not read Faust? Tell you what, leave a comment on this post and you'll be entered to win a copy of the first of her Angel Dare books, Money Shot. I'll choose a winner on Friday.

Picked up my ticket for the October 21 Daniel Woodrell event in St. Louis. Yup, you'll need a ticket to get into the COCA auditorium for Q&A and screening of the film Winter's Bone. Tickets are $25, ($30 for couples) and will include a copy of his brand new book, The Outlaw Album. So, yeah, pick up your ticket from Subterranean Books asap.

While you're at Subterranean, go ahead and pick up a copy of Noir at the Bar - it's good for you.

All the Funky Possibilities

2011-09-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

Have you checked out the Booked Podcast yet? I keep tuning in to hear Robb Olson and Livius Nedin casting out of Chicago reviewing books and interviewing writers. Check out this episode where they review Frank Bill’s Crimes in Southern Indiana and continue to give a recap of Frank’s book release party in Corydon a couple weeks back. Remember that? I do. It was some good shit.

At the end of that segment they drop the possibility of coming to check out N@B one of these days which I think would be tits. People sure have been swell in their reaction to the Noir at the Bar book, too. I’ve been reading the latest print edition of Mike White’s cinematic rag Cashiers Du Cinemart, (perhaps you’ve read the collection Impossibly Funky, and if you have then you know the kind of smart and smart-ass essays, reviews and interviews go down on these pages) and was just pleased as hell to see the Noir at the Bar ad (page 42 – doubters). Or turn to page 59 of issue 43 of Crimespree magazine and feast your eyes on the full pager those swell Jordanians threw in over there. And I’m starting to see reviews pop up on blogs. Sweet and thanks

Had an odd reading experience this week. Julian Grant (The Defiled, RoboCop: Prime Directives) is getting ready to shoot his next feature based on my short story A Fuckload of Scotch Tape and I’ve just seen the script. Holy shit, it’s gonna be a sick movie. Julian’s a hell of a stylist – a scrappy and innovative artist - whose vision I can’t wait to see. If you’ve read Fuckload (from Out of the Gutter #5) or my story Mahogany & Monogamy (from Blood, Guts & Whiskey), you’ve some idea of what to expect, but that’s all – some idea. It’s gonna be a hallucinatory trip to hell – you think reading that shit hurts? It’s going to a whole other level visually, not to mention audibly. Don’t forget, Scotch Tape the movie is a musical. I’m listening to Kevin Quain, (whose songs will score the film) right now, and telling you – you’ve never seen nothing like this.

Read a killer short story by N@B star Fred Venturini, called Detail, from the Cheryl Mullenax edited 2009 antho The Death Panel, which also includes the cop-killingest slice of pulp fiction since Ice-T recorded his quaint folk ballad - you know, before he began his real career of playing cops in movies and the TeeVees - Nine Cops Killed for a Goldfish Cracker by David James Keaton. Next I'm tackling the pieces by Tom Piccirilli and Randy Chandler. We'll see from there.

N@B hero Tim Lane has got a graphic feature in the latest issue of the Riverfront Times - Tim Lane's Hopeville Journal - a document of time he spent in a St. Louis homeless camp on the Mississippi river this summer. If you know Tim's work, than you know that this subject matter is right up his alley. Only this time it's true stories of Americans getting by, rather than fictional accounts of similar desperate characters letting dignity slip through their remaining fingers.

Just saw the artwork (almost said 'cover' but that wouldn't be right) for Anthony Neil Smith's latest eBook All the Young Warriors. Damn it. Call this the third ANS book my eHandicap is causing me to miss. I'm assuming it's a backstage document of life on the road with Mott the Hoople.

Taking the Mrs. to see Drive while the kids're at school this morning. It's gonna be a good day.

Driver Wanted

2011-09-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

Back to the regular grind this week after two weeks of travel and playing host - I think it may've been much easier on my poor wife if I'd actually been out of town the whole time, but I was coming through the door around three in the morning and leaving again five hours later. It's hard to quantify the work to your spouse taking care of two children by herself... honestly, Hon it was hard work hanging around in bars with writers 19 hours a day. But let's attempt a recap, huh?

Wednesday night's N@B event was a marathon cheered on by a tightly-packed crowd of boozy sardines with names similar to many writers I admire, but who surely hadn't ever heard of our tawdry little event. Still, you gotta admit it's a little too coincidental to have a single reading attended by people with names like Sophie Littlefield, Derek Nikitas, Jason Starr, Martyn Waites, John Connolly, Mark Tiedemann, Holly O'Neill West, Josh Stallings, Bryon Quertermos, Johnny Shaw and Bob Truluck, plus names that sounded Twitterish like Janet Rudolf, Sabrina Ogden, Ali Karim and on and on... But, when your lineup is some tight shit like we had that night, maybe it aint too hard to imagine that kind of interest.

Hilary Davidson kicked things off reading her story from D*CKED - which features a mix of violence and sex and dark humor setting the pitch perfectly for the evening. She was followed by Glenn Gray giving us a taste of what he's got in store for Needle readers soon. John Rector read a piece whose rejection letters were apparently closer to hate mail and threats, but that N@B was proud to feature, and Duane Swierczynski followed with the opening of a current work in progress - an infidelity meets baseball bats tale that I'm pissed I gotta wait for. Afterward Laura Benedict read a selection from her contribution to the Noir at the Bar anthology, Matthew C. Funk plunged us up to our elbows into a nasty situation and Matthew McBride encored his upcoming Beat to a Pulp: Round Two piece - Big Darlene the Sex Machine and John McGoran fucked up a whole family in about five minutes.

Over the next few days I spent a lot of, but not enough, time with Benjamin Whitmer, Cameron Ashley, Keith Rawson, Con Lehane, Dan O'Shea, Frank Wheeler, Peter Farris, Jonathan Woods, Jimmy Callaway, Greg Bardsley, Gary Phillips, Dennis Tafoya, Michael Wiley, Thomas Kaufmann, John Lutz, Robert Randisi, Christine Matthews, Chris Holm, Chad Rohrbacher, John Kenyon, Scott Montgomery, Mark Dischinger, Ron Earl, Kent Gowran, Owen Laukkanen, Thomas Pluck, Frank Bill, Aaron Michael Morales, Paul Oliver as well as N@B folks like McBride, Gray, Funk, Shaw, Quertermos and a growing list of blurry faces already receding from consciousness only to be recalled suddenly, jarringly, I'm sure later down the line when I'm on the wrong end of a restraining order, I'm sure.

Monday morning I went to see Nicolas Winding Refn's adaptation of James Sallis's Drive with Ashley and Scott Phillips before taking Crocodile Dundee to the airport. Since then, I've not been able to stop thinking about the film - apparently Refn's version of a 1980's era Michael Mann pic, or perhaps a contemporary version of Jean Pierre Melville's Le Samorai. It's a remarkably tangy slice of pulp fiction, alternately baiting genre fans with subversive aesthetic choices, (costume, music, props) and then delivering diamond-making sequences of tension that pay off bone-shattering moments of violence. Ryan Gosling seems to pose rather than act throughout the film as a future icon of criminal, masculine cool (like Alain Delon under Melville's direction), but that shouldn't be taken as a criticism. It's just one more deliberate choice made by a director in full command of the medium, and the visually haunting sequence where The Driver dons a rubber mask to stalk his prey seems - coupled with the so-on-the-nose-it's-subtle-okay-no-it's-not-it's-on-the-nose refrain of the soundtrack "real human being, and a real hero," - to (ahem) drive that home. You get all that plus Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as the best cinema baddies in a beat. Think Ima go again.

Couple other quick crime film catch ups. I really enjoyed Daniel Monzon's Cell 211 - adapted from a novel by Francisco Perez Gandul - about a guard trapped inside a deadly prison riot - wasted no time plunging us into the plot. At 20 minutes in, we'd already gone through several twists and it occurred to me that in a typical American movie we probably wouldn't have even been inside the prison by that time - a great argument for the slicing of needless exposition. Also finally got to see Jeffrey Goodman's The Last Lullaby with Tom Sizemore playing Max Allan Collins's go-to hitman. Low-low budget is evident in a few shots and details, but a smart script by Collins and Peter Biegen and a really fantastic performance by Sizemore make this one well worth checking out. Seriously, next time you need to cast a world-weary bad man unable to completely ditch his soul, I nominate Tommy Boy, (I'd put this performance up against George Clooney's in The American or Syriana any day.)

Debauchercon

2011-09-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

Goodness, what a night. Frank Bill threw a helluva party for his Crimes in Southern Indiana book launch last night. The back patio area of Beef O'Brady's in Corydon, IN. was packed with folks who'd come in from miles away to states away - Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky. Arlston's books sold out of Mr. Bill's stash before the event even got underway. Once the damn thing started though, it never let up. Rod Wiethop kicked things off with a brief reading from his afterward to the Noir at the Bar anthology and I read Amateurs from Crime Factory: The First Shift. Kyle Minor read an excerpt from The Sexual Lives of Missionaries and Scott Phillips from The Adjustment. Donald Ray Pollock read this flash piece called Life and Frank tapped into The Need. Matthew McBride read Big Darlene, the Sex Machine from the forthcoming Beat to a Pulp: Round Two, and Aaron Michael Morales closed the evening with Rainbow from Drowning Tucson.

Folks spent another hour or more socializing and I got the opportunity to say catch up with Richard Thomas and Stacia Decker as well as meet some badass folks like Chad Eagleton, Chris Deal, Matthew C. Funk, David James Keaton and Crimespree magazine's Tim Hennessey, (who was subjected to me and Scott as probably the most unruly, unfocused interview subjects ever. I feel bad about that. We're gonna catch up at Waffle Hut in a couple hours to see if we can't make it up to him.) I was also pleased to meet Robb Olson and Livius Nedin of the Booked podcast - go check them the hell out. I've really enjoyed their interviews with folks like Anthony Neil Smith, Nik Korpon, Senor Thomas, Stephen Graham Jones and Craig Clevenger (as well as many contributors to the Warmed & Bound anthology).

The evening was kinda like the biggest, baddest N@B evening yet and has got me primed for Wednesday's event with Duane Swierczynski, Hilary Davidson, John Rector, Glenn Gray and probably a lot more just-arrived literary jackoffs, (Greg Bardsley, DH Dublin, Bryon Quertermous) and previous N@B participants like Cameron Ashley, Laura Benedict, Brickhouse McBride, Josh Stallings and Holly O'Neill West (alright, those last two belong to the L.A. veterans chapter). Who knows, we may even see late arrivals from folks who opted to go to the library event featuring Reed Farrel Coleman, Megan Abbott, Christa Faust, Steve Hamilton, Lisa Lutz, SJ Rozan, Peter Spiegelman, Katie Estill and uh, Daniel Woodrell.

Whew. Taking lotsa vitamins.

Where's the Beef?

2011-09-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Soooo groggy. My poor, feeble body-clock has me hung-over, but I am back from the desert. Had a good time in Los Angeles with Scott Phillips - great to hang a bit with Alison Quinn, Sara Gran, Jordan Harper, Eric Beetner and Stephen Blackmoore. I remember thinking that I was sitting at a table with two guys with the best titles ever for short stories - Ten Thousand Gallons of Infected Saliva and Like That Japanese Chick What Broke Up Van Halen, (both incidentally, from the same anthology - Uncage Me edited by Jen Jordan, pick that shit up if ye aint already). Now for three hours of rest and it's back on the road tomorrow to Corydon, IN. Scott and I will be reading along with Kyle Minor, Matthew McBride, Rod Wiethop and some dude called Donald Ray Pollock at Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana party. Kinda love the name of the place we're at too - Beef O'Brady's. Thinks I'll read my story Amateurs from the brand new Crime Factory antho which will be available at the event!

This morning I'm trying to make a comparison between Dave Zeltserman's A Killer's Essence and the Tom Hanks cop and dog buddy movie Turner & Hooch sound complimentary over at Ransom Notes. Lemme know how I did.

Next week, it's N@B on Wednesday night at 8pm at Meshuggah Cafe. I see crazy times listed on the FaceBook and that's my fault, I suppose. I suck at the FaceBook, but it's 8pm and methinks it'll go late. Duane Swierczynski, Hilary Davidson, John Rector, Glenn Gray and probably a few other folks as they trickle into town. Can not wait.

On the LA trip I finally got a chance to read Roger Smith's fantastic Dust Devils (had no idea Disaster Zondi would be back in this one!) and Simon Logan's gloriously grimy Katja From the Punk Band. Get your international crime flavoring vitamins. They're good for you. Nicolas Winding Refn's James Sallis adaptation, Drive is out next Friday when I'll be hip deep in Bouchercon, but that will be a priority to catch up on.

Mostly

2011-09-06T06:34:00.000-07:00

Oky doke, so yesterday I was working one of the day jobs and saw a complete stranger walk through the front door with Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana under his arm. Said he's just seen it in the window at Subterranean Books and it looked interesting. Weird feeling, that. Why just last week over at Ransom Notes I was bringing that particular books some attention. Perhaps unnecessarily. You’ve been to this here blog once or twice, you’ve probably seen mention of Mr. Bill. In case you aint, he’s good. You should check out his book. (Actually, as good as the collection is, I’m eager for the world to get a taste of Donnybrook his novel due out in 2012 – I love me some Donnybrook and so will you). Anyhow, at said Mystery Blog post I tossed off a reference to another brand new book – Mostly Redneck by Rusty Barnes and though it really deserves a post of its own, I wasn’t going to be able to wrangle it much further into the spotlight on the mystery blog. Which is not to say there aint crime involved, there is – plenty – just not consistently enough to justify o’re there.

But here at the Hardboiled Wonderland we eat that shit up with a wooden spoon. I interviewed Kyle Minor a long while back and he made this observation about crime writing - Literature is all about our crimes, isn’t it? Sometimes they’re big, like murder, and sometimes they’re smaller, like telling a lie for personal gain. But those are the places where literature is situated – where a wrench is thrown in the progress of social nicety, and social nicety is replaced by the human impulse for retribution, and we get a chance to see what’s beneath the surfaces we’ve all been making out of our pretendings. – Right on, Minor. That’s what I’m talking ‘bout. Barnes writes the kind of economically abused and disenfranchised American characters who's wild passions don't often couple with expansive imaginations that can realistically conjure a life outside the dead-end one they're currently inhabiting. They're dangerous when boxed in and the books is a chronicle of so many ways to trap a human being, I'm not sure what's left. You can visit Rusty's world at Fried Chicken and Coffee.

A couple weeks back Brian Lindenmuth posted his list of the best noirs of the the last ten years or so at the Mulholland Books site. Good list that included some surprises, one of which was Matthew F. Jones's Boot Tracks. Just so happened I was reading Mr. Jones's A Single Shot at the time and ready to put more from him on my reading list. Today, at Ransom Notes I'm talking about A Single Shot as well as Johnny Shaw's debut Dove Season, (looking forward to meeting Shaw at N@B next week at N@B).

Speaking of which. Oh my gawsh, it's gonna be wild. Duane Swierczynski, Hilary Davidson, Glenn Gray and John Rector are ready to put some baaaaad ideas in your minds and I have a feeling the evening will spiral from there and turn into a marathon of human wreckage. Of course, drinks will be available to soothe the tailspin, as will books! I'm gonna make sure more Noir at the Bar anthologies are ordered and I suspect that Crime Factory antho will be floating around. I believe Cameron Ashley will be in attendance that night, so ask the hell him.

This morning, I'm heading out to Los Angeles with Scott Phillips to pitch our wares to the TeeVees and who knows, maybe give those N@B upstarts, Beetner, Blackmoore and Calcagno a kick in the pants. Hmmm, who else do I know in the city of fallen angels? Brace yourself, L.A. When we return at the end of the week it's straight out to Corydon, IN. for Frank's book release party where we'll read along with Kyle, Donald Ray Pollock, Matthew McBride and Rod Wiethop (or Norman if you prefer). I'm wore the fuck out just thinking about the next two weeks. For my plane trips I'm taking Roger Smith's Dust Devils and Simon Logan's Katja From the Punk Band.

See you on the other side.

Git(some)'Mo

2011-08-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

Multiple weeks for the Noir at the Bar anthology on the St. Louis Independent Book Store Alliance best seller list - fuck yes! Thanks everybody. N@B badass Chris La Tray is telling the story behind his contribution to the anthology - Vampires are Pussies - right here. Go read the hell outta that.

You want more? Yeah, you do. That's why D*CKED is now here. The cranky, rattling, colic-y brain-child of Greg Bardsley and Kieran Shea (okay, my name's on there too) has finally busted outta the cellar, stolen a car, picked up a half-dozen runaway hitchhikers, and was last seen shooting rocket-propelled grenades at bunnies out the window while tearing ass for a horizon near you. It's out in the world now and you'll just have to deal with it. Not bad for a fictional character with no pulse, no?

You've heard the pitch right? We asked a handful of creative types to let their twisted inner fabulists off the leash and do a little free association with the name Dick Cheney. Got a bunch of wild ideas including several that reoccurred in variations (Dick in pop-culture, Dick as vampire or other mythological creature, Dick's correspondence, Dick's sexy secrets etc.) Who came to play? Patricia Abbott, Cameron Ashley, Eric Beetner, Tony Black, Ken Bruen, Jimmy Callaway, Rachel Canon, Hilary Davidson, Jason Duke, Bill Fitzhugh, Matthew C. Funk, Harry Hunsicker, Nancy Lee Philcox, Scott Phillips, Keith Rawson, Mark Richardson, Al Riske, Marcus Sakey and Steve Weddle. Plus, our wordless contributor, artist Owen Smith delivers the goods via the front cover which is worth the measly $9.99 to hold the object in your hands... Yeah, come to think of it, I'm going to order an extra copy just to rip the cover off and frame that shit.

Really, really proud of the fantastic collection of pulp covers that I'm piling in behind these days. Awaiting the Crime Factory anthology with... (breaths into hand)... baited breath.

Jacked Up

2011-08-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

I had read some things on the internet after my last few books, saying that I had gone “soft.” And also, I’d been reading interviews with some of the younger crime writers out there, who are jacked up on what they’re doing and are full of piss and vinegar, as all writers should be. I’m the competitive type, no question. So with The Cut, I guess I’m saying, I’m still here. I get jacked up, too.

From my interview with George Pelecanos at Ransom Notes.

This Gun For Hire: Roger Donaldson

2011-08-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

Journeymen, craftsmen and artisans in general hold a rare warm ember in my coal-hard-dark heart. The guys and gals out there doin it for hire, honing their skills over time and with constant, repetitive motion leaving behind a body of work often unappreciated in their own time because it was dismissed as populist, mass media, common - whatever pejorative the snobbish jack-offs of the day assign to work that's eager to please and find an audience.

By necessity, there's a lot of throw-away items in their catalog, but once in a while I like to take a moment to consider them, and today belongs to Roger Donaldson. That's right, the director of Cocktail and The World's Fastest Indian is finally getting his due at the HBW, though neither of those films are making my top-five. And neither are some decent ones like The Bounty, (when you're telling ol' timey seafare - you can not skimp on the simple pleasures of abundant nudity - something Donaldson knows) Cadillac Man and Thirteen Days (yeah, Roger helps Costner stay out of his own way like I really think Kevin'd like to if more producers and directors would only let him, plus Bruce Greenwood as John Kennedy? I liked it.) But, we're not gonna dwell on turdbags like The Recruit or Dante's Peak either.

Roger Donaldson Top Five:

White Sands - Honestly, I haven't seen this movie since it was new nearly twenty years ago. Needless to say my tastes have changed some, but some things that haven't like my enjoyment of Mickey Rourke doing damn near anything on screen, my love of crime stories and the strength of the cast - Willem Dafoe, Samuel L. Jackson, M. Emmett Walsh (plus Fred Thompson and Mimi Rogers just kinda hanging around the background). Seem to recall the film's immediate critical dismissing and panning, and true '92 saw some pretty sweet crime flicks (Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Bad Lieutenant, Romper Stomper), but remove yourself twenty years and ask yourself, would you rather put this one on now or the big hits of the day like Lethal Weapon 3 or Passenger 57?

Species - Somewhere in the nineties, John Carpenter became a fixture of the eighties (hey, I'll still see anything with his name on it, but for one reason or another, his presence faded somewhere after Memoirs of an Invisible Man). Anyhow, my feeling is that somebody looked up one day and said, where the fuck did Carpenter go? And commissioned a script that would have it all - a hot alien, tough guys, lotsa nudity, blood, sex, dubious science and hey, how about a kick-ass cast? What's Ben Kingsley doing next week? Book him. How about Alfred Molina? No, he only thinks he's busy. Tell him that in this one he'll get tongue-kissed to death by a hot naked chick. Yeah, thought so. Alright, we need Forrest Whittaker and Michael Madsen too, right? Dumb? Yeah, but good, goofy fun.

The Getaway - What this movie had going against it - the legacy of Steve McQueen and Sam Peckinpah's original blood and dust classic. What this movie had going for it? Blood. Dust. The hardboiled classic by Jim Thompson, (though, not as much in either film as I'd like to see) and Alec Baldwin before his hyper-masculinity was purposely funny. Plus, James Woods, Michael Madsen, David Morse, Jennifer Tilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kim Basinger - far less shy and even a better actress than Ali MacGraw for support. Nothin fancy, just bang for your buck and slick too. I'd take Peckinpah's over this one in a heartbeat, but hey, I enjoyed this plenty.

The Bank Job - Far more than the sum of it's parts. Not really sure why it worked as well as it did. Not a show-stopping heist flick, not a particularly street-wise gangster epic, not a kick-ass action spectacular and not a richly-detailed dramatic period piece either. Smarter and funnier too than I had any expectations for - a marketing snafu or puzzle, I suspect. Somehow, less than the top of any of it's respective genres, it managed to be competent at each and fill an unlikely void in the flavor spectrum. Not a hard way to spend an afternoon at all.

No Way Out - The only truly excellent film on the list. You think I'm kidding, don't you? I'm not. Love this film. Love this film. Don't ever like Kevin Costner? Fuck you. This one is pure plot, just a constructed in reverse puzzler that ticks like a clock, and you say the characters are thin? Well, aren't they always in this type of fare? But movie stars (as opposed to capital 'A' actors) are just audience surrogates, inviting us to fill in the sketch on the screen with our own experience, and Costner never did it so well. This one is the standard bearer for thriller film-making, and I'm not ashamed to confess falling hard for every twist, feeling every turn of the ratchet in my nuts and yeah, getting my pulse into dangerous territory.

BS

2011-08-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

So, somehow I deleted this post and am now half-assing a re-write... Which shouldn't be too hard because it was good, happy shit to say - especially about Noir at the Bar - the book - debuting at number five on the Best Seller List - the St. Louis Independent Book Store Alliance best seller list, that is, but hey, when you're only available in one place in the entire world???? You take what you can get.

Let's see, I also mentioned a little teaser about the next N@B event which will be 8pm Wednesday, September 14 at Meshuggah Cafe with some pre-Bouchercon stuffs goin' on. Said something about Keith Rawson's new short story eCollection from Snubnose Press The Chaos We Know, mentioned John Hornor Jacobs' eCollection, Fierce As the Grave, Richard Thomas and Kyle Minor in the Warmed & Bound anthology and Frank Bill in the September issue of Playboy.

Also, at Ransom Notes, I'm talking up James Sallis's double whammy of The Killer is Dying and the movie Drive, and I've just picked up One Single Shot by Matthew F. Jones (with a foreword by none other than Daniel Woodrell) and I think it's gonna leave a mark.

Talk about leaving a mark, put Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace on thine Netflix que quick-like. I did after seeing it recommended by Ray Banks and Allan Guthrie. I'll take their next suggestions too. My gawsh it were a muck-up of a crime flick. Just a cluster-fuck of emotions, at once hilarious and horrifying in a mix I've never quite experienced before. Wheatley's got another one coming - Kill List, and I'll be first in line for that one, bet yur ass.

Innes & Out

2011-08-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Ray Banks has just pulled off one of the great feats of crime fiction in my eyes - successfully capped a PI series. With Beast of Burden, he's brought Cal Innes to a conclusion that in retrospect seems inevitable without ever losing my investment along the way. Over at Ransom Notes, he's listing his personal favorite short series, but here at the Hardboiled Wonderland he's giving us a peak inside his head.

It's British in there. It's more than a little intimidating too. Dude's wicked smart and funny to boot. He should be huge. He still might be. Seriously, if people bought books in a just universe, James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks would be his pool boys. If you like your crime gritty and nitty and dangerous, get the hell around to reading Ray Banks.

Can you briefly relay the story of the end of your croupier career and the beginning of the writing one? Did the one follow the other immediately?

The two had no connection whatsoever, despite what you may have read. I left the casino because I was overworked, underpaid and the armed robbery brought it home how little staff safety meant to the organisation. The writing career, such as it was, didn't start until a year or so later, and was chiefly a way of keeping myself sane when I was unemployed. I'd tried writing books before I went to Manchester, but they were just drunken pseudo-Palahniuk rubbish. I only started having some success when I made a point of subbing to places that edited like Handheld Crime, Hardluck Stories and Thrilling Detective. Once I started learning, that was when I started to think that maybe I had a shot at this.

How heavily did The Big Blind draw on your personal experiences?

Well, Les Beale was a composite of a lot of different punters I knew. The casino staff were also composites of various people I knew at the time, too. All the casinos mentioned in the book are based on real Manchester and Salford casinos, but with the names and layouts changed slightly. As for the double-glazing salesman stuff, a lot of the sales talk was taken from my time on the doors and listening to salesmen. So yeah, it was reasonably autobiographical.

How much do you stick to the "write what you know" advice?

I don't take it as literally as some people. I mean, obviously I use whatever personal experiences I feel are apt for a particular scene or book, but it doesn't have to be as autobiographical as the advice would suggest. Yes, I've written books about gamblers, and I'm writing one about a casino robbery at the moment, but if I purely wrote what I knew, I wouldn't have written the Innes novels. I mean, what do I know about stroke-related aphasia, prison or private investigation? I think that particular maxim needs to be taken as a general "write with emotional integrity" maxim.

How intent on writing a series character were you with Innes?

Completely intent, if the publishers would let me. I had things I wanted to explore. As it turned out, both UK and US publishers were quick to turn a two-book deal into four, so I had some wriggle-room. It was never going to be a long-running series, though. It couldn't be, could it? Not with Innes getting battered like that. In my head, it was originally five books, with the Scottish part of Beast of Burden as its own novel, but in the end the Declan stuff fitted better with the overall concerns of Beast of Burden, so I folded it into that book.

Yeah, I really respond to those short-series characters who leave everything on the page. Gotta keep a good sense of the stakes right? Do you have any more series characters coming?

That's exactly it. The longer the series, the less likely something awful is going to happen. It reminds me of that quote I posted recently from an NYT article about Breaking Bad - "The depravities of leading men in TV dramas traditionally don't leave permanent scars". And that's how I see it. A series should essentially be a mini-series, not an ongoing soap opera, and anything that happens in that series should have lasting consequences. You should pick up a new book in the series not knowing if something is going to blow that series' world apart. That doesn't exactly fit with a traditional idea of what a series is, though.

But yeah, I always saw Farrell and Cobb as series characters in a kind of Hap and Leonard, Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones kind of way. I don't know how many books as yet, but I do have a last one in mind.

Beast of Burden came out in UK a couple years ago, why did we have to wait so long in the colonies and what else are we behind on?

When the deal was done I think there was a year in between, and because Polygon published in March and HMH in September, it actually turned into 18 months. The US wasn't that far behind when you look at it like that, but it has been odd seeing the reaction to something I wrote almost two years ago. And you've got to hand it to HMH - they've put out some lovely-looking hardbacks. As for anything else, I think the only things the US may have missed out on are the two novellas, Gun and California, but I'm working on putting that right. I've been storing books in the meantime. Expect a flurry of books coming your way soon.

I've been reading a lot of books lately that would've benefitted immensely from having their page-count halved. Gun and California are great examples of why I love novellas - just right to the point story-telling that doesn't skimp on the emotional impact. Do you think they're easier to write stamina-wise or is it harder to pull of a successful story that length?

My tendency is to write short anyway, so they're much easier to write. I mean, thinking about it, a 15-30k novella is about a third of a novel, and so finding a natural arc is actually quite straightforward. And some ideas don't scream out to be novels, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be written. It's nice to have a halfway point between novel and short story. The actual writing of them is exactly the same - outlined, drafted, retro-outlined, drafted again etc. It just takes less time.

Have you written screenplays before?

Quite a few, as it turns out. I have a horror/thriller script doing the rounds at the moment about a stag party who fall prey to a bunch of itinerant Highland cannibals, there was another horror thing about a haunted oil refinery on Canvey Island, and I'm currently messing around with another draft of a Savage Night adaptation. Guthrie's, not Thompson's. Again, I have a list of stories I want to get out there, but I have to have to be able to write 'em first.

How'd you come to write and publish Wolf Tickets (the serialized novel spanning three issues of Needle magazine)?

I originally wrote Wolf Tickets as a collaboration with a well-known Irish crime writer back in 2005 or thereabouts, but for contractual reasons he couldn't continue with it beyond the first chapter. He gave me his blessing to continue with the book and I wrote it in about a month, whereupon it sat on my hard drive doing bugger all for five years. I don't even think we put it out to publishers. Not because it was a bad book - if I thought that, it would've stayed where it was, along with all the other failures - but because it wasn't particularly marketable. The main characters were a dog-killer and a shoplifter, and those were probably their least repellent traits. There was an inordinate amount of swearing and slang that wouldn't be heard outside of Tyneside. It was around 60k too, so it was too short for most publishers.

But when I heard that Needle were looking for longer pieces to run, I asked them if they'd be willing to look at Wolf Tickets as a three-parter. It was partly pure advertising on my part - I didn't have anything new coming out in 2011 other than a novella and the US edition of Beast of Burden, and I thought a serial might be a fun way to get my name out there. Plus, I knew that Weddle and JHJ wouldn't care about the concerns I've just mentioned - they're better men than that. So I did a page-one rewrite and they seemed to like it. Then they published it and other people seemed to agree with them. For me, I got to be in one of the best crime print mags I've ever read, so it was win-win.

Do you get worried notes about impenetrable Brit-slang in your work from US editors?

Is it impenetrable?

My US editors have been brilliant about the slang - I think if it had been a problem, they wouldn't have bought the books in the first place. In fact the only thing they did ask me to change was the title of the second Innes. "Donkey Punch" is a phrase with unsavoury connotations, and I was more than happy to change it, given that it didn't have much to do with boxing.

No, certainly not impenetrable, but I think it goes a bit beyond an accent... A lot of my favorite American crime writers seem to have a larger international following than domestic, do you have any sense as to the geographical appeal of your work?

I hear more from American readers than Brits, but I think the books have a higher profile in the US. The Big Blind was also published in the US first, so that might've had something to do with it. Plus, a majority of the websites I've written stories for have been American. I think there are small pockets of appreciation in the UK, and I've had some nice reviews, but I don't tend to hear very much from my readers, so it's difficult to tell. I know there have been Italian and Polish editions of Saturday's Child, so there's obviously some kind of market abroad. Other than all that, I haven't a clue.

You said that The Big Blind wasn't conceived as a crime novel, what's your attraction to crime writing?

Yeah, I said that before I knew what a crime novel could be. I thought I was being literary because I was splattering angst all over the page, and I thought crime novels were all about solving crimes rather than committing them. I swiftly learned that crime fiction was more than the police procedurals and thrillers that make up the bestseller lists. Crime fiction is realist drama, it's social fiction with the discipline of a plot. It features human beings at the extremes of emotion and morality. It can focus on marginalised members of society as well as those who run it. It delves into the psychology - normal or otherwise - of both the state and the citizen. A crime novel can be both high and low culture, a novel of ideas or tabloid dreck. That's why I love it - the scope and the potential.

Did you study writing formally?

Nope. And I wouldn't, unless I was going to teach it. Don't see the point otherwise.

Would you like to teach? If so, what do you think you could impart?

I don't think so. I've had the opportunity to teach before, and I've said no. This is a tough one, because I know writers who teach and who are brilliant at it. I mean, these guys can get pretty much anyone's work up to a publishable standard. But I can't help but feel that "publishable" shouldn't be the goal here. The bookstores of the world are yawning with "publishable". It keeps those guys in work, and I'm happy for them, but I don't know that I'd be comfortable with it. I just wouldn't know what to say to people. Read better?

Help me read better then. What are you looking for in a book?

An authentic and compelling voice. Clarity of thought and description. Brevity of action. Wit and originality. I want to see recognisable human beings as characters, and I want to see those characters treated with emotional integrity. There should also be the ambition to create something beyond entertainment, but also the knowledge that entertainment is a narrative necessity. A great book might not have all of these things, but it should have as many as possible. And when you see something that hits one of those marks, you should take time to see how it was done.

Do you re-read many books?

Everything I own, I re-read, otherwise there's no point in owning 'em. The only ones I can think of that I re-read on an annual basis would be Ted Lewis' GBH, Don Herron's Willeford bio, something by Richard Yates and Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn. Everything else gets read when I need specific inspiration.

Why aren't you huge?

Loads of reasons. The Innes books are PI fiction, which is an extremely unfashionable sub-genre. None of my characters are particularly sympathetic, and Innes is neither a conventional hero, nor is he cool enough to be a successful anti-hero. My plots aren't exactly thrill-rides, there are no big, explosive set-pieces, and the violence is anything but slick. Then there's the "bad language", both in terms of swearing and slang, which apparently offends and befuddles readers respectively. Oh, and I don't subscribe to the kind of gonzo nihilism that defines your average bestselling "cult" authors. Finally, there's always the possibility - and a very strong one at that - that the books just aren't good enough or universal enough to connect with a large mainstream audience. That's okay, though. I knew I'd be a tough sell.

Is that basically your pitch letter then?

Yup. I'd also like to add that I'm a terrible self-promoter with questionable personal hygiene.

Momentous Occasion

2011-08-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

The play-by-play...

Saturday night in St. Louis saw one of my favorite N@B events yet. The readers were fantastic as always, but it held a couple of special distinctions to me - one, it was the first St. Louis event for Scott Phillips' Og-tastic new book, The Adjustment. Yeah, since we've been doing this series, he's had Rut and Rum, Sodomy and False Eyelashes released, but this one holds an extra-special place in my heart. And two, it was the public introduction to our labor of love - Noir at the Bar, the book! It was great to have so many close friends and contributors on hand for the event. I got mine signed by Matt Kindt, David Cirillo, Matthew McBride, Scott Phillips and Laura Benedict (who stopped by before the event, but unfortunately couldn't stay - she rocks).

And though the contributions to the book are a monument to the event's past, the excitement shared for it points only to the future. If you count folks that've participated more than once, (myself, Scott, Anthony Neil Smith, Frank Bill), add the two that got away (for time-crunch reasons - Theresa Schwegel and Tim Lane) plus those who've participated since - Aaron Michael Morales, Fred Venturini, John Hornor Jacobs, Jane Bradley and Jesus Angel Garcia - shit, we'd be half-way to another collection already. Hmmmm. Let's see if we can't recoup our money and raise some funds and awareness for Subterranean Books with this first one, for now.

Scott kicked off the evening with a look into the head space of my favorite sociopath Wayne Ogden and David Cirillo read a novel excerpt featuring bad English accents, nudity, public disturbance and a scene that reminded me of nothing so much as the restaurant scene from John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Jane Bradley made everybody really uncomfortable with a reading from her fantastic book You Believers (really - go read the shit out this one. I'm picking up one of her short story collections next - either Power Lines or the one Kyle Minor supposedly told her should just be called Sex - Are We Lucky Yet?). Jesus Angel Garcia put the lights out with his megaphone preacher routine from badbadbad and I gotta say, my admiration for that guy and his hustling is just growing constantly. 9,000 miles into his self-funded book tour and he looked fresh and full of energy. WTF? I look like hammered shit three days into a work-week. That guy deserves any and all success that finds him.

I'd like to point your attention to a couple spots of interest on the N@B front - Laura Benedict is giving away three copies of the book on her blog Notes From the Handbasket with a cool little contest, (nothin hard) and David Abrams featured the anthology with a little note from me on his excellent literature blog The Quivering Pen. Thanks ere'buddy. Scott also mad this ridiculously fun trailer for the book. I like watching it on a repeating loop and have been humming that song non-stop for a week now.

Over at Ransom Notes it's Don Winslow's The Gentleman's Hour stirring thoughtsnshit. Plus, I make passing mention of Urban Waite, who it turns out has his story Nobody Heard a Thing the Night the Chicken Died posted at Design Observer. Checkerout.

Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting

2011-08-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

TONIGHT ONLY!!!

See The Sights! Smell The Scents! Taste The Flavor of NOIR AT THE BAR with Jesus Angel Garcia, David Cirillo, Jane Bradley and Scott Phillips! Bring a hankie! Bring some wet wipes! Bring some money! Buy the drinks! Buy the books! Don't buy the bullshit!

For the very first time, our tawdry event's very own chronicle will be available for purchase! History will be made! Whoopie will be made!
Butchery of the English language, social mores and the basic rules of hygeine!

Support your local bookstore, tip your bartender!

Ambrose Pierced

2011-08-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here is my command. Go read The Adjustment by Scott Phillips. Who? You. Especially if you like things nasty, dark and unsentimental with a cutting, but altogether whoopdi-do sense of humor. Most especially if you like to read about assholes being assholish with flare. Here's a good test, you've read Charles Willeford? You liked? You need a Phillips fix. Damn it, I'm laying down gold here. Choice wisdom. Pick up this book already. It's Wayne Ogden's lost year as a civilian in Wichita before re-enlisting to further his career as a pimp and black marketeer in Japan, (oh, please let there be a Wayne in Japan book coming!) Are you sick to shit of the sepia-toned Stephen Ambrose/Tom Brokaw/Tom Hanks-ish Greatest Generation bullshit? You wanna stop the lobotomizing of our national memory? Picketh the fuck up this book. Our fighting Joes were not cardboard saints possessed of a flinty patriotic streak and an outraged moral obligation to fight the Axis of evil. Let's stop the disservice we're doing to our heritage and recognize the inglorious bastards in their number. Wayne Ogden = sonofabitch #1. Gotta love him. I say more about my Wayne, Scott and The Adjustment at Ransom Notes.

And how about Crime Factory 7? Brand new Jordan Harper! First new story not featuring a blond super-genius in a long time. Too long. Also, N@B all-stars Sean Doolittle and Richard Thomas are skulking about with the likes of Pete Risley (did you read Rabid Child? shudder), Nik Korpon, Matthew C. Funk, Don Lafferty, Todd Robinson, Edward A. Grainger, Nathan Cain, Finbarr McCarthy, Mark Richardson, Derek Kelly, James Peak, Frank Wheeler Jr., Guinotte Wise, Andrew Nette, Jon Ashley, David Whish-Wilson, Mitch Tillison and Joelle Charbonneau... Hey, who let the cozy writer in? Also, Chad Eagleton interviews F. Paul Wilson, plus reviews and The Nerd of Noir's double feature. So fork over your free and get to it.

Y'know what else has got a killer lineup? The Velvet anthology Warmed and Bound, that's what. I'm looking at it right now and it's stupid good.

So... You're coming to N@B Saturday August 6, 7pm at Meshuggah Cafe in the Delmar Loop, yes? You're coming to be shocked and titillated by the likes of Senor Phillips, Jesus Angel Garcia, Jane Bradley and David Cirillo, no? You're coming because Noir at the Bar the anthology will be available for the first time, right?!?!

Roly-Poly Fish Heads

2011-07-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

Was great to see everybody who came out to the Donald Ray Pollock event at Subterranean Books last week. I got to introduce him and decided to mostly read directly from Kyle Minor’s review of The Devil All the Time which was a good decision. Afterward, grabbed a drink with Rod, Judy and Matthew McBride and that was a good decision too.

You know what else would be a good decision? Doing what I tell you to, that’s what. How many times have I told you to pick up and read The Sixth Gun by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt now? Mmmm, five or six anyway. Welllll, Imadoitagin. Pick it up. Read it before you watch it on SyFy. Over the weekend came the announcement outta ComiCon that the cable network will be adapting the comic book for television. Am I excited? Hell yeah, I’m excited – that’s a great series and SyFy’s history boasts y’know Battlestar Galactica and… Well, Battlestar Galactica was a good fuckin show. Before the weekend’s announcement I was trying to drum up some adaptation fervor for Brian Hurtt’s latest book Cowboys, a Vertigo Crime one-off , written by Gary Phillips (who’s also got another comic book just out – Angeltown) over at Ransom Notes. I petitioned the likes of Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Spike Lee and Antoine Fuqua, but I haven’t heard back from any of them yet.

I did hear back from one film maker though; Thomas Kaufman who stopped by the HBW with a guest post about writing violence a couple weeks back – a few of you read and appreciated that one. Just dropped a line to lemme know that he’s got a companion piece up at The Prime Time Crime Review.

Tomorrow night I’ll be at Square Books in Oxford, MS for the Megan Abbott - Scott Phillips event for The End of Everything and The Adjustment. Never been to Ol’ Miss, (though I used to live in Arkansas), and I’m looking forward to it. Speaking of Arkansas, I just read the first two issues of Fish-Head – a magazine devoted to people who like hang out under bridges and drink beer…- that I read about on Don Lee’s blog and enjoyed them immensely. They’re published outta Clarksville and speak of many places I know and knew in Fayetteville, Rogers and Eureka Springs, (hell, probably Erik Lundy did too, maybe even John Hornor Jacobs, Tom Franklin, Charles Portis, William Harrison or Daniel Woodrell – all spent their time in Arkansas). My favorite pieces included: How I Almost Wrote Porn for the Mob and Lived to Tell the Tale, Dept. of Strange Sexual Encounters: Case # 216B and Emmett Sudsbury’s Taxicab Confessions. Emmett? You’re ever up in St. Louis, let’s set up a reading.

Somebody else who’s worked as a cab driver that I’d like to rope into one of our events, other than Jack Clark (Nobody’s Angel), is St. Louis’s own Daniel Waugh who’s written at least a couple of books about St. Louis crime – Egan’s Rats and Gangs of St. Louis. Good anecdotal true crime that ought to enhance the St. Louis experience for anybody coming to town for Bouchercon in September.

When I get back from the Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter I’ll be focused on the next N@B event happening Saturday, August 6, 7pm at Meshuggah Café. Scott will be doing his first St. Louis event for The Adjustment, Jane Bradley will make you squirm reading from You Belivers, Jesus Angel Garcia will probably just collapse in exhaustion built up over the past weeks on the road, but hey I’m sure that’ll be entertaining too. David Cirillo will read from his story in Noir at the Bar THE BOOK! (which SHOULD be available for the first time that night!), so it oughtta be…emotional.

On the Way

2011-07-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like those Los Angeles fellas Eric Beetner, Stephen Blackmoore and Aldo Calcagno have pulled off a successful launch for their strain of Noir at the Bar. Last night they were joined by Josh Stallings, Holly West and Duane Swierczynski and apparently nobody died. I'll be following their regress with interest - looks like they're already looking at another event in October. 'Course, they don't have their very own book like St. Louis N@B does! We are now down to the waiting for hardcopies to land and I'm terribly pleased with the book. Just goes to show what you can accomplish when you're surrounded by generous, talented people and you don't give two shits about punctuation or spelling.

Y'know who gets a big fat round of applause for this book tho? Fuckin Jon Bassoff and Matt Kindt, thems who. Bassoff formatted it and pulled some strings for my cherry ass and Kindt designed the shit outta it. Y'know who else gets a big thanks? Our blurbers - Lawrence Block, Duane Swierczynski, Megan Abbott, Todd Robinson, Roger Smith, Tom Piccirilli, Stephen Graham Jones and Sara Gran. Without their cavalier attitudes toward public decency in the information age I would've been without the leverage to wrangle some juicy recommendations outta that prestigious lot.

So, who wants a copy?

Here's what you need to know: this has been put together as N@B's effort to help out our local bookselling heroes at Subterranean Books, which is why they're the only place you can get it. As soon as it's available, I'll make that announcement and you can order one off their website or send me a suitcase full of cash to trade for it. What? You don't order books online? Fine, come on out to a N@B event 'cause you know we'll pimp 'em there. Are you attending Bouchercon in September? Subterranean Books will have a table in the book room and you can make for to purchase it there too. There will be no eBook.

Not good enough? Kiss my ass. Publish your own damn book.

I was hoping to have them available at Subterranean by Wednesday for the Donald Ray Pollock event, but that aint happening. Should be able to put one in your hand Saturday, August 6 at Meshuggah Cafe when we do the whole N@B thing live with Jane Bradley, Jesus Angel Garcia, David Cirillo and Scott Phillips. Show the hell up and getcha one. Also pick up You Believers, badbadbad and The Adjustment while you're at it.

Dr. Pollockian's Monster

2011-07-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

Cruising the Twitters the other day I caught Brian Lindenmuth remarking that his favorite character on Breaking Bad was Jonathan Banks' Mike the PI and having just finished watching season three on DVD, I can find no fault with that choice - a testament to the strength of the writing, acting and production in general that among a heavyweight cast of amazing characters somebody can take a "small" role and make it shine. Myself, I might pick Giancarlo Esposito's Gus Fring. I've been a big fan of Esposito's since I saw him ooze menace in Boaz Yakin's Fresh (back in what '94?) Throw in Dean Norris and Bob Odenkirk's supporting work and geez is it any wonder it's my favorite show on the TVs right now? Gawsh, even Anna Gunn got better, (less irritating) things to do this season - I LOVE that she's throwing herself into the business - it's the reaction I've been waiting for from a compromised spouse for too long (The Shield, The Sopranos, Dexter - had your chances). Back to Banks though, Brian said that Mike the PI recalled to him the character Joe Sarno played by James Caan in Christopher McQuarrie's superb Way of the Gun (speaking of strong character ensembles), and it got me thinking - I just watched Caan in a pretty decent recent crime flick Middle Men (uneven for sure, but I didn't want my two hours back afterward) - and I ought to put together a quick list of my favorite James Caan crime films that aren't y'know, The Godfather. So, here you go in no particular order:

Christopher McQuarrie's Way of the Gun
Michael Mann's Thief
Matt Dillon's City of Ghosts
James Gray's The Yards
Rob Reiner's Misery
honorable mention to Flesh and Bone, The Gambler, The Killer Elite and Bottle Rocket

So... yeah, there's that.

Speaking of good stuffs on TV, I was pleasantly surprised by Southland on DVD. I dunno, ads made it look like the typical craptastic, networkerrific body of the week procedural, but turns out it's a character ensemble working with pretty decent scripts that allow for some of that weird street shit that you want from cop shows while not becoming all about 'solving crimes'. Far from blowing me away, but far better than I was expecting, I'm hoping a second season really solidifies this show.

Well, Jed, you may ask, what is blowing you away these days? To which I'd reply, Pete Dexter's memoir in disguise Spooner and of course, Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time. And you'd say 'well duh' and I'd say 'hey you asked' and you'd say something trite and I'd karate chop you in the neck. Seriously, this is the book of the year far as I can tell, and you have a need to experience it. You can read my review of it at Ransom Notes. St. Louis people, if you don't show up at Subterranean Books next week, July 20 for Mr. Pollock's event, you're dead to me. The rest of you that can't make it here would do well to aim for September 10 in Corydon, IN. where he'll be appearing with Scott Phillips, Kyle Minor and myself for the release of Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana. I see lots of names appearing on the might-be-there list - Matthew McBride, Chad Eagleton, Aaron Michael Morales, Matthew C. Funk, Richard Thomas, Fred Venturini, Cameron Ashley and Daniel O'Shea. That's gonna be a party.

Also, don't forget N@B on August 6, 7pm at Meshuggah Cafe. Scott's new book The Adjustment will be available, as will Noir at the Bar the book! Also, Jesus Angel Garcia with badbadbad, Jane Bradley with You Believers and David Cirillo. What a mix! What an event! What a country!

So, in case you're keeping track, the anthologies you can find me pushing especially hard the rest of the year are Noir at the Bar, D*CKED, Surreal South '11 and Crime Factory - which just got a little mention in PW. Guess whose story they found 'revolting?' Yup, Greg Bardsley's. Can Not Wait. Speaking of the Bards, he and Kieran Shea are working awful hard on D*CKED and even getting me off my substantial ass to contribute (just a little). Anyhow, I re-read Scott Phillips', Hilary Davidson's, Cameron Ashley's, Harry Hunsicker's and Eric Beetner's pieces the other night and really enjoyed them... I dunno, I got to thinking of setting up a special D*CKED at the Bar event for Bouchercon week. Any of you contributor's gonna be in town and wanna do that? Lemme know.

Thomas Kaufman: Guest Post

2011-07-07T16:47:00.000-07:00

I met Thomas Kaufman a year ago when he stopped through St. Louis promoting his first novel, Drink the Tea. We grabbed dinner and talked about our shared enthusiasms – film and crime fiction. I knew Tom was a funny, bright and insightful guy from that one exchange, but when I saw him six months later at NoirCon and heard him discuss Patricia Highsmith film adaptations, I felt retro-actively intimidated. This guy knows his stuff. He's a film maker and novelist who puts half-assed posers like me to shame with his chops. I'm going on a bit about Tom and his second Willis Gidney title, Steal the Show at Ransom Notes, while over here, Tom's got something to say.

Take it away, Tom.

(SPOILER ALERT: If you've never seen PSYCHO, this may ruin some of the surprises for you.)

Something that I love about the internet is the democratization of music, video, and writing. Anyone can attain a global audience, especially if they create something noteworthy. There's a lot of stuff out there, and some of it is extraordinary.

And the rest of it? Ordinary.

Or worse.

Now, I love noir fiction. Charles Willeford is a favorite author. So is Horace McCoy, David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, and Donald Westlake (especially when he wrote as Richard Stark). There are many others. If you want to write noir, you look to the greats, you sample what's been done.

When I read noir fiction online, what I usually come across is a bloodbath. And while it's true that you can't have noir without violence, the stuff I come across reads the crime version of a soft-core pornography.

Seriously. Substitute the sex for violence, and what've you got? It seems you're only a paragraph or two into some short story and already the hero is ~~humping~~ attacking someone, killing them in some graphic way. And while the writers may be talented, the effect is a let-down.

Why is that? In my opinion, it's because there's no build-up. Just like the sex act, anticipation is –nearly – everything.

The shower scene in Psycho is a great example.

Bloody, violent, swift, merciless. But it's also a release of tension that began when the movie started thirty minutes ago. So while the shower scene is a brilliant use of direction, camera work, and montage, it would just be a series of shots if it weren't for what came before: the theft of the money, the suspicious cop, the strange conversation with Norman Bates, the decision to return the money, the cleansing shower. These elements keep building and building tension in the audience.

And what does Hitchcock do after this shower sequence? He takes the pacing way down. The shots of Norman Bates cleaning up after the murder are of long duration (as opposed to the fast editing and quick shots during the shower scene). Hitchcock is telling the audience to calm down, relax. In other words, he's getting them ready for the next shocker.

Let's face it, folks, this is foreplay. And sex without foreplay is rarely any fun. Let's take a look at the second murder in Psycho, when the private eye Arbogast dies:

Do you see what Hitchcock is doing here? He's building the anticipation. The shots of the detective going up the stairs, the door opening a crack, the light spilling through, leading to a high angle of the killer rushing at the victim.

Notice something else? When the detective is at the bottom of the stairs and the killer is going to finish him off, Hitchcock frames the knife as it comes up, into the frame.

By doing this, Hitchcock is emphasizing the anticipation of the knife coming down. And that, folks, is great direction.

(It's not that different from music: listen to the end of a Beethoven Symphony, say the last 60 seconds. What would it sound like if he'd begun the symphony that way? Like a bad dream. Beethoven spends his time wisely, guiding the listener and building to that final 60 seconds. Musical foreplay, leading to a great climax.)

Donald Westlake's series about Parker may sometimes begin in the middle of the action. I can think of at least two books that start with Parker killing someone. But in a typical Parker story, the violence is implied. Westlake uses this to create tension. Just now I'm finishing The Green Eagle Score just one of the many Parker books I've enjoyed reading over and over. I'm near the end, and so far Parker hasn't even swatted a fly.

So why is the book suspenseful? Because of the people and the situations Westlake puts them in. We know Parker can be violent. We can see trouble ahead. In other words, you need to build towards the violence. The flipside is, if you have one violent act after another after another, you could wind up with something like this:

Great for humor, but for suspense? Not so much.

Here's one last observation: before you kill off a character, please go to the trouble of bringing her/him to life in the mind of the reader. Psycho stunned people because Hitchcock had the audacity to kill off the lead character (and the only "name" star of the film) within the first thirty minutes. We have her point of view up to her death, Hitchcock carefully brought her to life in the minds of the audience before she got sliced to ribbons – that's one of the reasons the shower sequence is so powerful.

So go ahead. Shoot, stab, and garrote to your heart's content. Just remember the build-up.

The End Is Nigh

2011-07-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

Can't say the title of the new Megan Abbott book, The End of Everything, without cuing that Chris Isaak song in my head. Come to think of it, they sorta go nicely together - both are melancholy and haunting, shimmery summer mirages that come on sweet and twist something in your gut before they're through. Anyway, I'm talking about Ms. Abbott's latest over at Ransom Notes. Planning on hitting Square Books in Oxford, MS. on July 27 for Megan's event, and I'll be in Corydon, IN. September 10 for Frank Bill's event with the Donald and company. I've also just found out about a Surreal South shindig at SIUC in Illinois hosted by the Benedicts in October... hmmm, wonder if John Hornor Jacobs will be there? Have you checked out Senor Jacobs' blog Bastardized Version lately? He's doing a new interview series called Why I'm Badass. So far he's spoke at Daniel O'Shea and Julie Summerell Teat. Entertaining format, yup.

Anybody seen or know interesting shit about (that other Arkansas guy) Jeff Nichols' latest Take Shelter with Michael Shannon? If you saw his feature debut with the same star Shotgun Stories, then you, like me are excited about this one based on pedigree alone. How about Martha Marcy May Marlene? John Hawkes as a creepy-ass cult leader? Sold. Speaking of creepy, the usually so Peter Stormare leads in Small Town Murder Songs which looks terrific and Monte Hellman's The Road to Nowhere looks like it could be something good featuring songs by, no not Ozzy Osbourne, but Craig McDonald favorite, Tom Russell.

I got nothin.

I Saw the Devil All the Time

2011-06-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Finally caught up to Jee-woon Kim's I Saw the Devil this week. Really did like it, but y'know, for once, I probably could've done without a lot of the graphic brutality. Come to think of it, I turned off Steven Kastrissios's The Horseman because I just didn't wanna look at it. I dunno, just wasn't rooted deeply enough in any emotional soil to sustain the weight of the onscreen violence. And while I did finish Devil and think it's certainly one of the best serial-killer movies I've seen, there just came points where I thought, "this feels gratuitous and it's not adding anything worthwhile to the picture." I found myself thinking back to Eli Roth's Hostel, a far less elegant film that matches the onscreen awfulness pound for pound, but where I loved it in Hostel (you read that right - I loved Hostel and don't make me defend my fondness for Hostel II, I'll do it), I merely liked Devil. Apples and Oranges you might say and I'd counter with Oranges and Tangerines. We should talk.

What I loved loved loved though? Donal Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time. I'll be brief 'cause I'm gonna cover it elsewhere in the blogosphere soon, but if anything is gonna top this one for book of the year, it's not on my radar. You know what is on my radar though? Rusty Barnes' collection of short stories Mostly Redneck. Man, if you likes you some hardcrabble, blue-collar Americana, (and if you don't why the hell are you reading this blog?) you've got to check this one out. It won't be available till summer's end, but I'll remind you then. Just save that name and save some money to purchase it when the time comes. (And yeah, cat's-out Pollock will be at Frank Bill's book release in Corydon, IN. on September 10 along with Scott Phillips, Kyle Minor and lil''ol me, but you can catch him in St. Louis at Subterranean Books July 20.)

I was getting pretty tired of The Nerd of Noir reviewing Ray Banks titles that I couldn't get my hands on in the USofA and wrote The Saturday Boy hisself to bitch about it, ('cause you know, he doesn't want anybody not living on the island to be able to read it - must've been my reasoning) and he suggested The Book Depository, which I checked out. A UK online retailer that charges 0 shipping all the time. So, yeah, I ordered his novellas Gun and California and received em by post Monday and Tuesday. Then Wednesday I received Needle #4 featuring part two of Banks' Wolf Tickets, so thanks, I'm full up for that blendashit for another week or so. Thinkin' I'll hit up the Book Depo for summat Allan Guthrie next.

Oh, and if you've read the latest Needle and taken in Daniel O'Shea's The Bard's Confession and Dog's Breakfast by Cameron Ashley - just think how awesome it'd been to have caught them reading it live at N@B last October, (okay, Dan read a different piece). Man, I wish I had a recording of that sexy, manly growls... fucken woof! Look for Dan and Cam to shine in print together in the N@B antho (coming soon!) So, think of the history you've missed and make the fuck sure you show the hell up at the next N@B event August 6 at Meshuggah Cafe with Jesus Angel Garcia, Jane Bradley, David Cirillo and unconfirmed.

And somebody tell me what the sweet hell is going on here? I saw someplace the Duane Swierczynski is reading at a Noir at the Bar event in July. C'mon, that'd be awesome, but it's not nice to tease folks like that. He's not gonna be anywhere near St. Louis before Bouchercon... oh, my bad. He'll be at that other Noir at the Bar. Y'know, the one in La-la-wood that Eric Beetner and Stephen Blackmoore have cooked up to try and approximate a St. Louis evening. As if. Still, the Swizzler's a pretty good start. What really chaps my balls though, is that former St. Louisan Jordan Harper will almost assuredly participate there before he comes back home to read. Really chaps.

The Green Bay Packager

2011-06-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

Martin H. Greenberg passed away Saturday. He'd anthologized untold numbers of writers in every genre from Kitty Cat Sleuths to Steampunk. Over a hundred books he compiled and edited. He was 70 when he passed. More at Ransom Notes.

Whitey, Blackmoore & Rednexploitation!

2011-06-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

You hear about Whitey Bulger being caught? Dunno what it might say about me, but as far as I'm concerned, this feels like bigger news than Osama Bin Laden taking the bullet cure. I'm wondering though if this whole thing wasn't orchestrated by Dave Zeltserman to sell more copies or possibly the film rights to his Whitey & Winter Hill Gang inspired Pariah. What? You haven't read it? Brothers and sisters, please rectify that.

Speaking of big Dave, I'm slowly reading through that On Dangerous Ground anthology of western noir that he co-edited with Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, and I really dug the Terry Tanner piece All Good Men about a prisoner at Yuma biding his time bent on killing two other inmates. You get a chance, check that one out. That Greenberg cat edits the hell out of some collections don't he? I just got a couple of the strangest anthologies I've ever seen, also from Cemetery Dance Publications, the other day and one of them had Marin's name on it: Screamplays an anthology of... wait for it... screenplays. Yup, horror screenplays from the likes of Gorman, Joe Lansdale, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Dean Koontz, Harlan Ellison and Richard Laymon. Martin's co-editor was Richard Chizmar and he had solo editing credit on the second, Smoke and Mirrors which was the same concept and featuring a bunch of the same names plus Stewart O'Nan, Frank Darabont, William Peter Blatty, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Poppy Z. Brite and on and on and on. They're hefty fuckers too. Been flipping through them. I'm always curious how other folks writer screenplays and make 'em readable. Of all the bound screenplays I've read, I think I like The Coen Brothers' the best. These aren't shooting scripts, they're reading scripts and there's a big difference for anybody not actually trying to make the film.

Have you seen the new Noir Nation eMagazine? I love seeing Cortright McMeel's name on there (one of the guys behind Murdaland magazine and the author of Short.) He, Eddie Vega who was also involved with the Murdaland, and Alan Ward Thomas are editing this beast of prose and graphic fiction, poetry and apparently they're gonna put short noir films up there too? Interesting... veddy intelesting. I'm wondering if Paul von Stoetzel has got his eye on that one. You remember Paul, the dude making the short film based on the Dennis Tafoya short story from Crime Factory, How to Jail? Paul's been reading some of my shit recently and apparently digging it which is tremendously gratifying. (I'm looking forward to catching his The Curse of Yig, an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation.) Any way, Noir Nation international journal of crime fiction. They're stressing the international thing. Good. Oh, and look whose popping up in that first line-up, my man in Poland, Paul D. Brazill. My gawd, he gets around.

While we're talking internations and internets, I got an offer for some eReview copies of titles from Melville House publications which look promising. I've got my eyes on More Beer by that German guy Jakob Arjouni. How could you go wrong with a title like that, huh? I mean, if the book sucks, just take the title as a suggestion and your time is bound to improve, yeah? Though, drinking around an eReader or in my case my computer, is probably not a good percentage move.

But if you're somebody who likes to live dangerously and read electronically and would like a free eCopy of Donald Westlake's God Save the Mark? Apparently, if you sign up to The Copia social-e-bookstore you'll get one... looks like they give away more cool titles like John Ball's In the Heat of the Night and W.R. Burnett's Little Caesar. 'Course, if you like to be allowed to spill your drink, or smear your barbeque sauce on your reading material without ruining it, just leave a comment on this piece, and you may win a Westlake or Richard Stark book you could hold in your hands! Selections are limited, but hey, they're free and touchable, so go ahead and leave a comment. I've got, uh three? to give away.

That Westlake. Man, he cranked em out and they're still finding em. Charles Ardai over at the relaunching Hard Case Crime is going to town on these unearthed Westlake and Mickey Spillane titles. If The Comedy is Finished is as good as Memory - the last last unpublished Westlake - then sign me up. And Max Allan Collins has got a new Quarry book - Quarry's Ex as well as the co-authored Hammerless tome The Consummata a few weeks later. Throw in Lawrence Block's Jill Emerson resurrection Getting Off and Christa Faust's second Angel Dare episode Choke Hold and I say, damn, I've missed you Hard Case.

Backtracking a moment to Lovecraft, Derek Nikitas is working on a hugely ambitious novel about H.P., Aleister Crowley and W.B. Yeats. Yikes, that sounds awesome, especially if you've read Derek before. And most especially if you've read The Ballad of Larry Plank, his contribution to the N@B anthology... I'm so excited about putting that one out. It's a great story, (cycle of stories, actually.)

Talky of N@B, our little event seems to be contagious. I mentioned before that Frank Bill is hosting a book release party for Crimes in Southern Indiana in southern Indiana on September 10. He'll read of course, as will me and and Kyle Minor and and and... Frank asked me not to say until he'd made an announcement, but if you follow his Twitter dialogue with Keith Rawson or his Facebooking comments on Steve Weddle's page, then you already know... And your mind is blown by how awesome the event is going to be. Na-na-na-na-na.

But don't pout, start your own franchise. Looks like Los Angeles will finally be put on the map for dark fiction. For those of you who're not familiar, get out a map and check the bottom left corner of the USA for L.A. It's where Paris Hilton lives, right? Anyhow, seems Eric Beetner and Stephen Blackmoore have been giving a little thought as to how they can put their city into the public consciousness. Good luck to them. Once again, I'll let them make an official statement sometime, but methinks something good is in the works.

BTW - have you seen the cover for Blackmoore's City of the Lost? Got a nice picture from Sean Phillips the badass motherfucker who draws that motherfucking badass Criminal comic, y'know, the one Ed Brubaker writes. Score. Over at Ransom Notes, I'm talking up the other Ed, Ed Lynskey's rednexploitation novel Lake Charles. A lot of fun. Check it out. And while I'm on about the funny papers, I just got Jason Starr's new Batman/Doc Savage/Avenger First Wave special. Let's see, can I share this one with the kids?

Severance Package

2011-06-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

Gonna be a helluva summer for the ol' pocketbook, friends. Lots of travel - mostly work/pleasure hybrids - books to publish, events to plan and plenty o' books to buy - starting with Fun & Games the first in a trilogy to be released within a year from Duane Swierczynski, (okay, okay, starting with Claire DeWitt & the City of the Dead by Sara Gran - catch up, people.) I've got a review of it up at Ransom Notes and seriously, it's the most fun you've had between the pages since Joan Severance appeared in Playboy... And the most fun you may have till what's-his-nuts Bill shows up in the glossy later this year.

Looks like some of those summer travel plans will be heading back to Corydon and Arlston's Books for a release party for Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana September 10. Sounds like I'll be joining Scott Phillips and Kyle Minor, maybe more there for that. Hoping we can secure a few copies of the Crime Factory antho for that event, plus Scott's The Adjustment will be shiny and new. I'll most likely be with Scott in Oxford, MS. in July for a release party of Megan Abbott's new one The End of Everything - a real chiller for your muggy summer nights - seriously, Abbott's out-creeped herself with this one. Never quite put myself in the headspace of a thirteen year old girl that way before. Lemme tell you, it's disorienting and kinda yummy... And now I've out-creeped myself. Hope, of course that the whole Oxford crew turns out for that one. I'd love to see Tom Franklin, William Boyle, Chris Offutt, Jack Pendarvis and John Brandon. Who knows, maybe Ace Atkins will take time off from channeling Robert Parker to show up, maybe John Grisham and the spirit of William Faulkner will hover, I'm game. 'Course nobody's got more to look forward to than St. Louis this soggy season, as the eminent arrival of Donald Ray Pollock supporting his first novel - and what a scorcher, I'm reeling - The Devil All the Time is here July 20, Jesus Angel Garcia brings badbadbad and Jane Bradley shows up with You Believers with N@B antho contributor and Matt Kindt collaborator David Cirillo August 6. Jon Jordan and company bring Bouchercon our way in September and rumors leak that Daniel Woodrell may arrive in October with The Outlaw Album.

My First Robot Ham

2011-06-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

Ready for the list? The lineup for Surreal South '11 just dropped and who-ee it's strong. Aside from my own contribution, look for stories from N@B vets Anthony Neil Smith, John Hornor Jacobs (and editors) Laura Benedict and Pinckney Benedict as well as HBW friends Brad Green, Sophie Littlefield and Nik Korpon. Back for another round are SS09 folks like Alexander Lumans, Michael Kardos, John McManus, Josh McCall, Josh Woods, J.T. Ellison and Sheryl Monks and from SS07 Susan Woodring. Then make way for A.K. Thompson, Anne Valente, Gregory Wolos, James O'Brien, Jim Walke, Julia Patt, Marilyn Moriarty, Mark Fleming, Reuben Hayslett, Robert Busby, Robert Hill Long, Ron Lands, Rose Bunch and Victor Schultz. Nice.

Over at Ransom Notes I'm talking Michael Robotham's latest The Wreckage. I'd never read one of his before, but he was on my radar, and while it's not the kind of fare I usually pick up - it's long (like over 300 pages - yeah, that's long for me, what the fuck you lookin at?), it's international intrigue and a conspiracy thriller while I tend to like my thrills and chills on a smaller scale - it's a damn fine representation of the genre's potential. I've always wanted to give Nelson DeMille or Tom Clancy a try, but absolutely wilt at the sheer size of their tomes - so, this one is what I'd like to believe theirs can be too, (though, that's probably completely unfair to all three authors.)

While supporting the recovery of my amazing wife from a minor surgery this week, I've been watching a bunch of movies. In one 24 hour period we sat through about ten episodes of Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, two episodes of Treme Season One, Sofia Coppolla's Somewhere, Nic Cage in Drive Angry, Jason Statham and Ben Foster reprising the roles of Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent in The Mechanic, The Coen Brothers' slice of awesome The Man Who Wasn't There and Christopher Smith's Black Death - after that one and Severence, Smith is on my go-to for off-balance horror films every time list.

Hittin the Links

2011-06-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

Dan O'Shea & Frank Bill listen to Aaron Michael Morales read at N@B

Some little bit o' catchin' up to do at the HBW. First, over at Ransom Notes I'm still a bit high from the N@B event over the weekend and I'm telling a few stories about book events. Have you one? Please go there and leave it in the comment section. Second, I've not yet linked to my thoughts on two big summer books, so here they are: Jason Starr's rabid moon thriller The Pack (check out Cullen Gallagher's notched toply interview with Jason here) and Marcus Sakey's forget me not The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes. Third, Patti Abbott forced me to take part in her series "How I Came to Write This," so here's a link to the story behind my story Politoburg.

I've been touching up a story about a fallen away preacher at the ass end of Sherman's March this week and still thinking about it as a novel. There's a biblical character he's modeled on, and I think there's a novel's worth of story there without even trying. Perhaps it's my next big project.

You guys see that Spinetingler magazine is going into publishing eBooks? Snubnose Press is debuting with the mini-antho Speedloader soon featuring N@B alumn Richard Thomas and Jonathan Woods as well as HBW friends Nik Korpon, Nigel Bird and Matthew C. Funk. Now, I've got to familiarize meself with W.C. County. eBooks. Here we go with eBooks again. Man, I don't think I'll ever back down about there being something special about print, but I'm just gonna be left out of too much good shit to not read em. So, I just picked up (not literally of course, sigh) Roger Smith's Dust Devils, How Do You Like Your Blue Eyed Boy by Barry Graham and The Adventures of Cash Laramie & Gideon Miles by David Cranmer pseudonym Edward A. Grainger. Of course Anthony Neil Smith's Billy Laffite books Yellow Medicine and Hogdoggin go in there too, but just for objectivity as I've already got reading-friendly physical copies that I've comfortably dog-eared, (actually the new covers by Erik Lundy are worth picking em for - but damn - I'd really like to hold those tattered pulps). Check out Mr. Smith on the Booked Podcast talking ePublishing-n-stuff. My favorite quote from that interview? "Being dragged kicking and screaming to ePublishing is like being dragged kicking and screaming to a blow-job."

N@B is coming backatcha August 6 with Jesus Angel Garcia, Jane Bradley and David Cirillo, so make your travel plans now. July 20, Donald Ray Pollock is here and though it's not technically a N@B event, me and Scott are involved and trying to make it special for as many folks as possible, (think we could twist some arms to show? Maybe Alan Heathcock? Chris Offutt? Pinckney Benedict? Robert Olmstead? Kyle Minor? Scott Wolven? Benjamin Percy? Daniel Woodrell? Tom Franklin? John Brandon? Bueller? Bueller? I dunno, but will keep you posted.

Southern Hostility

2011-06-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Can I take a moment to pat the N@B community on their collective back? Over the years, I’ve been to some very nice literary events, some with absolutely 100% spell-check approved and correct grammar usage. I’ve been to some dull ones and even a couple that took amazing material and snipped its nuts with atmosphere and culture, but before last night’s N@B event, I had never been to a reading where one author stops mid-paragraph on his story and tells the next reader that he would like to fuck his muscles, much less one where said erotically-muscled-reader’s piece includes a passage about literal muscle-fucking, (tendons maybe, or some such viscera –weird though, yeah?)

I love our event. You should make a point of attending some time.

Glad to see that the change of venue didn’t throw the community into chaos, (or rather turn our pleasantly chaotic little group into a bunch of well-behaved line-standers). In fact I got several politely phrased suggestions to keep future events at Meshuggah, and as the next one (August 6, with Jesus Angel Garcia, author of badbadbad, David Cirillo and Jane Bradley, author of You Believers) also takes place on a Saturday, we just may have it there again.

The evening got off to a righteous start with John Hornor Jacobs reading a tale of Pentecostalism run amok somewhere beneath the Mason Dixon line and was followed by Aaron Michael Morales’ tale of a young boy’s first pubes , cage fighting and y’know, arrow wounds. Fred Venturini read two pieces, a marriage tale with a side of serial-killer fascination/fandom and an excerpt from his novel The Samaritan, featuring inanimate-object violation of a human being, murder and suicide, (I kept thinking about the Stephen Graham Jones blurb on his book claiming that reading it, “was like finding an autobiography I forgot I’d written,” hmmm… Steve, I’m sorry about your life, dude.) Not to be out-transgressed, Frank Bill read a lovely piece about a family’s final breaking point, which is apparently when incest turns to pimpdom and handguns are suddenly remembered beneath pillows or beside oxygen tanks – the things we do for health care.

In attendance I was amazed to see former N@B star Daniel O’Shea had hauled his lovely wife all the way from Chicagoland, but not so much that Matthew McBride had the Mrs. in tow from about a hundred miles out. Rod Norman and his better half Judy led the last century mark of miles in the caravan that included Misters Bill and Morales, and local past and future N@B inductees Matt Kindt, David Cirillo, Mark Tiedemann and Erik Smetana lent the proceedings a veneer of classiness just shiny enough to lure other wives, friends and passersby into our whimsically debauched company. For that we are thankful. Now, if they can do it again we’ll really be doing something special.

Thanks of course to Kelly and Subterranean Books who’ve just announced that indeed they will be remaining open, (though they might be moving from their current location on The Delmar Loop). With events like last month’s Steve Earle read, N@B, Tim Lane’s monthly Whirling Gypsy Cabaret, BYOB and of course July 20th’s Donald Ray Pollock signing making a pattern of #winning, I hope to keep shopping there for a long time to come.

And y’know what I’m looking forward to purchasing there?

Yup, the N@B antho, which should be available at our next event. Alright, I’m putting it out there. And lemme tell you, I’ve read the collection of stories and they are all over the map, tone, subject and story-wise, from hardboiled to kinda runny and on to rotten and nearly hatched, but the single thing that binds them all together is the history and seat space they share on the literary-short-bus we call Noir at the Bar.

Totally Meshuggah

2011-06-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

N@B is tonight!!!! Come see Fred Venturini and his extra limbs! Come hear John Hornor Jacobs and his ridiculous accent! Come smell Frank Bill's favorite passtimes! Come touch Aaron Michael Morales's big hard Tuscon streets! Come taste the beer! Rub elbows with other N@B folks like Scott Phillips, Matt Kindt, Matthew McBride? Malachi Stone? Tim Lane? Daniel O'Shea? Come hang with Rod, Judy, Kelly, Elli, Pearl, Stuart and the gang! Come tip Liam! Come sing happy birthday to Patrick!

Meshuggah Cafe is where to be tonight (6269 Delmar in the U-City Loop) at 7 for all the rowdy that is St. Louis's most dangerous literary event!

Gran Ol' Time

2011-06-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

At Ransom Notes I'm talking about Sara Gran's brave new direction for the American PI novel, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. Man, if you haven't read a Gran book yet, fix that shit. I have yet to read Saturn's Return to New York, but if it's half as good as her others, it'll be the best book I read all month... unless that month is my next. Holy crap, I've got some good shit ahead including Megan Abbott's The End of Everything and Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time. But go ahead, I vouch for Dope and the recently reprinted Come Closer. I was thinking that the new cover for Come Closer looked awfully familiar and it took about ten seconds to place it... what do you think?

Going out of town this weekend. Hope to have some time to read and write. First time I'll have been back to Colorado in hmmm 17 or 18 years. I used to live there though and I definitely still miss the weather. I had some drinks and fatty foods with previous N@B participant Richard Thomas the other day. He used to live in St. Louis and over the Memorial Day weekend return visit he was so moved by the awful humidity he wrote a flash crime piece called Gateway inspired by it and it was immediately published at Doc O'Donnell's new fiction site Dirty Noir.

We talked about books - we're swapping care packages - including anthologies we're excited to be taking part in. Of course, Richard is included in the N@B antho which ought to be available sometime over the summer (Matt Kindt just turned in some really fantastic artwork for it btw) and he's also involved with The Velvet anthology Warmed and Bound (which sounds like a really dirty cookbook to me) alongside names like Paul Tremblay, Nik Korpon, Christopher J. Dwyer, Kyle Minor, Caleb J. Ross, Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger and Chris Deal (plus too many more to name). I've never gotten involved with online writing communities in any official way, but The Velvet seems like a pretty good place to hang out if you're looking for a home.

Of course when I return home next week I'll be gearing up for N@B with Frank Bill, Fred Venturini, John Hornor Jacobs and Aaron Michael Morales. Damn, that's a solid lineup and gonna be hard to beat. We've just added some names to the August 6 N@B event though. Joining Jesus Angel Garcia will be David Cirillo and Jane Bradley whose book You Believers I spent this Ransom Notes piece gushing over.

It's been a busy week for N@B people - The Concord ePress went live this week with titles by our people Scott Phillips (2 from my man - Rut and his first collection of short fiction Rum, Sodomy and False Eyelashes) and the debut novel Frank Sinatra in a Blender by Matthew McBride. ANS has had the e-version of Hogdoggin' released featuring more seriously badass work by future (I'm counting on it) N@B performer, Erik Lundy. Damn. The Lund delivers on those, (he also retooled the Yellow Medicine e-cover). Also, Sean Doolittle alerted me to his next book's December release - Lake Country is due in December and I can't wait. Matt Kindt has a brand new book he illustrated, The Tooth - which looks plenty bizzarre. Pinckney & Laura Benedict are putting together Surreal South '11 and Dennis Tafoya's short story How to Jail (from Crime Factory 3) is being made as a short film by director Paul Von Stoetzel (Snuff). You can be a part of this uber cool film's odyssey by supporting it right here and following the Brute Force Films blog. My lil' ol' film update is that Julian Grant (The Defiled, Fall Away, RoboCop Prime Directives) is gearing up to begin shooting A Fuckload of Scotch Tape near the end of the summer and I'm stoked about that. And has anybody not seen Adam Wangler's short doc Pitch Black Noir shot in part at N@B? It focuses on Malachi Stone and Scott and features a snippet of Anthony Neil Smith reading Crotch Rockets (from Kung-Fu Factory).

Finally, I'm watching the first season of David Simon's Treme on DVD and really enjoying it. The music is of course fuckin ridiculously infectious and the cast is stellar (Wendell Pierce is stealing it though). Each episode so far has featured a large number of cameos - mostly uncredited - and last night I just about choked on my Schlafly beverage when Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly had about two seconds of screen time. I backed up the disc and made my wife watch it over and over - I know that guy, sweetie, we're like this (makes twisted finger sign), you (pointing to her) went to school with them at the University of Arkansas, don't you remember? She was so impressed, lemme tell you. I had to go dig up this picture of me and Scott and Tom and John H. Jacobs being entirely sober to really make it sink in.

At the risk of sounding like Chris Farley, do you remember when we all met up in Arkansas at that guy's house? That was awesome.

CriMemoir

2011-05-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm going to exploit the hell out of this quote from Anthony Neil Smith, "St. Louis is becoming the hub of neo-noir in the country." (sorry, it's not Cape Cod... c'mon Johnny Temple). What's he referring to? He's talkin' 'bout Noir at the Bar of course. Well our tawdry little event and also Adam Wangler's Pitch Black Noir, a short documentary featuring Malachi Stone, Scott Phillips, Matthew McBride and myself and shot in part at that last N@B event. Check it out to see footage of Mr. Smith's reading. Look closely and you'll see Kyle Minor and Rod Norman in there too. Now, if that don't get yur nethers bothered for our June 11 event with Aaron Michael Morales, Fred Venturini, Frank Bill and John Hornor Jacobs, well, maybe this thing between us just isn't working out. It's not me, it's you. Getting close on the N@B anthology too. Matt Kindt and Tim Lane are putting together some graphic awesomeness for it.

Moving on from that personal horn-toot to this one, Crime Factory 6 is out and features Eric Beetner, John Mantooth, Angela Savage, The Nerd of Noir, Libby Cudmore, Andrew Nette, Tony Black, Graham Bowlin, Mike Sheeter, Tom Larson, Sean May, Nigel Bird, Scott Miles, John M. Radosta and Douglas Sullivan. Oh and it also features a non-fiction piece by me about a knifing at a Burger King, an event that I don't believe I've ever discussed before. It's a sub-genre I'm tagging CriMemoir and I'm officially putting out the call: I want your personal stories of crime however you've experienced it (as a perp, as a victim, as a bystander, as collateral damage, as a reporter). Go read My Semi-Dark Places and you'll see - I don't need the world to end in these pieces, but I'm interested in the ways our brushes with transgression have effected us. And like any memoir piece, the strict factuality of the events is not the point. My mom's always asking me where my 'dark side' came from... this is a little example.

Westward

2011-05-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Goodness, gracious, but panties twist sharp-like over at the Spinetingler and a review of James Reasoner's story The Conversion of Carne Muerto in the Ed Gorman, Martin Greenberg & Dave Zeltserman edited On Dangerous Ground: Stories of Western Noir. Yes, Brian Lindenmuth set up another monster anthology review project wherein each individual entry of a collection gets its very own critique. I was happy to participate and drew Bently Little's Hell to look over. You can read my thoughts on that one right here. You could also check out Nik Korpon being exposed to Ken Bruen for the very first time, (turn in your cool-kid-card right now, sir) or Charlie Stella's thoughts on the Robert Randisi piece, but the one everybody is getting snarky over is the Reasoner review by Benjamin Whitmer. Yeah, it's like 3,000 words long and that's before the epic comment section which is - well, it deserves a read too. The book also has entries from Terry Tanner, Steve Hockensmith, Desmond Barry, Bill Crider, Trey R. Barker, Harry Shannon, Jan Christensen, Jerry Raine, Jon L. Breen, Norman Partidge, T. L. Wolf, Jeremiah Healy, Gary Lovisi, Patrick J. Lambe and Terence Butler and each one is covered by the likes of Elizabeth White, Cullen Gallagher, Nick Mamatas, Steve Weddle, Russel McLean, Chris Rhatigan, Ben Springer, Chris F. Holm, Matthew C. Funk, Patti Abbott, S. McDonald and Jen Forbus.

Over at Ransom Notes, I'm sticking with the western noir theme (loosely) and listing some of my favorites in that vein. Some big nerd somewhere is bound to call me out on my usage of the term noir as applied to some of these choices, (like Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers) but y'know, why don't you go ahead and kiss my ass. Basically, I'm just going with non-black-or-white-hat westerns with a dark streak and I'll be the first to tell you that I am woefully under read in this area. I'd actually welcome being shown up a little in the comments section over there, so if you've got some suggestions for me (and can watch yur fuckin language) go ahead and leave me some picks of your own... 'course if you can't mind yur tongue, go ahead and leave 'em here.

And that goes for movies too - I'd love to have gone on about some films over on the B&N site, but I try to stick to books as much as possible there. One film out right now that I'm realllllly anxious to see is Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff. Man, after Wendy & Lucy, I'm signed up to check out whatever the hell she wants to try her hand at... I reserve the right to hate it, but I'll give it a shot. This one stars Michelle Williams too and she's somebody whose attachment to a project is beginning to mean more to me all the time. Plus great supporting actors like Will Patton and Bruce Greenwood (doesn't matter how many utterly shitty movies that guy is in - I like him - and we'll always have Exotica) round out my interest. Hope, hope, hope I can catch it on the big screen.

While we're on movies, lemme say I was excited to see the announcement from Canne that Nicolas Winding Refn took home the best director honors for his new film Drive. Looks, frankly, more mainstream than anything he's yet done and I am not using that term as a pejorative. He's the man to thank for the incredible Pusher trilogy as well as last year's Valhalla Rising (like the greatest heavy metal video ever, just without any actual y'know metal), the much ballyhooed Bronson and a quiet, eerie little thriller in a decidedly non-wanky-Lynchian vein Fear X (co-written by Hubert Selby Jr.) The new film, about a Hollywood stunt driver who's a getaway man by night, is based on the novella of the same name by James Sallis. So, a big movie and a new novel, The Killer is Dying, for Sallis this summer - that's what I call timing.

Sallis also penned an introduction to On Dangerous Ground. But who buys a book for the introduction? Really. Alright, alright, my hand is raised. I've done that before. Hell, I may even buy an e-book for the introduction. I may find it within my budget to purchase Matthew McBride's Frank Sinatra in a Blender just so I can cut and paste my own name over McBride's and send it out to agents as a glowing recommendation from Ken Bruen. Seems like yesterday he was giving his first public reading for Noir at the Bar and now he's all growed up with a book deal and everything. Yeah, those are tears of pride. We at N@B do our best with the time we're given and then we have to let them walk on their own. And it's been a good little stretch for our kids - Dennis Tafoya just got some exciting movie action on The Wolves of Fairmount Park and Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana is racking up some awful solid remarks pre-release.

And if you wanna catch Mr. Bill before he's just a huge A-list name and a total prick, your absolute last chance before he sells out is Saturday, June 11 when he'll join Aaron Michael Morales, John Hornor Jacobs and Fred Venturini for a N@B to fucking remember. And please do remember it, 'cause I think I'm gonna have some issues with recall Sunday morning. Please note that we're setting up an August event too. Jesus Angel Garcia brings his wild, sexed-up verve to St. Louis on August 6 in support of his book badbadbad. The N@B anthology is coming together quick-like and I can't wait for you to have a gander. Should be available for the August event. Definitely by Bouchercon if you're coming through for that. Are you?

Next week, I'm headed to Colorado. I used to live there. Ten years ago I wrote a couple PI novels about a Denver dick with an office on Colfax and a yen for all-nite diners. I hope you haven't read them. They are not the reason I've been asked to come back to the bosom of the Rockies (they weren't officially why I was asked to leave either). But hey, I'm going to be there and a cheap date too as the altitude will most likely play with my otherwise formidable substance tolerance. So, if you're there and wanna get me drunk and you aren't scared of my wife...

The Hungry Ones

2011-05-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Here's some blurbs for the hungry ones club that will be N@B, Saturday, June 11, 7pm upstairs at Meshuggah Cafe.

For John Hornor Jacobs' Southern Gods

If William Faulkner, Jim Thompson and H.P. Lovecraft had an orgiastic blood sacrifice ritual to honor the Old Ones in the Delta Swampland at the height of the muggy Deep South summer at midnight, Southern Gods would probably be the result. - Ed Kurtz, author of Bleed

A dark and dreamy delight ... enlivened by the sort of characters only Elmore Leonard and Shirley Jackson could write ... Southern Gods held me fast until the end, leaving me wanting more, but satisfied that I had witnessed enough brilliantly rendered brutality and compassion for one sitting. - Weston Ochse, Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author of Empire of Salt and Scarecrow Gods

For Fred Venturini's The Samaritan

Fred Venturini is an awesomely talented writer, and he proves it on every page of The Samaritan. Stretching artfully from the shabbiness of life in a small Illinois town to the glitter and greed of Hollywood, this first novel about a shy, emotionally damaged loser with a bizarre but coveted ability to regenerate his vital parts is one of the most engaging and ultimately satisfying that I've had the pleasure to read in a long time.—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

Reading this was like finding an autobiography I forgot I’d written. Like Venturini had access to all my secret thoughts. It was strange and wonderful, and I’d pay to do it again.—Stephen Graham Jones, author of It Came from Del Rio

For Aaron Michael Morales' Drowning Tuscon

Morales wrestles with nothing less than the parameters of the human soul. —Luis Alberto Urrea

These are brutal and frequently riveting stories of the mean streets rendered in highly emotional, cinematic language. - Joanne Wilkinson (Booklist)

The bleakly human debut of the new Bukowski. - Esquire

Morales's vision is disturbing, haunting, though sometimes even strangely hopeful...his talent is considerable. You won't ever look at Tucson in quite the same way again. And you won't rest easily until the last page is turned. -January Magazine

Returning to the bosom of N@B, Frank Bill's Crimes In Southern Indiana

Good Lord, where in the hell did this guy come from? Blasts off like a frigging rocket ship and hits as hard as an ax handle to the side of the head after you’ve eaten a live rattlesnake for breakfast. One of the wildest damn rides you’re ever going to take inside a book.” —Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time

Bill's resolutely unsentimental debut collection lays bare working-class strife, exposing atrocities that are at once violently harrowing and desperately human. Readers who enjoy coal-black rural noir are in for a sadistic treat: flowing like awful mud and written in pulpy style, these stories paint a grisly portrait of the author's homeland. You might want to have your brass knuckles handy when reading. - Publisher's Weekly

Is there anything else even competing with your Saturday night? Don't be lame. Be there.

And we've just added an event for Saturday, August 6 with Jesus Angel Garcia, author of badbadbad!

Tunng & Groove

2011-05-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

Andrez Bergen has worked as a journalist, musician, photographer and graphic designer. He's also just published his first novel, The Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat through Another Sky Press out of Portland and they've got an interesting publishing philosophy which you can read more about here. Reminds me of what Radiohead tried with In Rainbows... never did hear how that worked out for them. And of course it sounds a little bit like what Stona Fitch has been doing with the Concord Free Press who - have you heard? - are launching the Concord e-Press to help fund the 'Free' press. So, yeah, their first round of e-books will include a short story collection from Scott Phillips, Rum, Sodomy & the False Eyelash as well as Matthew McBride's Frank Sinatra in a Blender, (featuring a gushing introduction by Ken Bruen btw).

But I digress... Andrez Bergen is today's contributor to the Narrative Music series.

Tunng & Summit ‘Little King’

When Jedidiah asked me to contribute to this series, my first thought was something dark, balladesque and threatening, wearing its noir/hardboiled origins on its sleeve – something by someone like Johnny Cash, or maybe Jack Palance’s ‘The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived’.

I almost went with Palance. I love the guy as an actor and ‘The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived’ is a classic whip-snap of a ditty.

But, instead, I find myself writing about some Brits I stumbled across when I did a DJ set in London in 2002. There was this band contributing to a mate’s compilation CD over there, and when he played me their song I was smitten.

The band was Tunng, the guest vocalist someone named Summit, and the song is called ‘Little King’. It’s never left my personal play-list over the intervening decade; these days it sits pretty on my iPod and will never, ever be deleted from same.

But the music itself is far from pretty – it’s downright ethereal, in a sardonically British kind of way. Tunng matches superb finesse behind their rack-mounted electronic gadgets and live instrumentation with a style, rhythm and tempo all their own.

So what is ‘Little King’ like, anyway?

It’s sublime, as I mentioned; there’s that canny touch of caustic knowingness; it’s almost a love song to some unseen muse, though given that this muse is “four foot nothing with dirty knees… carried on shoulders like a little king”, this is either a kid we’re talking about or a height-challenged adult individual.

Then there are the contrasts and off-skew lyrics that contradict: We’re introduced to “She” in the fifth line, but in that same breath she’s compared with a king instead of a queen. Then come the two standout lines for me: “She is worshipped and adored/Invisibly worshipped and ignored.”

I’ll probably never know what the writer(s) actually intended by all this, but in my headspace I picture quite vividly a crossover between the child Dalai Lama in Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (1997) and the equally young Puyi in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) being carried by worshipers through a dusty, sun-drenched place in Tibet or the Gobi Desert. Sure, they’re boys, but I can’t think of any celluloid moment similar in which a girl is “worshipped and adored” – though many girls do get a tip of the hat for “Invisibly worshipped and ignored”.

That’s where the trouble boils to the surface, beneath the serene beauty of the above landscape scenario: An undercurrent that’s dark, possibly scarring, and worrisome; intimations that some kind of abuse, physical or mental, is being played out.

“No one came looking for me” is just plain sad.

But this kid surely has attitude. “Four foot nothing”? Short but tough, I like to think. “Knees stained with dirt”? If it’s a girl, a tomboy who’ll hit back. Besides, he/she “is restless with greed”. This kid is no pushover.

The real strength of ‘Little King’, however, is its flexibility. It has this chameleon-like ability to twist and adapt to different kinds of scenarios in your head, making it one of the more influential pieces of music that helped shape my recently published novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

There were times on the train here in Tokyo when I’d just tune out from the crowds, hit play on my iPod, conjure up pivotal scenes in the book, and reflect. ‘Little King’ was the soundtrack for the more harrowing emotional moments therein.

It’s that kind of song – a poignant, moving, somewhat dark journey of a lullaby that remains unforgettable. That said, here are the lyrics in their entirety to nut over on your own:

Four foot nothing knees stained with dirt
When we went hiding why don't you seek?
No one came looking for me
Your head is restless with greed

She carried on shoulders like a little king
She is worshipped and adored
Invisibly worshipped and ignored
No one came looking for me

Twisted metal and underground deeds
This weightless town no good for me
Your head is restless with greed
Your fate laid down in deep

Palance will just have to wait until next time.

Andrez Bergen

Guest Post: Bill Loehfelm

2011-05-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

Bill Loehfelm's latest The Devil She Knows is the first of a series and he's the guest contributor at Hardboiled Wonderland today.

The hero of my new novel, THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS, is Maureen Coughlin, a twenty-nine year old New York cocktail waitress who gets herself on the wrong side of some bad people. Though my first two novels each featured strong female characters, this is my first novel with a female lead. I get asked a lot about that choice, to write from a female POV. Were the reasons commercial? Artistic? (The latter) Was I nervous? (No) Did I have a female consultant to proof it for me? (Not specifically, though Maureen did pass muster with my wife and my editor) What yoga exercises did I do to get in touch with my feminine side? (OK, I made that last one up)

The decision was simple, and boring. It was time to write about Maureen; it was her time for a book.

Maureen began life in a flash fiction piece I did more than ten years ago. She lived for years without a name. She has endured and evolved over the years, resurfacing in various guises (not unlike a director’s favorite character actor), in short stories and as a supporting character in the (forever) unpublished novel I used as my graduate school thesis. When I sat down to write my third book, I pulled up Maureen (then the lead in a short story called “Waitress”) and decided to see if she had a book in her – simply because she had lasted so long. There had to be something she wanted to do or say, and I had to see if I had figured out how to lead her through it. Now, as it turns out, she may have more than one book in her. She’s become a character that I can’t put down. Maureen got the lead in THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS because she’s a rich character who wouldn’t go away, not for any other reason.

The fact that she’s female is incidental. I didn’t choose her because she’s female anymore than I chose Junior Sanders from my first book (FRESH KILLS), or Danny and Kevin Curran from my second (BLOODROOT) because they’re male. Curiously, people rarely ask how I wrote about Nat Waters, the book’s washed up 60-year-old NYPD detective, though my life is much closer to Maureen’s than his. Could that because we’re both male, I wonder? Well, regardless of how it all plays into post-modern lit theory and gender studies, I choose Maureen for this book because every story starts, for me, with character. And she’s the best I’ve ever had.

No Matter How I Struggle & Strive

2011-05-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

Junkies and country music. Steve Earle knows of what he speaks and damn can he speak. I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive reads awful strong. I had a great time listening to him speak Monday on his books and music as well as the occasional acting gig and speaking other people's words, though, as he said, he's had a good go of it, having them written for him by the likes of David Simon (The Wire, Treme) and Tim Blake Nelson (the uneven, but pretty entertaining Leaves of Grass). If you get the chance, take it. Standing in line to meet the dude, I hear the guy ahead of me confirm a rumor about a bar in town that's awarding free beers to anybody who bought Steve's book and once I've digested the blessed info, I do an incredibly nerdy thing and ask him if he's on the radio talky-box 'cause his voice is damned familiar. Yup, Tim Rakel who hosts the badass Mystery Train show on the beyond badass KDHX community radio station in St. Louis, (and I'm told you can stream it online for those of you living in the future) was standing just ahead of me and we share a couple awkward moments of 'heh, yeah... on the radio... yup... that's cool... uh-huh... neat.' Eventually a semi-intelligent exchange takes place regarding musicians writing books (we've both read Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel) and I'd just finished Nathan Larson's The Dewey Decimal System which I'm blathering excitedly about over at Ransom Notes. Good stuff from the former Shudder to Think rocker and current film scorer, (Ima haveta watch Dirty Pretty Things again soon and focus on the music), but yeah, if you like Philip K. Dick, Jonathan Lethem, Duane Swierczynski and Victor Gischler, I'll thinka yull like TDDS.

Tonight!!! Join me, Scott Phillips and Tim Lane at Subterranean Books for another round of multi-media entertainments revolving around The Myth of Jackie at 7pm and if you haven't picked up Tim's book Abandoned Cars yet, yur dead to me.

And just added to the June 11 N@B event already featuring Aaron Michael Morales and Frank Bill, the cantankerous and bombastic John Hornor Jacobs in support of his debut novel Southern Gods due later this summer. As we're holding a Saturday event this time we will not be at The Delmar Lounge for the first time since N@B's inception, so stay tuned for a venue announcement and possibly another kick ass participant.

Too-Left Feat Giveaway

2011-05-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hot damn, this week is good for the creative stimulus. Good meet with Tim Lane and Scott Phillips the other night - also bumped into illustrator/children's author John Hendrix, tonight the recently agented up Matthew McBride sneaks inside our naive city's panty-lines, Monday Steve Earle signs books at the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Library and Tuesday I'm takin my fair lady to see Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs. Tim is getting ready for his monthly show at Subterranean Books next week which Scott and I will once again be lending our vocal stylings to, so come check that out Wednesday the 18th.

Did I mention N@B is coming June 11 with Aaron Michael Morales and Frank Bill? Come ON, how could it get any better than that? Hmmm, I dunno, maybe if say Alan Heathcock jumped in the mix? Well, I tried, but Senor Heathcock will actually be in Evansville Indiana that evening. And what, you've seen AMM and Frankie Bill and me and Scott too much? You're getting sick of us? Well, the Webster Film Series is showing Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place starring Humphrey Bogart and based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes that evening too. So, you have plans for Saturday the 11th now, I should think.

Over at Ransom Notes I'm gushing over PM Press's re-issue of Sin Soracco's women in prison novel Low Bite and yeah.... I liked it a lot. Anybody out there with a copy of Edge City they wanna send me, 'cause I'll send 'em something back. In fact, I tell ya what, I'm just crazy about one particular piece of hardboiled poetry that I'm gonna give it away to somebody... Just leave a comment on this post to be entered in the drawing for my copy of Pinckney Benedict's only novel (three amazing collections of short stories, but only one novel), Dogs of God. Seriously, look it up. You think it's coming over to touch gloves, but it'll bust up yur kiss maker before the bell's even rung. So, just leave a comment, any ol' comment, and you're entered. What? You never heard of PB or Dogs? Here, check out this video on YouTube. Somebody made a short film outta the prologue to the book. Now enter. I'll draw a name on Monday.

Kilgore's Trout (ahem)

2011-05-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

"And it burns, burns, burns - the ring of fire."
- June Carter Cash, Merle Kilgore

S'okay, my new hardboiled science fiction pulp story Down, Down, Down, Burns, Burns, Burns is up over at Beat to a Pulp and while I slightly exaggerated my offense to the very dedicated and talented David Cranmer in the previous post, (turns out I'd sent him the wrong draft of the story - not an entirely different story), I would like to thank him for believing in it enough to stick with me/it through several drafts as I waffled about silly things. I did have fun writing it, (my first attempt at Sci-Fi since sixth grade) and may go back and try another speculative piece soon. While we're on the topic of firsts, the Crimefactory antho will feature my first foray into westerns while my second will appear in another anthology later in the fall. I'm enjoying getting out and exploring unfamiliar terrain.

At Ransom Notes I'm interviewing the one and only Lawrence Block about his new one, A Drop of the Hard Stuff as well as his latest Jill Emerson excursion into sex and violence, Getting Off. Speaking of grand masters, I'm excited about Robert J. Randisi's third, (and it looks like final - but with Bob, you never say never), Nick Delvecchio book The End of Brooklyn, while Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead takes the PI novel down a decidedly different path into the future. Next up, Sin Soracco's Low Bite and Jason Starr's The Pack.

Summer travels will take me to Colorado in a few weeks for a rowdy week of carousing with Tom Piccirilli, Jon Bassoff, Benjamin Whitmer and Stephen Graham Jones. Or maybe just seeing some family. But hey, I've been known to enjoy a good carousing. And I hear that Scott Phillips will be headed to Texas and the set of Terrill Lee Lankford's filmed take on Joe Lansdale, Christmas With the Dead. Carousing guaranteed.

Have you got your summer travel plans together? Do they include St. Louis? They should. There are a handful of N@B events looming in the realm of possibility not to mention Steve Earle - doing books - Donald Ray Pollock and something called Bouchercon. But for Pete's sake be here Saturday June 11 for N@B featuring Aaron Michael Morales author of the hardcore Drowning Tucson and Frank Bill for his pre- Crimes in Southern Indiana tour.

Dear David Cranmer

2011-05-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

Dear David Cranmer:

You rock. Your WebZine Beat to a Pulp is fantastic. I love the genre mash going on over there and I love the commitment you and Elaine Ash have demonstrated to the pulp-loving community by cranking this stuff out every week. And should we talk about the book? Beat to a Pulp: Round One was tits! Not only full of my favorite writers getting their pulp on, but gorgeous to look at and a pleasure to hold. Really, thanks for that and for y'know, paying the writers. You sir are a class act.

Now, about that piece of mine you're running tomorrow, thanks for sending me a preview and all. And thanks for all that work you did formatting it and making it look spiffy, but could you, y'know forget it? I've changed my mind. I don't want that to run after all. Instead, I've got a brand new - longer - bit I'd like you to format and proof and run in its place.

I know this has been going on for months. I know I told you you could have the one, but really, I'd appreciate it if you'd chalk all that previous work you'd put in to experience and just stay up all night working on this new piece instead.

Pre-shate it. You're the best.

Hugs,

Jedidiah Ayres

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

2011-05-03T08:02:00.001-07:00

Okay, now that Osama Bin Laden has moved on to his first dozen celestial virgins and Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic are jet skiing the lake of fire, now that Fidel Castro is too feeble to crush anybody and Kim Jong Il is somehow less menacing in nepotism thank Hugo Chavez is in power. Where will we turn to fill the role of International Boogey-Man No. 1? Talking a bit about it over at Ransom Notes.

But y'know who's got an answer to that question? A quick list in no particular order:

Scott Phillips, Hilary Davidson, Cameron Ashley, Harry Hunsicker, Eric Beetner, Tony Black, Greg Bardsley, Matthew C. Funk, Patricia Abbott, Kieran Shea, Bill Fitzhugh, Steve Weddle, Jimmy Callaway, Ken Bruen, Jason Duke, Al Riske, Rachel Canon, Keith Rawson and Mark Richardson.

Who is it? Who could possibly be sinister enough for all to agree on? You'll just have to speculate for a while longer.

El Asshole From El Paso

2011-04-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the badassedness of the new Plots With Guns? Fiction from Schuyler Dickson, Richard Godwin, John McMahon, Graham Powell, Jason Stuart, Kent Westmoreland and Fred Zackel, plus a tasty excerpt from Greg Bardsley's fantastic novel Cash Out which I hope the rest of you poor not as cool as me souls can get your hands on soon. Oh, yeah, Cameron Ashley and Jimmy Callaway share credit on a story in there too. Attention whores. Sure, write a story in the same issue you get your pictures up as the artwork. Have you checked out the art for this issue? The theme is 'Getting Our Asses Kicked by the Giants of Crime Fiction,' and it features The Worm having his neck broke by Lee Child and Mr. Fosters being smothered by Christa Faust as well as Reed Farrel Coleman garroting Seth Harwood and yours truly taking a sock to the kisser from George Pelecanos. Nice, huh? Was really hoping there'd be a shot of Steve Weddle being kicked in the nuts by Johnny Temple, but photo ops, who knows? If only there were a way of getting the two of them in the same room... Still, hats off to Erik Lundy, Marty McCabe, Sean O'Kane and Gonzalo Baeza on their editorial maiden voyage and congrats to Anthony Neil Smith for kicking back and taking all the credit.

Speaking of online literary journals getting an injection of badass - I've had my eye on Fried Chicken and Coffee for a bit now. Dunno when I could submit something, but I'd like to. (I will have a hardboiled sci-fi piece up at Beat to a Pulp in a week or two, so there's that.) And I believe that none other than Scott Wolven will be doing some fiction editing over at The New Guard, so if you feel your oats enough to risk rejection by the very best, I'd check that out.

So, then. Friday night, Kinky Friedman is playing in St. Louis and it's a mere all the money I have in the world to go see him. Reaaalllly thinking about it, though. Jeez, the Kinkster this week and Steve Earle in a couple more? What's next, a Charlie Louvin and Benjamin Whitmer tour stop? I wouldn't complain.

Over at Ransom Notes, I'm talking Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth's Stumptown and Rob Guillory and John Layman's Chew - both of which I was exposed to through the noble and altruistic efforts of Kieran Shea. Thanky sir.

Rough Ozark Stuff

2011-04-26T04:48:00.000-07:00

I've been told by all who love me and many who don't that I do have a chip on my shoulder, if a mighty fucking oak can be counted as a chip. My parents told us to upwardly mobile, to educate ourselves toward finer streets--they wanted us to aspire to a class they clearly despised and feared. They understood that for us to succeed we'd have to hate them a little bit in order to say goodbye. Not all of us cared to do that. There's a very fine book called The Hidden Injuries of Class that ought to be read, mostly by those who will know the details from the inside and will recognize the hidden influences they operate behind.

My interview with Daniel Woodrell is up at Ransom Notes.

Ragin Cajun

2011-04-25T09:05:00.002-07:00

Craig McDonald's 2006 interview with Daniel Woodrell (that appeared in Craig's excellent collection of interviews Rogue Males) has been posted on the Mulholland Books site.

My own interview will be posted at Ransom Notes tomorrow.

Tornado Alley

2011-04-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter from St. Louis.

Tornadoes this week. Scared the piss outta Philip Kerr during his event. Felt bad about that, but hey, I'm a mid-westerner and take it in stride. 'Course I wasn't trying to catch a flight into or outta town.

Tim Lane's Whirling Gypsy Comic Carousel Burlesque was a bunch of fun. That guy is a steaming pile of talent. I kinda hate him for it. I'm hoping it becomes a monthly event and if it does, I'll letcha know. And if it does, I nominate Scott Phillips to be the voice of any midget you care to draw. Draw one. Phillips has a voice for it. Betcha a dollar.

Couple quick notes on upcoming events. N@B with Frank Bill and Aaron Michael Morales - looking likely to be June 11, but I'll confirm that when I can. Meanwhile Steve Earle will be here May 16 to support his new novel I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive. Count me in. And Donald Ray Pollock is coming through Julyish in support of The Devil All the Time. Can't fucking wait.

This week I read Mama's Boy by Rick Demarinis, Cowboys by Gary Phillips and Brian Hurtt, The Worst Thing by Aaron Elkins, A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block and Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski. Talking big Joe Lansdale, Hap, Leonard and the Texas Badassery of Devil Red at Ransom Notes. Now I'm clearing some brain space for The Walking Dead on DVD. Stand back.

I Didn't See the Devil

2011-04-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

Gaaah! You go spend one weekend out of town and completely miss your chance to catch Jee-woon Kim's I Saw the Devil in St. Louis. Crap. Just, crap. Those kooky Koreans are churning out some of the most creative mayhem in pictures these days and I haaaate to have missed that one. Did catch up with The Good, the Bad, the Weird and The Chaser in the last couple of weeks, but that's only going to tide me over so long. Let's see, if I wanted to go to the pictures this week it was gonna be uh... Jonathan Hensleigh's Kill the Irishman or Duncan Jones' The Source Code. Ended up seeing both.

Irishman was perhaps the most enjoyable puffy-beefy-red-faced-middle-aged-white-guys-with-lousy-hair-cuts-beating-on-each-other-period film since Mulholland Falls. Irish had plenty of faults, but remained enjoyable all the way through and Source was definitely of a piece with Jones' first film Moon - trippy sci-fi Philip K. Dick-ian fare that didn't make you feel retarded for hiking your plausibility skirt and just going with it. Criticizing either film for their science means you're just missing the point... I mean, would you do that with Star Wars?

Had a few posts over at Ransom Notes recently. The first was inspired by Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller character - the same one portrayed by Matthew McConaughy in The Lincoln Lawyer and also Connelly's latest book The Fifth Witness. Had to do with defense lawyers and how the tide of popular entertainment has seemingly shifted hard out of their favor in the last fifty years. So if ya feel like getting all ponderous and leaving a comment go here. The second was a recognition of the late great Sidney Lumet and had a rundown of some of his crime films beyond just Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and y'know, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Got one to add to the list, praise me for remembering or lambaste me for leaving off? Go here. The third was a quick summation of some mystery award noms.

Tuesday I'll be headed to the St. Louis County Library HQ to see Philip Kerr, the author of one of my favorite PI series ever, the Bernie Gunther books. Seriously, go check that shit out now. The first three titles are collected in an omnibus called Berlin Noir and they will kick your ass. I'll be posting further on Kerr at Ransom Notes, tomorrow.

Wednesday I'll be providing my vocal talents (cough) to a multi-media presentation of a graphic short by Tim Lane over at Subterranean Books. If you live in St. Louis and you're liking the crime stuffs, check out the extra curricular activities hosted by Subterranean. Tim's event will be a monthly one, (if you attended our graphic novel N@B w/ Tim and Matt Kindt, you'll know about what to expect), plus Scott Phillips is teaching a writing workshop on Tuesdays and hosting the BYOB event once a month with Paul Friswold - I participated in that one last week reading from George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Good fun.

Corydon Blue

2011-04-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Just read the new Daniel Woodrell story that appears in the April issue of Esquire called Twin Forks and it strikes me that it makes a nice companion piece to the last one he had there, Night Stand - which, itself was a great marriage of his rough Ozark stuff and marine-centric short stories (as was the devastating Black Step - New Letters.) Twin Forks and Night Stand deal with two sides of similar no-win situations. I like reading them back to back and soon, I'll get to do so without flipping too many pages from multiple sources. The Outlaw Album, his first collection of short stories is due out in October and that's just damn good news.

Spent the weekend with Rod Norman and Frank Bill in Indiana doing some video interviews that may find their way into some hidey-hole on the internet soon. Frank will be making his way back to St. Louis for a N@B event probably in June along with Aaron Michael Morales, so stay tuned for more on that. You know one of the best things about talking with writers is coming away with really solid recommendations and after hearing the name again and again, Frank's say-so pretty much made me feel all sheepish for never having picked up Craig Clevenger or Will Christopher Baer. So, now I'm hip deep in the first of Baer's Phinneas Poe trilogy Kiss Me Judas and after I thank Frank, I'm gonna go beat my head pulpy for not picking this one up sooner. Ex-cop, junkie just released from a mental institution takes a hooker up to his hotel room and wakes up maybe 36 hours later in a bathtub full of bloody, melted ice and clutching a hand written note 'If you want to live, dial 911.' Now he's chasing the broad through the Western US half interested in retrieving his kidney, but more interested in maybe hooking up with her again. I mean, he might be in love. Over at Ransom Notes I'm going on about my out of control reads-in-progress.

Speaking of ridiculously hot femme fatales who start off books with a bang, Duane Swierczynski's The Blonde has been optioned by Michelle Monaghan and looks like a production date may be materializing soon. Man, I hope they do that one justice.

And in case you didn't know, Kent Gowran has started publishing a new flash fiction site, Shotgun Honey. He's looking for kick-assery under 700 words. Can you do it? N@B alumn Daniel O'Shea has the first piece up there already.

Get the Ludd Out

2011-03-31T17:40:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I was contacted by an author with an upcoming book that has really been on my radar. Like I thought it was out and had already tried to buy it, on my radar. We'd never had any contact, but he got ahold of me and asked if I'd like to have a PDF of a couple of his electronic books. As much as I'm pretty confident I would really dig the books, I declined the offer of the PDFs for the simple reason that I'm finding I just don't read them. I've got a virtual stack of em on my laptop and even when I know I'm going to love, love, love the book, it's a pain in the ass to get at it and ingest it from the screen.

But I realize I'm an old fart. And I understand the irony that I, y'know, blog and shit, and that I've had fiction published online and that I'd be absolutely nowhere without people like Todd Robinson or Anthony Neil Smith or David Cranmer and Elaine Ash for reading, publishing and promoting my no-name ass. I also understand that it could very well be the only way some of my books ever get published. So, it's a loaded issue for me. I love the idea of electronic publishing, but I do not yet love to read (books anyway) in that format. At Ransom Notes, I'm talking about it. About how I'm not such hot shit with my book-reading prowess anymore. About how I'm getting left behind because there's a lot of cool shit getting released only in electronic format. I asked Allan Guthrie (because of his new blog Criminal-E) and Dave Zeltserman (because of the approach he's taking to e-books with Top Suspense Group) for a few words on the subject and their experience with electro-books and used some snippets from what they said in the Ransom Notes piece, but I thought I'd just put the rest of it out there for you here. Pay special attention to what Guthrie says regarding the cons of e-publishing, (for the writer). A couple of things I hadn't thought about.

Allan Guthrie:

About ten years ago I launched my website, Noir Originals. It focused on crime fiction, since that was my particular passion, and included reviews, articles, interviews, author showcases, and so on. The new blog is a natural progression from that. Just another way of connecting authors and readers, I hope. As the name suggests, Criminal-E features crime fiction in ebook format. Why ebooks? Because since publishers have become increasingly risk averse, a lot of excellent new (and indeed previously out of print) crime fiction is available in that format, sometimes exclusively.

My personal experience has been eye-opening. My print sales taught me to have very modest expectations and to begin with those expectations appeared to be right on the money. But I was lucky enough to get some traction, sales picked up in December, shot up rapidly in January and by February BYE BYE BABY was in the top 10 in the UK Kindle store, where it remained for most of the month. US sales have been picking up too, month after month, but much more ... um ... modestly.

It's hard to disentangle the advantages and disadvantages of indie publishing over traditional publishing because often they're just different ways of looking at the same thing. For instance, while it's great being in control of the whole operation, it would also be nice to have some help now and then. Self-publishing is a lot of fun, but it's very time-consuming.

My own situation is a little unusual in that the two novellas I've made available digitally were both commissioned for print. So I had very useful editorial input taken care of, otherwise that would have been a huge upfront cost. Generally the lack of an advance is one of the downsides of going it alone, but again that wasn't the case for me. Also, it's generally harder to sell subsidiary rights for a digital-only publication, but audio rights to both my novellas have sold because of the acumen of the publishers behind the print deal. I can't cite minimal bookstore presence either. So, specific to my own situation, the cons would be the lack of marketing input for the digital versions and the whole conversion process, both of which involved a steep learning curve. The pros that spring immediately to mind are the speed of publication, higher royalty rates, control over the price, content, cover design and product information, the monthly payments (from Amazon; Smashwords is quarterly), and real-time access to my sales figures with Amazon. The latter cannot be underestimated.

I'm not sure whether I'm getting more exposure, but I'm certainly getting far more books into the hands of readers, which is what we all hope greater exposure will lead to. My ratio of ebook sales to print sales over the last three months is fairly staggering: 450 to 1. And that's with only two ebooks available and seven books in print.

Dave Zeltserman:

The idea for the Top Suspense Group came out of discussions I had last year with Ed Gorman and Harry Shannon about how midlist writers were going to survive in this upcoming e-book centric world, especially with the Big Six shutting themselves off more and more to us midlist. The idea we came up with is conceptually simple--band together with top writers in our field and brand ourselves over time as a trusted place for readers to find high-quality genre fiction; in our case mystery, crime, horror and thriller fiction. Since then we've grown to 12 writers, built a pretty cool website, and have taken on projects like our Top Suspense Anthology, and our branding seems to be taking hold. The results aren't going to be there immediately, but I feel pretty good about this working over time. One thing I know is six months from now the e-book landscape is going to look very different than it does now, but I have to think selling quality will eventually win out no matter how this landscape changes.

Almost Here

2011-03-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

Television this weekend! Oh, wait... damn it's all on the cable box and not on one of the broadcast channels I have access to. Ah well, Todd Haynes' five part miniseries adaptation of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce begins Sunday on HBO and then on Monday's No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain does the Ozarks and hangs out with Daniel Woodrell. I haven't seen the episode, and am not sure what ended up on the cutting room floor, but let's just say, I hear it weren't a blood-less visit and leave it at that. Anyhow, I'm excited about Pierce over at Ransom Notes, though it looks like Megan Abbott has got some concerns about it, and her blog-mate Sara Gran has some about Reservations. How's that for balance?

I'm writing a short story about a southern preacher in the 1860s and it's beginning to feel more and more like a novel. It's a story I've been toying around with writing for like eight years, so I swear it pre-dates my exposure to Heath Lowrance's The Bastard Hand, (which I've just started reading). We'll see if I ever finish it... my story/novel that is, not Heath's book.

Looking at late spring/early summer for a N@B event with Aaron Michael Morales and Frank Bill, so stay tuned for details on that. And speaking of N@B, I'm looking into the cost of printing and all as well as getting this whole thing compiled and I think it's a hell of a collection. Just this morning, Dennis Tafoya's piece was rattling around my subconscious, bothering me the way you know his stuff does. That's a good thing. And apparently his short stories get to other folks too. His How to Jail from Crime Factory was just nominated for a Spinetingler award and Paul Von Stoetzel's cameras are getting ready to roll on the short film adaptation of that story. Meanwhile Jordan Bloch's short adaptation of Scott Wolven's The Underdogs has been playing a few film fests and I'm looking forward to seeing that one when it's available. Both Tafoya and Wolven (and me!) will have stories in the upcoming Crime Factory anthology edited by Keith Rawson and Cameron Ashley and that thing should scorch the hair off your nuts. Dunno when to expect it other than some time this year.

And I haven't heard anything from Greg Bardsley, the big chief, regarding announcing a little project I've had a finger in, but I'd expect he's nearly ready to announce a preeeeettttty unique alt-history collection soon.