Tuesday, October 26, 2010

O'Shea Can You See?


Wha? Huh? Are we there yet? Is this thing on? Oh, yes it was a hell of a week in St. Louis and I'm still not quite recovered, but ready to do my worst. First off, thanks to everybody involved with Noir at the Bar - that especially means YOU who came out and gave ear to some seriously attention starved egomaniacs just vain enough to believe if they traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to read, you would show up. Spent a good afternoon with Cameron Ashley and Jonathan Woods Thursday. We powered up on coffee and bloody meat for the evening's events, in the mean time running into Ashley favs like Tim Lane and Brian Hurtt making St. Louis seem like the epicenter of cool. Scott Phillips and Chris La Tray joined us for dinner and the crank sweat dripping into the Schlafly beers made those motherfuckers scary. At the event, Matthew McBride turned up - bald tires be damned - and Dan O'Shea, only a rumor beforehand, materialized like malevolent dream. The evening kicked off with two world-tilting pieces from Woods, (whose Bad Juju is no joke - or maybe a sick one), and the N@B first timers all clutched their drinks with both hands eyeing the emergency exits having no idea what they'd got themselves into. La Tray followed up with his hardboiled contribution to Crimefactory's upcoming Kung-Fu Factory and got the evening's first explosive laughter with that story's climax, (as opposed to the nervous chuckling Woods' stories tend to illicit - 'was that funny?' 'am I a bad person for laughing at that?' The answer to both is 'yes'.) I thanked Cameron on behalf of a grateful nation for AC/DC, for which he graciously took credit, but he refused any culpability for Baz Luhrmann, which struck me as hypocritical. Everybody learned some great Aussie cusses which I'll be practicing to pull out later at Noircon. Scott advanced all the runners with an excerpt from his fantastically twisted new novel Rut, (which you ALL have to order from Stona Fitch's Concord Free Press... Yeah, it's free, do it,) and Dan O'Shea brought everybody home with his contribution to Discount Noir, a nasty piece of middle American malaise. Hung around the bar for a couple hours with the degenerates and closed the evening with Ashley and Woods at the hotel bar sometime Friday morning. (Check out McBride's version of the events here.)

Spent the rest of the morning with those two and Scott, then dropped Woods at the airport and gave Ashley the rinky-dink tour of the Lou. We bought two gallons of beer from the brewery up the street for lunch and spent the rest of the day eliminating them, met up with Scott for nightcaps and sent him off to Toronto first thing in the morning.

I've spent the last two days in bed. But don't cry for me, Argentina, Saturday's mail brought some great reasons to stay there a while - Cortright McMeel's Short, Phillips' Rut, Gil Brewer's The Red Scarf and Dave Zeltserman's 21 Tales. Come get me next week, or turn me over at lest.

Speaking of Crimefactory, Issue 5 is live featuring fiction from Charlie Williams, Sandra Ruttan, Stephen Blackmoore, Patricia Abbott, Matthew C. Funk, Paul D. Brazill, John Weagly, Jim Winter, Chad Rohrbacher, Erik Lundy, Richard Godwin, Libby Cudmore and Calvin Seen.. Of course there's a nice helping of non-fiction features as well from the likes of Andrew Nette, Gary Lovisi, The Nerd of Noir, Eric Beetner, Audrey Homan and Jimmy Callaway.

Something that I don't need to apologize for, but I do feel a certain nagging urge to make up for is my lack of online participation with the cool community of writers, readers and enthusiasts that I have the good fortune of rubbing virtual elbows with out here. I'm just not much of an online guy. Haven't got access to the webs at my house, so I'm not a casual browser. I get online and take care of business, then I'm gone. For that reason, I don't get hip to new stuffs very quickly, I don't do the flash fiction challenges or exchange witty Tweets, not because I don't want to, but it just aint in the cards for me now. Every once in a while I receive a heads up to a new site that I'd probably spend time at if I had more of it. Here's a couple examples of some that you're probably already hip to. Noir Journal, Thrills Blog and The Crime of it All. Check 'em out and lemme know what you think. Meanwhile, Nigel Bird continues the series of one sided conversations over at Sea Minor with Benjamin Whitmer and Charlie Stella. Or how 'bout this contest from Chris F. Holm's blog, a six word story - winner gets a copy of Beat to a Pulp: Round One. And Daniel Woodrell has a new story up at Narrative called Blue Norton. Here's the kickass opening line, "They woke us up about three to go into the jungle and find the sergeant's foot."

Like I said, I've been bloody exhausted and sickly all weekend, so I didn't get out to post links to Friday's Ransom Notes piece about Reed Farrel Coleman and his new one Innocent Monster. I feel bad about that, but it looks like Colemanites found their way over on their own. Good on you, Coleman nation. Today at Ransom Notes, I'm speaky on the topic of alternative routes to publishing, in specific Seth Harwood whose latest Young Junius is now available and recommended, (also mentioned in the piece is Phillips' Rut).

Lastly, I do have N@B schwag for anybody wanting some - event read sheets autographed by meself, Jonathan Woods, Matthew McBride, Chris La Tray, Dan O'Shea, Scott Phillips and Cameron Ashley. These are the printouts the authors read from at the event and each is signed by everybody. Also, I'm giving away an autographed copy of Woods' Bad Juju which he inscribed with a rather saucy remark about yours truly. What do you have to do to "win" these? Just leave a comment on this post and I'll getcha somethin. Out of the country? Don't worry, I'll send you something too.

13 comments:

Kent said...

Sounds like the latest Noir At The Bar was a hoot.

Cam and his nation have given us a lot of great rock'n'roll over the years. X. Cosmic Psychos. The Scientists. The Beasts of Bourbon. DollSquad. Radio Birdman. The Hitmen. Rose Tattoo. The Saints. The Lipstick Killers... Ok, I'll shut up.

jedidiah ayres said...

Birthday Party, Nick Cave...

but then we can't let 'em off the hook for Frog Stomp.

Kent said...

They should've sent Chopper to silence Silverchair.

pattinase (abbott) said...

At least when you come on to chat, you chat up a storm.

Amanda said...

Thanks for putting together such an awesome event. We had a great time, and would love a memento.

jedidiah ayres said...

Amanda - email me an address to send something to. Check my profile on the rt. hand side of the screen for the email address.

Thanks for coming out

Jon Bassoff said...

Gonna have to figure out how to make the next Noir at the Bar. I'll start selling blood this week and hitchiking the next.

Unknown said...

I forgot Libby Cudmore in the hurly burly of things. But she's up the next couple of issues for SHIFT WORK (serial) And I haven't had regular Internet access during the day at the job for about a month now and I'm just not missing it all that much

koolphil said...

couldn't make it but i know you guys kicked it. comment, comment, comment =D

Chris said...

It was a blast. Thanks for letting me crash the party! I'll have my own overview once I finally get caught up myself.

Chris said...

Thanks for the mention!

Kathleen A. Ryan said...

I'm LOL at your blog post title...what fun!

I hope you're feeling better!

Thanks for all the great links.

Hope to meet you next year at B-con.

jedidiah ayres said...

Kathleen - September is gonna be a glorious wreck. I do feel better, thanks.