Next, I was in Chicago for N@B a couple weeks ago. Stayed with Jake & Heather and entered into conversations on topics like Jello Biafra's bluegrass faze, promoting books in France, the melancholy of porno conventions, all the latest in current events, all the oldest in personal histories, fascinations with L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology's own pulp master/P.T. Barnum/Bernie Madoff and the pleasures of breakfast at midnight. The event was attended by favorite folks like the Gowrans, the Hennessys, Kevin Lynn Helmick and John Weagley, hosted by Jake Hinkson and emceed by Livius Nedin & Robb Olson who recorded the whole damn thing and released said audio as two episodes of their famed Booked Podcast.
After I stunk up the joint Libby Fischer Hellmann read a heart-warming prison story about how well things go between the races behind bars. After the event I picked up a copy of Libby's novel Nobody's Child and if it's as feel-good as her short story you'd best hide the sharp objects before endeavoring to finish.
Booked's second episode (which you can hear right here) kicks off with the one 'n only Heath Lowrance reading his short story Five Bucks Buys Some Goddamn Vodka from Needle Magazine's Spring 2014 issue. Was a huge pleasure to finally meet Heath face to face. I've been enjoying his stuff since The Bastard Hand and it turns out he's a handsome bastard... and not nearly as gaping an asshole as you might expect... I was surprised. Dan O'Shea finished the evening with his sick little story of tweakers knocking over a Girl Scout cookie sales champ, Thin Mints.
BTW - you know who else is in that first N@B antho? Chicago-native and non-N@B attendee because he had a fancy pants speaking engagement in Oklahoma, Richard Thomas. Richard's latest book Disintegration is not an entry in the 33 1/3 series about The Cure, but a noir-boiled crime mind fuck the Booked boys also spoke on. Go, read. Listen. Hope to cross paths again, soon, Richard. Damn handsome man on the cover of that there book, too.
And while we're talking damned handsome books - nothing so pretty (though some more good shit, no doubt) as the physical copy of Jake Hinkson's short story collection The Deepening Shade from All Due Respect Books. Seriously, this is a super classy paperback, that's almost as deep a pleasure to hold as it is to read. Good job, Chris Rhatigan, Mike Monson, JT Lindroos and everybody at ADR.
Last week I was in Mississippi for N@B-Oxford hosted by bearded ball-shiner and N@B-alum, William Boyle. Bill put together a ridiculously heavy-hitting lineup who deserve more attention than I can give them, but... a couple of highlights: Jack Pendarvis reading a short piece titled Joan Crawford: A Hot Looking Woman, Ace Atkins reading the monkey-killing passage from Larry Brown's Fathers & Sons, Derrick Harriell hanging some noirboiled poems out to dry and the outlaw narrative musical stylings of Tyler Keith, but my personal favorite moment was Melissa Ginsburg giving us a cut passage from her long-anticipated debut novel Sunset City (seriously, I've been excited for this one for years... like five). Anyhow, when that beast comes out next year from Ecco, you can betcher sweet bippy I'll be rapping to the beat.
Another highlight - the preview of Mary Miller's Mississippi Noir contribution... and coincidence? I gave a taste of my story Have You Seen Me? from the upcoming St. Louis Noir. Shit, I'm looking forward to those two Akashic city noir installments edited by Tom Franklin and Scott Phillips respectively. Get here soon, please. Meantime I'll have to catch up with Miller's novel Big World... I hear things. Big things.
Had the pleasure of staying with Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly and dig through their comic book collection as well as put my smudge marks all over the William Gay novel Little Sister Death coming soon from Dzanc (who will also be publishing The Final Country and have already put out there an e-book collection of stories and essays Time Done Been Won't Be No More - Guy Intoci and company are doing bang-up work).
Also in big Gay news... it appears my dreams of a big screen adaptation of Gay's novel The Long Home are coming true only... not as I had hoped. James Franco is producing, directing and starring as Dallas Hardin in a new film based on Gay's debut novel. Franco has a taste for southern gothic as demonstrated in his previous directorial efforts based on classic books: As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury from William Faulkner's famously unfilmable books and Child of God from Cormac McCarthy's creepiest cranial crannies. The Long Home has a cast of names recognizable and double-take inducing (Courtney Love? Ashton Kutcher?), but does not have a script written by me.
Fuck.
So there you go - three new stories. For me, that's huge output. Maybe I'm on a roll. Not sure what I'm going to read at N@B-Indianapolis on June 20 alongside Hinkson, O'Shea, CJ Edwards and Alec Cizak. Show up and find out.
4 comments:
Damn. You go to porn conventions? How come we never see you there?
Wait, you mean that wasn't you?
Wait... Toto... I have a feeling we're not in Kansas any more!
Thanks!
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