Behold the coolness. Coming next month. Professor X fans should pop a frosty one, sit back and enjoy the awesome.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Debut Novelist Steve Ulfelder's PURGATORY CHASM
Hey folks. I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Ulfelder's debut novel Purgatory Chasm, so I thought I;d give it a shot out here at Blogpocalypse. It's a great read, and Ulfelder seems like a writer who's been doing it for years rather than a first time rookie.
From the back cover: "Our Hero Conway Sax, a smart-talking former alchoholic who owes everything he's got to the Barnburners, the Alchoholics Anonymous group who saved him. So when they have a problem, he fixes it. When obnoxious, blowhard Barnburner Tander Phigg gives him a call, Conway reluctantly agrees to help. But then Tander turns up dead, and Conway becomes the cops' top suspect. He needs to catch the killer, not only to clear himself, but because he's also the type of guy to honor his promises, even whern the guy he made them to is dead. Conway Sax isn't a hired gun, or a sophisticated urbanite; He's just a car mechanic trying to make his way."
If you enjoy the "regular guy as hero" type story, then give this one a try.
And check out Steve Ulfelder's website for more info.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Anthony Neil Smith interviewed here and now!
Author Anthony Neil Smith is reissuing his fantastic Yellow Medicine on Kindle and Nook. Let's talk to him about it. And about other stuff too!
1. Crime Dog Books. Huh? What? Explain yourself.
I miss the idea of the "brand" on self-pubbed e-books, like to old Gold Medal, but I'm not ready to start a real publisher. So I decided to make a Crimedog Books badge (Erik Lundy designed it) for Yellow Medicine and beyond. But then I thought, well, why not just give the brand to any of our PWG alums with an e-book to create that feeling of a brand again. I don't know about you, but when I see a Gold Medal or a Penguin or a Vintage/Black Lizard, or even a Vertigo, I know I'm getting quality. Same with Crimedog Books. And we get none of the profits. Just a community. Once we get a handful of CDBs, we're going to list them at a page on PWG. Yellow Medicine and Hogdoggin' will be #1 and #2.
2. You gave yourself a promotion at PLOTS WITH GUNS. What's going on with the journal? Can we expect to ever see a collection of the Best of PWG on Crime Dog Books?
I had run myself ragged with being the one-man band behind PLOTS WITH GUNS, so I "hired" (ha. no money in it) some new assistant editors to help out. But I was still way behind in reading, still having trouble getting new art, tried of delaying issue after issue. I couldn't do that plus the day job plus my own writing. But I didn't want to see it die. So the idea was to make myself "Publisher" (kind of like Stan Lee), pay for the site and drive the "big picture" idea of it, while finding a great new editor and art director to handle the actual production of the thing. And I also wanted them to take it places I had never thought of. So now we've got former MURDALAND assistant ed Sean O'Kane, who is a monster editor with great ideas for the future. Erik Lundy should be getting a fat salary for the amazing art he does (the new cover of Yellow Medicine is Lundy's, too), but he works for PWG so he gets jackshit. And our other two Assistants, Gonzalo Baeza and Marty McCabe, are sharp and can help choose the work that keeps us on top.
3. Your novel YELLOW MEDICINE was originally published by the now seemingly in limbo / possibly defunct Bleak House Books. Talk about what it means to give the novel a new life on the Kindle and Nook.
It means the world. I get to push this thing to an entirely new audience, and I get a bitchin' new retro cover. I just want people to read it and enjoy it. I've got a box of Yellow Medicine's sitting in my closet, and I give them away to people every now and then, but for the most part they're not doing anyone any good sitting there not getting read. Having the e-version out means a lot more people can get it for a decent price. I love promoting it, too. A lot of fun, even if I make an ass of myself on purpose while trying.
Also, before the implosion of Bleak House, I had thought about a third Lafitte novel to round out the story, and maybe some short stories from before he moved to Minnesota. If the e-versions of YM and the sequel, HOGDOGGIN', do well, I can go ahead and write the new Lafitte stuff.
4. Give new readers a little hint of what they can expect from Billy Lafite.
This is the guy in the bar you're glad to buy drinks for while he's telling his wild-assed stories, but who chills your blood when he asks for a lift home. Dangerous, but you're captivated by him. A bad egg, but you root for him. I was interested in that line between sympathetic and unsympathetic, how far he could go before the reader decided he wasn't worth cheering on.
He's pretty confident that his power as a cop can allow him to get away with anything. Worse, he uses that power to force loyalty from people, and he confuses that with earned loyalty, I think. But he likes being feared more than respected. God knows why.
5. Let's move some product. Give readers a run-down on CHOKE ON YOUR LIES and THE DRUMMER and your other e-books.
CHOKE ON YOUR LIES is a bit of a left turn for me. Not really a noir. It's my tribute to the Nero Wolfe detective series and features a very large woman who is rich, powerful, and very mean. Her "Archie" is Mick, a poetry professor who is about to lose his wife, his house, and his job. He's a weak-willed sort, and he needs Octavia's help, which is pretty much like selling his soul. Plus, it's got a lot of sex in it.
THE DRUMMER is my love song to New Orleans, written before Katrina and sold the same month Katrina hit. It's my take on the "man on the run" thriller, with an 80s metal drummer faking his death to avoid personal problems and the tax man. The singer tracks him down 15 years later and wants a reunion. So now he's got to find a way to keep the life he's built for himself, and he'll do *anything* it takes to do so. Heartbreaking stuff, full of rock and roll, sex, and tequila.
Oh, and my first novel, PSYCHOSOMATIC, which is batshit crazy and features a woman with no arms or legs...and she's in charge!
Plus: TO THE DEVIL, MY REGARDS, co-written with this Gischler hack, about a P.I. who makes all the wrong choices along the Alabama Gulf Coast.
6. What's next?
The sequel to YELLOW MEDICINE, called HOGDOGGIN', gets its e-debut in June. It was published in 2009, right before Bleak House went bye-bye. And then maybe some of my early short stories bundled together. We're trying to sell a thriller to the big NYC guns right now, but in the meantime I'm working on new novellas for Kindle, and on a sequel to that thriller I mentioned.
7. We've known each other a long time, since grad school at the hot and humid University of Southern Mississippi. But you've been in Minnesota a while now. How's life? Adjusted?
My first semester in Minnesota was hell. I thought I it was a mistake. That's because I was in the southwest corner, where it's pretty much cornfields and the smell of beets being turned into sugar (which is not pleasant). The anger was what got me going on YELLOW MEDICINE. But then I met the love of my life, and she turned me on to the great stuff about Minnesota I hadn't seen yet--Minneapolis, the northern woods, Duluth--and the more I fell for her, the more I fell for Minnesota. So I love my job (Director of Creative Writing at Southwest Minnesota State University), love the beauty of the state, and have come to appreciate the stark, frozen, wind-whipped prairies down here. Especially as a setting.
8. What are you reading?
Currently working on Jo Nesbo's THE DEVIL'S STAR. I like his stuff, even though it's more quiet than the noir I usually gravitate towards. Also just finished some Danny Hogan pulp on Kindle. Crazy stuff. And I'm getting ready to launch into the sneak peek copy of DUST DEVILS that Roger Smith sent me. If you haven't read Roger Smith yet, I'm telling you this is THE SHIT right here. His two novels were both in my faves last year. Stunningly violent and full of unsympathetic characters. Love it.
9. It's your soap box. Anything you want to say about the "state of the genre" or the "definition of noir"?
I'm done with definitions. I just want to read stuff that gets to me. Plenty of stuff could follow the "classic" definition of noir and it would bore me silly. I don't care about rules. I care about what works. You ever seen the X-Games moto-cross guys? They have to redefine the sport all the time because of the tricks these guys think up. The riders are ahead of the game. So do something amazing on the page and I'll love it. Bore me and you're done.
The state of the genre is blooming because people are churning out pulp on the Kindle. Fuck the naysayers. I'm telling you, the same way they were churning out pulp in the early part of the 20th century, that's what we're seeing now in e-books. And yeah, there's a lot of sheer bullshit out there, same as way back when, but the good stuff will swim to the top of the muck and shine through.
10. Okay, back to the reason we're here. We're making a big push to sell copies of YELLOW MEDICINE today. Tell readers how they can join in.
So today's Sunday, May 1st, right? What I want you to do is head over to http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Medicine-ebook/dp/B004XWQ0DC/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5 at 2PM (EDT) -- I got Standard and Daylight confused in earlier posts. Sorry--and BUY THE DAMN BOOK. If enough people do it all at the same time, we can run it high up the bestseller list so people can see it, and hopefully it'll snowball down the hill from there. Only 99 cents for a full fucking novel. Why not?
I miss the idea of the "brand" on self-pubbed e-books, like to old Gold Medal, but I'm not ready to start a real publisher. So I decided to make a Crimedog Books badge (Erik Lundy designed it) for Yellow Medicine and beyond. But then I thought, well, why not just give the brand to any of our PWG alums with an e-book to create that feeling of a brand again. I don't know about you, but when I see a Gold Medal or a Penguin or a Vintage/Black Lizard, or even a Vertigo, I know I'm getting quality. Same with Crimedog Books. And we get none of the profits. Just a community. Once we get a handful of CDBs, we're going to list them at a page on PWG. Yellow Medicine and Hogdoggin' will be #1 and #2.
2. You gave yourself a promotion at PLOTS WITH GUNS. What's going on with the journal? Can we expect to ever see a collection of the Best of PWG on Crime Dog Books?
I had run myself ragged with being the one-man band behind PLOTS WITH GUNS, so I "hired" (ha. no money in it) some new assistant editors to help out. But I was still way behind in reading, still having trouble getting new art, tried of delaying issue after issue. I couldn't do that plus the day job plus my own writing. But I didn't want to see it die. So the idea was to make myself "Publisher" (kind of like Stan Lee), pay for the site and drive the "big picture" idea of it, while finding a great new editor and art director to handle the actual production of the thing. And I also wanted them to take it places I had never thought of. So now we've got former MURDALAND assistant ed Sean O'Kane, who is a monster editor with great ideas for the future. Erik Lundy should be getting a fat salary for the amazing art he does (the new cover of Yellow Medicine is Lundy's, too), but he works for PWG so he gets jackshit. And our other two Assistants, Gonzalo Baeza and Marty McCabe, are sharp and can help choose the work that keeps us on top.
3. Your novel YELLOW MEDICINE was originally published by the now seemingly in limbo / possibly defunct Bleak House Books. Talk about what it means to give the novel a new life on the Kindle and Nook.
It means the world. I get to push this thing to an entirely new audience, and I get a bitchin' new retro cover. I just want people to read it and enjoy it. I've got a box of Yellow Medicine's sitting in my closet, and I give them away to people every now and then, but for the most part they're not doing anyone any good sitting there not getting read. Having the e-version out means a lot more people can get it for a decent price. I love promoting it, too. A lot of fun, even if I make an ass of myself on purpose while trying.
Also, before the implosion of Bleak House, I had thought about a third Lafitte novel to round out the story, and maybe some short stories from before he moved to Minnesota. If the e-versions of YM and the sequel, HOGDOGGIN', do well, I can go ahead and write the new Lafitte stuff.
4. Give new readers a little hint of what they can expect from Billy Lafite.
This is the guy in the bar you're glad to buy drinks for while he's telling his wild-assed stories, but who chills your blood when he asks for a lift home. Dangerous, but you're captivated by him. A bad egg, but you root for him. I was interested in that line between sympathetic and unsympathetic, how far he could go before the reader decided he wasn't worth cheering on.
He's pretty confident that his power as a cop can allow him to get away with anything. Worse, he uses that power to force loyalty from people, and he confuses that with earned loyalty, I think. But he likes being feared more than respected. God knows why.
5. Let's move some product. Give readers a run-down on CHOKE ON YOUR LIES and THE DRUMMER and your other e-books.
CHOKE ON YOUR LIES is a bit of a left turn for me. Not really a noir. It's my tribute to the Nero Wolfe detective series and features a very large woman who is rich, powerful, and very mean. Her "Archie" is Mick, a poetry professor who is about to lose his wife, his house, and his job. He's a weak-willed sort, and he needs Octavia's help, which is pretty much like selling his soul. Plus, it's got a lot of sex in it.
THE DRUMMER is my love song to New Orleans, written before Katrina and sold the same month Katrina hit. It's my take on the "man on the run" thriller, with an 80s metal drummer faking his death to avoid personal problems and the tax man. The singer tracks him down 15 years later and wants a reunion. So now he's got to find a way to keep the life he's built for himself, and he'll do *anything* it takes to do so. Heartbreaking stuff, full of rock and roll, sex, and tequila.
Oh, and my first novel, PSYCHOSOMATIC, which is batshit crazy and features a woman with no arms or legs...and she's in charge!
Plus: TO THE DEVIL, MY REGARDS, co-written with this Gischler hack, about a P.I. who makes all the wrong choices along the Alabama Gulf Coast.
6. What's next?
The sequel to YELLOW MEDICINE, called HOGDOGGIN', gets its e-debut in June. It was published in 2009, right before Bleak House went bye-bye. And then maybe some of my early short stories bundled together. We're trying to sell a thriller to the big NYC guns right now, but in the meantime I'm working on new novellas for Kindle, and on a sequel to that thriller I mentioned.
7. We've known each other a long time, since grad school at the hot and humid University of Southern Mississippi. But you've been in Minnesota a while now. How's life? Adjusted?
My first semester in Minnesota was hell. I thought I it was a mistake. That's because I was in the southwest corner, where it's pretty much cornfields and the smell of beets being turned into sugar (which is not pleasant). The anger was what got me going on YELLOW MEDICINE. But then I met the love of my life, and she turned me on to the great stuff about Minnesota I hadn't seen yet--Minneapolis, the northern woods, Duluth--and the more I fell for her, the more I fell for Minnesota. So I love my job (Director of Creative Writing at Southwest Minnesota State University), love the beauty of the state, and have come to appreciate the stark, frozen, wind-whipped prairies down here. Especially as a setting.
8. What are you reading?
Currently working on Jo Nesbo's THE DEVIL'S STAR. I like his stuff, even though it's more quiet than the noir I usually gravitate towards. Also just finished some Danny Hogan pulp on Kindle. Crazy stuff. And I'm getting ready to launch into the sneak peek copy of DUST DEVILS that Roger Smith sent me. If you haven't read Roger Smith yet, I'm telling you this is THE SHIT right here. His two novels were both in my faves last year. Stunningly violent and full of unsympathetic characters. Love it.
9. It's your soap box. Anything you want to say about the "state of the genre" or the "definition of noir"?
I'm done with definitions. I just want to read stuff that gets to me. Plenty of stuff could follow the "classic" definition of noir and it would bore me silly. I don't care about rules. I care about what works. You ever seen the X-Games moto-cross guys? They have to redefine the sport all the time because of the tricks these guys think up. The riders are ahead of the game. So do something amazing on the page and I'll love it. Bore me and you're done.
The state of the genre is blooming because people are churning out pulp on the Kindle. Fuck the naysayers. I'm telling you, the same way they were churning out pulp in the early part of the 20th century, that's what we're seeing now in e-books. And yeah, there's a lot of sheer bullshit out there, same as way back when, but the good stuff will swim to the top of the muck and shine through.
10. Okay, back to the reason we're here. We're making a big push to sell copies of YELLOW MEDICINE today. Tell readers how they can join in.
So today's Sunday, May 1st, right? What I want you to do is head over to http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Medicine-ebook/dp/B004XWQ0DC/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5 at 2PM (EDT) -- I got Standard and Daylight confused in earlier posts. Sorry--and BUY THE DAMN BOOK. If enough people do it all at the same time, we can run it high up the bestseller list so people can see it, and hopefully it'll snowball down the hill from there. Only 99 cents for a full fucking novel. Why not?
You heard the man, everyone! Bring money! 99 cents is cheap!
If you've read Neil's work and have encouraging words for those considering a purchase, chime in with your comments.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Emerson LaSalle: Rumors Abound!
Folks, I've literaly been inundated with e-mails (okay, one e-mail) asking if it's true that all of Emerson LaSalle's pulp sci-fi will be re-issued on Kindle and Nook. People, I just don't know, but I'm as excited as you are about the rumors. As you know, Anthony Neil Smith and I wrote the screenplay based loosely on events from Emerson LaSalle's life. So, yes, I'm obviously a fan. I'd love to read Sheriff Dracula or Spaceport Floozy or any of the old classics. If you hear anything about this, please let me know.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
NATHAN LARSON: The Blogpocalypse Interview
Nathan Larson's debut novel THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM is a fantastic blend of hardboiled shamus and near-future dystopian elements. Blogpocalypse caught up with Nathan to pester him with a few questions:
1. First thing first. You come from a musical background. Tell us about that?
Yup. I lived in D.C. in the early-mid '80s and as a young un was very much a part of the hardcore punk scene which at the time was really happening down there. In the early 90s, my post-punkish math rocky band got swept up in the Nirvana-era tide of major label signings, which was a wild and ridiculously unrealistic ride till it all came crashing down in the late 90s....luckily for me I stumbled (literally) out of that wreckage into the world of film scoring, cos some directors happened to dig my old band, and off I went down that path, one which I'm still on. It's lucrative and I can see myself doing that kind of thing (making film music) into my middle-post-middle age gracefully, as opposed to trying to squeeze a pair of leather pants over my paunch for the rest of my life. Rock is for the young. And now I have the incredibly good fortune to find myself having written a novel, seeing it published, and experiencing real people actually reading it. I am truly a lucky man and hope this is the advent of yet another chapter for this guy right here.
2. THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM is your first novel. Tell us about the process of writing it. Are these different creative muscles your using from your musical efforts?
I have to say the mental processes that went into writing this book were very much the same as that which I apply to music, or anything creative really. Not to get too esoteric, maybe you dig this, but I think it was Keith Richards (among many others) who talk about this "mass" or "cloud" of information/ source material/ magic, and all the artist has to do is poke a hole in the cloud, stick in a straw and start snorting (metaphor inspired by Keith). You channel shit. I find I'm able to do this, but only if I sit down to work without giving it a second thought, just do it and not judge it. This requires speed, you're keeping that nasty fucking brain censor at bay, that evil thing that has a constant "you suck you suck you suck" mantra going, you're racing ahead of this bad energy. When I look back on this book I can totally see areas where meticulous "plotting" was sacrificed in order to harness the tempo...I saw a "bad" review of this book that faulted it for losing the plot in the violence, and if that's the case I'm totally ok with it. It's like Chandler says (again I paraphrase): if you get bored send in a dude with a gun. You can always come back later and polish, which to me is almost exactly the vibe one aspires to when making music. It's palpable in the end result.
3. I love how the novel blends a sort of sci-fi-ish near-future dystopia with the hardboiled shamus genre. How did you decide on the setting and approach for this novel?
I didn't exactly decide so much as discover, after page into the thing, that I would somehow have to arrange for spaces to get cleared out for my character. It just sort of emerged. I certainly am a lover of both "genres", and have enjoyed books such as your own GO GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE or Charlie Huston's NY hardboiled vampire series where something like this setting is presented, so that combination is familiar to me. I resisted the sci-fi-ish element for a while, if only because I simply don't feel like I have the writing chops to adequately describe what a decimated New York City would look like. I'm just not qualified. It's hard enough to do New York City properly as it is.
I recall looking at the remnants of the WTC in late September of 2001 and only being able to come up with "it looks like Die Hard 4 where they blow up the World Trade Center, the movie they shelved cos THIS thing happened....". I just start seeing CGI stuff and that's not interesting at all. Scorpion King bullshit. Feel like we're kind of poisoned in this sense, we're so accustomed to seeing the same-y CGI shit over and over. Tolkien armies swarming over the hill, it's all just algorithms + plug-ins and it all looks the same.
So I tried to keep it hazy, maybe zooming in on a detail but (I hope and pray) leaving space for the reader to fill thing in themselves in terms of the landscape. So to get back to it, it wasn't a choice per se but I'm glad it landed where it did.
4. Tell us about your road to publication and how you ended up at Akashic.
Man full disclosure, I knew the head of Akashic, my bud and publisher Johnny Temple, we go way back to our teen years in bands down in DC...we ran into each other at a party having not seen each other in a while and he asked if I had anything, cos I used to scribble all the time, little stuff here and there and lyrics etc...as it was I did have a super messy longer-form thing I had attempted, so I said sure. Well that particular piece of writing was not happening at all, but Johnny must have seen something in there cos he sat me down and straight up asked if I could do a noir-y kind of jammie. I had the time and just said fuck it I'll go for it. So I feel a tad guilty, I didn't have to do any of the sending manuscripts around + rejection letters slog, the situation I walked into was really pretty ideal and allowed me to write without that added stress on top of my head. I'm very aware of how lucky I am with respect to the way this whole thing went down, very sweet.
5. What fiction do you read? What literary influences fueled the novel?
wow there's a lot of ground to cover here...you know I love the classic noir, Cain, Thompson etc, and I dig jackasses like Victor Gischler (no but for serious I do love your work), Megan Abbott, Charlie Huston, Duane Swierczynski...what do you call what you do? What is it? Is it neo-noir? And of course Ellroy, Leonard, Winslow. Wandering away from that kind of thing a bit I clearly am into Philip K. Dick in a big way, I love William Gibson, J.G. Ballard is one of my faves....beyond that just a random grab into the hat; William Vollmann, Chuck Palahniuk, Will Self, Martin Amis, Daphne Du Maurier, H.P. Lovecraft, Dennis Cooper, Jerry Stahl, Ryu Murakami, Denis Johnson, Sara Gran, Roberto Bolano, Joy Williams, Susan Sontag, Don Delillo, Lionel Schriver, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Conner....shit I could go on and on.
But I couldn't and didn't read anything fiction-wise when writing....can you pull that off? Except nonfiction material that might relate to an aspect of the book, stuff on Bosnia, Anna Politkovskaya's brave as fuck got-her-killed book on contemporary Russia. Gun magazines, cos I didn't know anything about guns and weirdly got off on reading these magazines. I would go to the newsstand and get GUNS AND AMMO and MODERN PARENTING cos my wife was pregnant at the time with our son (who is now 6 mths) , struck me as a funny combo of mags
6. Any upcoming events, reading, promotional stops you'd like people to know about?
Not sure when this piece is running, but I'm doing a slew of stuff over the next couple weeks....here's a link: http://www.akashicbooks.com/deweydecimalsystemevents.htm
Buy the book though! Great if you can support your local indie bookstore, but here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Dewey-Decimal-System-Akashic-Surreal/dp/1617750107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296262585&sr=8-1
Beyond that I'll be doing stuff in the Fall. Spending most of the summer in Europe prancing around. My wife's Swedish, we have a place there as well.
7. I really like how you hint at certain events in the novel (like the 2/14 stuff) but never flat out tell us what happened. If other novelists did this, readers might punch them square in the balls. But I think you pull it off, and it actually makes the novel better and more mysterious. How did you arrive at this approach? And will these questions be answered in future books?
Yes those questions will be answered, thanks for your kindness, I hope I pull it off ok, again as I mentioned above I wanted to give it more of a sketch-like feel so folks would fill their own mental pictures in, likewise I would like the reader to develop his/ her own theories. Plus I didn't really have an answer until I was nearly finished with this first book. The only problem with what I came up with is that it calls for more books, which isn't really a problem so much as something to get done.
8. Three bands you love:
VERY VERY difficult:
The Bad Brains
Sly and the Family Stone
X
Anything Stax Records (ok that's 4-ish)
9. Three things you love to eat:
I'll have to be place-specific as well:
The cheeseburger from Le Pigeon in Portland, OR. : http://www.lepigeon.com/ (tied for first place: The Black Iron Burger, NYC : crappy website! http://www.blackironburger.com/), just a diff vibe...Le Pigeon is fancier
The Gnocchi alla Aglio D'orato from Supper, NYC : http://www.supperrestaurant.com/
a big ass helping of anything from Toscanini's Ice Cream, Boston : http://www.tosci.com/
10. Favorite drink:
I'm boring in the sense that I dropped alcohol, drug, cigarettes etc (no choice...I cannot have just one of anything I gotta have it all) and I'm kind of one of those annoying yoga guys, I know I know it's boring...
but I couldn't imagine my life without the occasional double macchiato from Gimme Coffee, NYC : http://www.gimmecoffee.com/static/community_stores.aspx
Tied for first: The amazing coconut water from One Lucky Duck, NYC: http://www.oneluckyduck.com/takeaway/
I dig that this come off as fancy-pants-y, I'm just really particular about this jazz and have sought these things out...
11. Sports?
As a punk teen it was mandatory that I skated. It was more about hanging out and having the right stickers on your board. I sucked but I gave it my best shot.
I do better as a spectator. I love basketball. I am so thrilled about this recent trade my Knicks made cos it's shot them full of energy, even if they're not gonna get anywhere. Being a Knicks fan (especially through the '90s) is just fucking tragic. Self-flagellatory, Opes Dei style. But if you get the bug you can't help it. I get all misty talking about the Knicks.
Also love "European" soccer. Sorry. I do. It's an awesome game and a total mystery to me why it hasn't gotten much traction in the US, when a huge portion of the world's population lives and breathes the sport. I never miss watching the Cup at the very least, if I'm in the States....they're getting better, the last one was pretty widely televised. I greatly DISLIKE regional UK football, it's just trashy somehow.
Don't understand American football but I'll tell you what, Superbowl 2007 Prince came out at halftime and just fucking destroyed everybody, I mean he KILLED it, I have rarely seen anything that fantastic. One of the best guitar solos I've heard in my life. So much heart. I just watched it again and wept. I'm not scared 2 admit it 2 U : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QKajzKmyhw&feature=related
12 Tell us about your next literary effort. Will we see Dewey again ... or something new?
Yeah Dewey is coming back to do his thing, I'm well into book 2 and now have an sense of what book 3 will look like, so I guess I'm down for a "trilogy." The word "trilogy" reminds me of Rush or some kinda prog-rock concept record but there it is. I am definitely not done with Dewey Decimal, I love him like a brother and he's not done with me either.
1. First thing first. You come from a musical background. Tell us about that?
Yup. I lived in D.C. in the early-mid '80s and as a young un was very much a part of the hardcore punk scene which at the time was really happening down there. In the early 90s, my post-punkish math rocky band got swept up in the Nirvana-era tide of major label signings, which was a wild and ridiculously unrealistic ride till it all came crashing down in the late 90s....luckily for me I stumbled (literally) out of that wreckage into the world of film scoring, cos some directors happened to dig my old band, and off I went down that path, one which I'm still on. It's lucrative and I can see myself doing that kind of thing (making film music) into my middle-post-middle age gracefully, as opposed to trying to squeeze a pair of leather pants over my paunch for the rest of my life. Rock is for the young. And now I have the incredibly good fortune to find myself having written a novel, seeing it published, and experiencing real people actually reading it. I am truly a lucky man and hope this is the advent of yet another chapter for this guy right here.
2. THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM is your first novel. Tell us about the process of writing it. Are these different creative muscles your using from your musical efforts?
I have to say the mental processes that went into writing this book were very much the same as that which I apply to music, or anything creative really. Not to get too esoteric, maybe you dig this, but I think it was Keith Richards (among many others) who talk about this "mass" or "cloud" of information/ source material/ magic, and all the artist has to do is poke a hole in the cloud, stick in a straw and start snorting (metaphor inspired by Keith). You channel shit. I find I'm able to do this, but only if I sit down to work without giving it a second thought, just do it and not judge it. This requires speed, you're keeping that nasty fucking brain censor at bay, that evil thing that has a constant "you suck you suck you suck" mantra going, you're racing ahead of this bad energy. When I look back on this book I can totally see areas where meticulous "plotting" was sacrificed in order to harness the tempo...I saw a "bad" review of this book that faulted it for losing the plot in the violence, and if that's the case I'm totally ok with it. It's like Chandler says (again I paraphrase): if you get bored send in a dude with a gun. You can always come back later and polish, which to me is almost exactly the vibe one aspires to when making music. It's palpable in the end result.
3. I love how the novel blends a sort of sci-fi-ish near-future dystopia with the hardboiled shamus genre. How did you decide on the setting and approach for this novel?
I didn't exactly decide so much as discover, after page into the thing, that I would somehow have to arrange for spaces to get cleared out for my character. It just sort of emerged. I certainly am a lover of both "genres", and have enjoyed books such as your own GO GO GIRLS OF THE APOCALYPSE or Charlie Huston's NY hardboiled vampire series where something like this setting is presented, so that combination is familiar to me. I resisted the sci-fi-ish element for a while, if only because I simply don't feel like I have the writing chops to adequately describe what a decimated New York City would look like. I'm just not qualified. It's hard enough to do New York City properly as it is.
I recall looking at the remnants of the WTC in late September of 2001 and only being able to come up with "it looks like Die Hard 4 where they blow up the World Trade Center, the movie they shelved cos THIS thing happened....". I just start seeing CGI stuff and that's not interesting at all. Scorpion King bullshit. Feel like we're kind of poisoned in this sense, we're so accustomed to seeing the same-y CGI shit over and over. Tolkien armies swarming over the hill, it's all just algorithms + plug-ins and it all looks the same.
So I tried to keep it hazy, maybe zooming in on a detail but (I hope and pray) leaving space for the reader to fill thing in themselves in terms of the landscape. So to get back to it, it wasn't a choice per se but I'm glad it landed where it did.
4. Tell us about your road to publication and how you ended up at Akashic.
Man full disclosure, I knew the head of Akashic, my bud and publisher Johnny Temple, we go way back to our teen years in bands down in DC...we ran into each other at a party having not seen each other in a while and he asked if I had anything, cos I used to scribble all the time, little stuff here and there and lyrics etc...as it was I did have a super messy longer-form thing I had attempted, so I said sure. Well that particular piece of writing was not happening at all, but Johnny must have seen something in there cos he sat me down and straight up asked if I could do a noir-y kind of jammie. I had the time and just said fuck it I'll go for it. So I feel a tad guilty, I didn't have to do any of the sending manuscripts around + rejection letters slog, the situation I walked into was really pretty ideal and allowed me to write without that added stress on top of my head. I'm very aware of how lucky I am with respect to the way this whole thing went down, very sweet.
5. What fiction do you read? What literary influences fueled the novel?
wow there's a lot of ground to cover here...you know I love the classic noir, Cain, Thompson etc, and I dig jackasses like Victor Gischler (no but for serious I do love your work), Megan Abbott, Charlie Huston, Duane Swierczynski...what do you call what you do? What is it? Is it neo-noir? And of course Ellroy, Leonard, Winslow. Wandering away from that kind of thing a bit I clearly am into Philip K. Dick in a big way, I love William Gibson, J.G. Ballard is one of my faves....beyond that just a random grab into the hat; William Vollmann, Chuck Palahniuk, Will Self, Martin Amis, Daphne Du Maurier, H.P. Lovecraft, Dennis Cooper, Jerry Stahl, Ryu Murakami, Denis Johnson, Sara Gran, Roberto Bolano, Joy Williams, Susan Sontag, Don Delillo, Lionel Schriver, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Conner....shit I could go on and on.
But I couldn't and didn't read anything fiction-wise when writing....can you pull that off? Except nonfiction material that might relate to an aspect of the book, stuff on Bosnia, Anna Politkovskaya's brave as fuck got-her-killed book on contemporary Russia. Gun magazines, cos I didn't know anything about guns and weirdly got off on reading these magazines. I would go to the newsstand and get GUNS AND AMMO and MODERN PARENTING cos my wife was pregnant at the time with our son (who is now 6 mths) , struck me as a funny combo of mags
6. Any upcoming events, reading, promotional stops you'd like people to know about?
Not sure when this piece is running, but I'm doing a slew of stuff over the next couple weeks....here's a link: http://www.akashicbooks.com/deweydecimalsystemevents.htm
Buy the book though! Great if you can support your local indie bookstore, but here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Dewey-Decimal-System-Akashic-Surreal/dp/1617750107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296262585&sr=8-1
Beyond that I'll be doing stuff in the Fall. Spending most of the summer in Europe prancing around. My wife's Swedish, we have a place there as well.
7. I really like how you hint at certain events in the novel (like the 2/14 stuff) but never flat out tell us what happened. If other novelists did this, readers might punch them square in the balls. But I think you pull it off, and it actually makes the novel better and more mysterious. How did you arrive at this approach? And will these questions be answered in future books?
Yes those questions will be answered, thanks for your kindness, I hope I pull it off ok, again as I mentioned above I wanted to give it more of a sketch-like feel so folks would fill their own mental pictures in, likewise I would like the reader to develop his/ her own theories. Plus I didn't really have an answer until I was nearly finished with this first book. The only problem with what I came up with is that it calls for more books, which isn't really a problem so much as something to get done.
8. Three bands you love:
VERY VERY difficult:
The Bad Brains
Sly and the Family Stone
X
Anything Stax Records (ok that's 4-ish)
9. Three things you love to eat:
I'll have to be place-specific as well:
The cheeseburger from Le Pigeon in Portland, OR. : http://www.lepigeon.com/ (tied for first place: The Black Iron Burger, NYC : crappy website! http://www.blackironburger.com/), just a diff vibe...Le Pigeon is fancier
The Gnocchi alla Aglio D'orato from Supper, NYC : http://www.supperrestaurant.com/
a big ass helping of anything from Toscanini's Ice Cream, Boston : http://www.tosci.com/
10. Favorite drink:
I'm boring in the sense that I dropped alcohol, drug, cigarettes etc (no choice...I cannot have just one of anything I gotta have it all) and I'm kind of one of those annoying yoga guys, I know I know it's boring...
but I couldn't imagine my life without the occasional double macchiato from Gimme Coffee, NYC : http://www.gimmecoffee.com/static/community_stores.aspx
Tied for first: The amazing coconut water from One Lucky Duck, NYC: http://www.oneluckyduck.com/takeaway/
I dig that this come off as fancy-pants-y, I'm just really particular about this jazz and have sought these things out...
11. Sports?
As a punk teen it was mandatory that I skated. It was more about hanging out and having the right stickers on your board. I sucked but I gave it my best shot.
I do better as a spectator. I love basketball. I am so thrilled about this recent trade my Knicks made cos it's shot them full of energy, even if they're not gonna get anywhere. Being a Knicks fan (especially through the '90s) is just fucking tragic. Self-flagellatory, Opes Dei style. But if you get the bug you can't help it. I get all misty talking about the Knicks.
Also love "European" soccer. Sorry. I do. It's an awesome game and a total mystery to me why it hasn't gotten much traction in the US, when a huge portion of the world's population lives and breathes the sport. I never miss watching the Cup at the very least, if I'm in the States....they're getting better, the last one was pretty widely televised. I greatly DISLIKE regional UK football, it's just trashy somehow.
Don't understand American football but I'll tell you what, Superbowl 2007 Prince came out at halftime and just fucking destroyed everybody, I mean he KILLED it, I have rarely seen anything that fantastic. One of the best guitar solos I've heard in my life. So much heart. I just watched it again and wept. I'm not scared 2 admit it 2 U : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QKajzKmyhw&feature=related
12 Tell us about your next literary effort. Will we see Dewey again ... or something new?
Yeah Dewey is coming back to do his thing, I'm well into book 2 and now have an sense of what book 3 will look like, so I guess I'm down for a "trilogy." The word "trilogy" reminds me of Rush or some kinda prog-rock concept record but there it is. I am definitely not done with Dewey Decimal, I love him like a brother and he's not done with me either.
Monday, April 4, 2011
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