Dexter is Delicious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.