Avoiding the Internetty

Really, it’s not that bad.

Some writers, they literally never post the their blogs.

Speaking of that blog thing.

Folks who have been here from the start will remember my classically grumpy first post in which I expressed my distaste for the word. Followed a couple years later by a post in which I mentioned that I was long over it and could give a fuck. Blog, blogging, blogger, whatever. I may want to think of myself as an online journal keeper, but what I really am is another blogger.

Except that I’m not.

A realization that came to me when I similarly realized that I am not a twitterer.

Or whatever.

Yes, I use Twitter, but I do not Twitter.

To wit: Twittering, it seems, involves exchanges of text. Twittering involves and active engagement. Which suggests that in order to be a Twitterer, one must not only have followers, one must follow as well.

I do not follow.

It’s not snobbery, it’s time. I don’t have time to get engaged.

I am not Twittering, I am broadcasting via Twitter.

The communication is all one way.

Ding!

And that’s when I had the thought about blogging. Blogs are interactive affairs. That’s part of the attraction. They generate conversation and commentary, they invite it right there onsite.

I do not.

I write and post and explicitly do not invite people to join in am exchange of thoughts and ideas.

I broadcast via my blog.

Yes, readers may email me via the site. But this is more akin to viewers writing letters to their local TV or radio stations. It is not engagement in the manner of a true blog.

Why does this matter?

Well, it doesn’t much matter at all. It’s interesting to me as it does reveal something intrinsically 20th century about my approach to the Internet. This fabulous venue for interaction, that I use almost exclusively to either broadcast or reception.

Child of the broadcast age that I am, I am still uneasy with the idea of interactivity. Which comes as something of a surprise to me. But once seized by the thought, it became very clear to me that I consistently avoid using the aspect of the Internet that are the most Internetty.

Fair warning: this is not leading up to some big change in the site and/or how I use it.

I’ve tried that.

No dice.

Every time I think I’ve hit on a model that will make writing here more compelling and regular, I burn out within weeks to months.

(Still trying to figure out when I’m going to finish All Future Names.)

Truth is, things will probably muddle along as is.

Broadcasting.

Which, by the way, is the point of all this.

Started a new Twitter story today. Link to Twitter over there on the right somewhere. I rarely let more than a couple days go between “chapters” on the last one. Plan to do something similar. Again, don’t expect much plot. Though I am going to try and tailor it a bit more to the format. Not sure how that will manifest overall, but for the first several installments it probably means murder lists.

stay tuned,

-c

Pleased as Hell

Kyle Baker has posted some art he’s done for a short story I contributed to an upcoming Deadpool anthology that Marvel is putting out.

 I didn’t know Kyle was doing the art, but I’m pleased as hell.

The work is vastly different from what he laid down in his awesome “Nat Turner,” but equally cool.

Though one should not expect the same emotional impact in a Deadpool story.

 Find the pages HERE

Hacking at Other Things

The ghost of Joe Pitt is behind me.

The last book isn’t published and already the fucker is haunting me. On this occasion his spirit has taken the form of copy edit pages that I need to review.

Curse you!

The accelerated pace of putting MY DEAD BODY together continues unabated. The good/bad news is that this is it. After I review these pages, make whatever slight tweeks I think they may need, the manuscript will travel downriver to a bend that takes it out of my hands.

Better or worse, this fucker is all but done and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.

I am, it is fair to say, emotionally conflicted.

In any case, that’s what’s on the front burner.

The SLEEPLESS manuscript for next year’s crime novel is now off the burner. I did my copy edits, looked at some design pages today (layouts and typefaces, the look of the book on paper), but really all I’ll be doing from here out is checking out cover art, cover copy, some ad copy, and hoping for the best.

I’m through four scripts on my unannounced Marvel project. This thing doesn’t have an artists yet, so I’m way ahead of deadlines. For that matter, it doesn’t even have a publication schedule. Twelve issues starting sometime late this year, I think. I’m going as far over the top as the character will allow. Less thinking, more fun. Could easily suck.

In the last couple weeks I’ve done a total of three short stories for various Marvel anthologies. Not sure how that got started, but there it is. Characters I’ve either nover worked with before barely touched in. Good times, but that’s about all I can handle for the moment.

My Marvel mini has five issues of art in the can now. They have to announce that thing some time soon.

I’m giving myself a break before starting my next novel. Nothing luxurious, just a couple months. I’ll need to start fairly soon, but it’s been nice hacking at other things. Most of my focus is on comics. They are actually, in many ways, a bit harder for me than novels, but it’s still a good change of pace.

I keep thinking about fantasy. A pure adventure story. My roots as a childhood reader. It’s largely a time thing. Some gigs I know will pay bills, others I have no clue. How much time can you devote to the gig that may not cover the rent? Not a life or death struggle for me, especially as how the paying gigs are plenty of fun on their own. But it’s been awhile since I wrote something I wasn’t being paid to write, and I’m curious to find out what will happen if I’m writing a story that doesn’t already have a price tag on it. More anxiety? Less? More freedom? Less? Some days I just want to spit it on the page and see what color it is.

-c

A Knob of Tendon

I just discovered that what appears to be the entire text of the extreme noir anthology EXPLETIVE DELETED is viewable online via Google.  Including my own contribution LIKE A LADY.  

A few caveats:First, I have no idea if Jen Jordan, editor of the anthology, or her publisher, Bleak House, know that the entire text is up there. I’m guessing that they do not. I’ve had previous experience with a Google “excerpt” from one of my own books turning out to be every last word. They were perfectly agreeable about pulling it down, and I certainly do believe that it was an accident on their part, but the text had not been posted with my or my publisher’s blessings. I suspect that something similar has happened here, and that the book may well be coming down soon.

Second, and in the meantime, I heartily encourage anyone who wants to to follow the links up top and below directly to my story. Other contributors may feel differently, so I can’t endorse reading anything you find there that I did not write.

Lastly, LIKE A LADY is a grotesque little knob of tendon that is likely to stick in the craw of anyone who has had the slightest misgiving about the content of any of my stories or novels. Seriously, it’s a sick piece of work and is not at all for everyone. If your taste is not geared toward the gutter stuff, stay the fuck away from this one.

enjoy,

-c

German Mystic Arts

The German’s are back at it.  Here we have their cover for THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH, retitled CLEAN TEAM.  And, you know, I understand the title change and don’t think I can really expect anyone to keep the American title.  As for the artwork, I love it.  Nice and splattery.  Mop and bucket, natch.  More like this, please.                                                                 huston_978-3-453-40730-5.JPG

Something Similarly Demanding

So much for being weekly again.  

Victory is fleeting that way.

Since I drank from the cup of weekly posting hubris on April 18th work has gone on apace.

The process for the last Joe Pitt book continues to be an adventure. Steps in the editing were shuffled into a new order to allow me to get a head start on larger story notes while my editor worked on line-noting the manuscript (cleaning up the more egregious of my many abuses of the language, suggesting changes that will make sure the work cleaves to Joe’s voice, etc), and his general editing letter with mid-level concerns (a character that may play a little flat, continuity issues, etc). I then ruined this plan when I realized I needed to make an extensive number of small changes that would, in turn, require a second line-edit and letter. End result: second draft is in, waiting for line-notes and letter. But we’re close to final on this one.

Meantime, and as expected, the copy edited manuscript for SLEEPLESS is in my lap. Rather it is behind me, bowing the legs of a sturdy chair, asking why I wrote something so damn long. Before looking at page one I have extended the return date because Pitt five has priority for another week. Copy editing sucks. Looking at all those red marks is a constant reminder that you are an imbecile. It also forces you to think very deeply about the placement of a great number of commas. A piece of punctuation I would just as soon live without. Periods. I could get along quite well with nothing but periods.

The Marvel project is underway. Two scripts are done. I’ll break while I focus on editing, but I did do a quick short script for an anthology project Axel Alonso is putting together over there. And I have another I’m tinkering with. Comic book shorts are fun. Quick jabs. One-liners. Usually targeted at a character’s devoted readership. You can get away with a lot of shorthand, and take chances you normally would not.

Side projects are all quiet for now. Still poking, but nothing has roused. Not much expectation that it will.

I think the Twitter story I’ve been telling will wrap soon. Not sure how many more days, but not many. Thinking I’ll take a break when it does, and then start a new one soon after. This one, never did think of a title, veered into fantasy more than I’d expected. Next time out I may try for straight hard boiled. Or a western.

I’ve been thinking about notes.

Random notes.

The ones that drop out of thin air at inopportune times.

When it became clear that I had a shot at making a living doing this writing thing, I became much more serious about always having a pen and some kind of paper on me or nearby. Ideas, whether the basis for an entire book or just a snatch of dialogue, are the essential building blocks of my trade. I can’t waste them. I’ve become fairly disciplined about writing them down as soon as they come to mind. But sometimes my hands are just full of child or steering wheel or something similarly demanding. Generally I’ve learned to recognize an idea I won’t lose, or one that might well slip away if not secured. However, my the actual note-taking process has not changed or improved much over the years.

Computer notes generally take the form of links that I dump into the appropriate file and/or this site. Most of that stuff is deep background. Broad ideas looking for a home.

The really important stuff I still put on paper. And those notebooks are a mess.

Live projects, a book, screenplay, or comic book series, get their own notebook. Everything gets dumped in there. Notes will be everywhere, filling pages, scribbled in margins, on the back cover, but it will all be related to a single project.

It’s the little notebooks that kill.

All random thoughts go into those. I try to not put ideas for two different projects on one page, but shit happens. And them I scribble down an address or a phone number. A grocery list. A reminder that tomorrow is mother’s day. Next thing you know it’s a mess. I’ve tried sepperate notebooks for writing and day to day mundaness, but it inevitable gets mixed up.

Plus, I get tired of having ten notebooks. One idea book and one mundane for each jacket. One of each for the desk. One of each for the car. One of each for the night table. One of each for the book bag.

Tried to make it with a smart phone, tried with a netbook. Less said about both experiments the better.

What I need is a self organizing notebook. One which gives my the tactile pleasures of scribbling on paper, but lets me tag each note with a category, and then sees that it is duplicated in each of my notebooks so that I have all notes on each project always at hand no matter where I am.

Or, I could just keep one damn notebook and make a habit of carrying it everywhere.

Still debating the cost/benefit on that.

-c

Unlikely to Last

My archivist, AKA my mom, alerted me to the fact that CAUGHT STEALING published five years ago today. An anniversary that inspires a single thought: No fucking way.

I spent a large chunk of that day touring Manhattan bookstores with my wife to look at CS on the shelf. We both took the day off, rode the subway up and down and crosstown, had lunch, several drinks, and generally felt like hot shit, the both of us. A tradition we kept for just about every book while we lived in NYC, but have dropped since coming west. LA is not designed for casual motor-touring on a weekday.

At the time CS published I believe I was just finishing the manuscript for SIX BAD THINGS. Which means I had run through all my advance money and was preparing to return to bartending for what would be my second to last stint in the game.

In the last five years I have written nine more novels, seven published, one to be published this fall, another in the winter. I’ve also written about twenty-five comic book scripts (about a screenplay’s worth of content there), a screenplay version of CS, a novella’s worth of interviews and publicity pieces, and a very long novel’s worth of original content for the site.

In the last five years we moved three times. Once locally within Manhattan, once cross country, once locally within LA. My wife has gotten pregnant and had a baby, and we’ve leaned the basics of parenting.

In the last five years I’ve gone from identifying myself as a bartender, to a bartender who wrote a book, to a bartender who wrote a couple books, to a guy making his living writing stuff, to telling people in public places that, yes, I am a writer. A claim I still have trouble making as it seems unlikely to last and feels much like a bragging rather than a statement of employment.

Scheduled for this anniversary: get up when my daughter starts screaming for milk. Check. Hang out with my daughter after milk. Check. Have breakfast with my wife and daughter. Check.

Still to do: exercise, shower, coffee, more daddy-daughter time, put my daughter down for a nap, work for eight hours, give my daughter evening milk, put my daughter to bed for the night, dinner with my wife, rest.

A great way to spend any day.

Thanks for the five years,

-c

Flaws in My Process

Adapting to living in the future.

That’s very much how it feels like these days to be breathing and not choking to death on the utter madness of everything seeming to come off the rails at once.

To mix a few metaphores.

My next two books both reflect a great deal of personal anxiety.

The final Joe Pitt book, titled MY DEAD BODY, was always meant to have an apocalyptic aspect to it. I don’t think I’ll be spoiling anything when I say that it is about the end of Joe’s world. The Vampyre war that the entire series has been building toward. But high concept genre only allows for so much of the mirror to be held up to nature. Which is fine. I don’t want to close the Pitt series with an essay on the decline of American hegemony in the early twenty first century.

But I can still see faint blue lines in the first draft, shadows in the blueprint that show where I built a previous structure.

That structure is a stand alone crime novel that will be released early in 2010. Titled SLEEPLESS, this book is a more direct reflection. Not so much of the world as of many of my fears regarding the world. It is also, in many ways, a reflection of the many flaws in my process.

Large in scope and scale, it reveals in many places just how thin my research can be. At some point this year, as I do slight revisions and reread it several times, I expect to be coming to a few conclusions about myself as a writer.

One of them will regard whether I’ve evolved a style that involves the creation of off kilter worlds that don’t require absolute verisimilitude, or if I’m simply too lazy to be working on large canvas stories.

It’s good to know these things about yourself.

I also expect to learn something about the limits of genre.

SLEEPLESS is a crime novel in plot and structure, but it is also speculative in nature. Contemporary, but not our contemporary.

I’m still nonplussed at how much the discussion of fiction is dominated by what is what is not genre, and the extent to which respect is doled out based on that distinction. Having never been the part of any kind of literary scene, by the time I started making a living do this, I assumed that distinction had largely been dismissed. Good writing and storytelling would be respected whatever trappings they might wear. But there’s still a great deal of snobbery flowing in either direction. Literati who offer obligatory props to Chandler, as well as genre devotees who can kind of dig a little Hemingway, but mostly because he cut to the plot without a lot of blahblahblah.

When I run into someone who has firmly settled into any form of narrow mindedness regarding what constitutes good fiction, I find myself shocked in the same kind of way as when I run into good old fashioned racism or sexism. My mind turns on its side and thinks, “Really? Still?”

And narrow mindedness seems to be one of the primary symptoms of the future that’s looming. Adaptation requires either adhering to a trench of thinking, or good eyes and reflexes to keep one from falling into those trenches and breaking one’s neck.

So both the next to books are about, when the smoke clears and the blood dries and the last bullet has been used, how people adapt to their futures.

Looking ahead,
-c

Los Angeles Times Book Fair

Tomorrow, April 24 2009 

 

10:00 am

Signing at the Mystery Bookstore booth #411. 

Noon

Signing at the Vroman’s Bookstore booth.Booth #367.

That’s it.

Hope to see you there.

Â

An Utter Lack of Meditation

Am I weekly again?

I think I am.

I’m not at all certain. But I think I may have gotten back to a roughly weekly schedule for new posts here. Old school format mini-essays or short fiction. Concentrated primarily on writing and publishing.

Hard to keep track.

The kid is still in possession of the majority of my brain and shows no signs that she will relinquish ownership until she has sucked it dry.

Children, I have discovered to my horror, are actually brain vampires. This is true and I write it here knowing what the disclosure will cost me. They’ll come to silence this beacon of warning, but the word is free. They eat your brain. Yes, they do.

Mine will do little to sustain my kid. It’s fragmented and paltry in thoughts these days.

Ground to the nubbin.

The state of things:

The manuscript for my next crime novel reached final draft about a month ago. It has now entered the roughly year-long editorial, production and marketing cycle that will lead to publication early in 2010. Cover art has been discussed, a proofed copy of the draft will hit me in the next month or two. My editor will present the book to the Ballentine sales staff soon. Prepping them so they can start talking it up to their accounts. I will try and forget the books exists until I see it next. An attempt to keep my brain clean for a relatively fresh reading.

Last week i completed the first draft of the final Joe Pitt book. Because of a very tight deadline, I am skipping a step in my process, foregoing a layoff, re-read and first pass, and just sending it straight to my editor. Cover art is done, has been for months, and we’re scheduled to publish early September of this year. Even if I haven’t utterly shit the bed, we’ll still be racing to get a final draft into the pipeline. This one will leapfrog several other books in production. Proofs will come back very quickly, galleys will be slammed out, and it has already been presented to the sales staff. Hell, I had to give a title on this sucker before I’d written word one. Did all this affect my approach to writing the thing? Fuck yes it did. I’d planned on a leisurely year of writing. Closing out a series, I wanted to tap everything gently into place in what I thought would be the longest book of the set. Instead, I had to dive in and bash away. About fifty pages in I threw out the idea of a Pitt epic coda and saw that the only way to finish off a pure pulp saga was to get as pulpy as the concept allowed. And so it shall be. Book five of the Joe Pitt series is a pulp extravaganza. All questions answered, but with an utter lack of meditation on what it all means. A book beyond which the series would become farce. Written on a true pulp schedule. Jesus I hope it doesn’t suck.

As those two projects shuffle and race through editing and production, I’m turning my primary energy to my next Marvel gig. It is still unannounced, but I’ll be doing a 12 issue double arc on one of their front line titles. Most of my research is done, now I’m mixing concepts and finding where it clicks for me. Should be writing page one, panel one next week.

My other Marvel gig, a 7 issue mini that is also unannounced, is in the pipeline. The scripts have been down for some time. Four issues of art are in. Somewhere in here I’ll be seeing lettered pages come my way for a final review.

Side projects are in the works. Nothing I can talk about. Poking at the side of the Hollywood beast with a sharp stick and seeing if it will rouse to either crush me or lick my face.

At the back of my mind are the next few novels I’d like to write. One of which I’ll start either in a couple months or maybe as late as the fall. It’s weird not to be charging straight into the next one, but I can use the break. And so can the books. Next up will likely be the Mystic Arts sequel, but that’s not a sure bet. I still have that rage and a sledge hammer idea stewing. And something with swords.

I’m becoming aware that I will never write everything I want to. That’s cool. Having the chance to write anything at all, have people read it, and get paid for the privilege, is still a daily trip. But I’m also becoming increasingly aware that to be able to write half of it, half as well as I want, I need to create a better work environment. A chair that easier to sit in for hours on end, a better chair to desk height ration, a desk edge that doesn’t cut into my forearms, a room arrangement that doesn’t have direct sunlight cutting into my eyes when I open the drapes, fresh air. The basics. At some point in any work, if you progress far enough, you find yourself becoming aware that you could use some better tools. These are the little needs that will be addressed.

But only if I can get my brain back.

To do: move desk or take daughter to farmer’s market.

Is there any question how that’s going to turn out?

-c

Old Man Gut Check

Transmission to Hamburg was accomplished via train.

And, as advertised, European train travel was swift, efficient, and pleasurable. With the added benefit that being in a ground-level conveyance moving as speeds comprehensible relative to the terrain did nothing to worsen the lingering effects of jet lag.

The sixth day of my trip and I was still lagged.

Chalk it up to a schedule that had only allowed one full night’s rest. And that night coming only because of a cancellation. Praise be the cancellation.

On deck in Hamburg: two interviews, gift shopping (saved, typically, to the final day), our last gig, and an evening on the town with Bernd.

Hamburg is Bernd’s turf. More than that, he loves the city and is passionate about its nightlife. Not is a Dude, let’s get shitfaced, see where the Beatles played and then go cruise the red light district way, but in in the way that someone wants you to see and understand something they love.

Hamburg by night with Bernd. A once in a lifetime opportunity.

That I was already dreading.

My head filled with images of how exhausted I would be by 11pm. How early my flight home would be. The unlikeliness that I would sleep on that flight. And the anticipation of that fact that I’d arrive home at “bedtime,” have an iffy shot at a full night of Zs, and need to hit the ground running the following morning with my daughter.

Gut check for an ooold man.

As I had since the mistakes of my first day in-country, I stayed off the bed. Dealt with emails. Interview time. Obligatory pre-interview coffee (I’m still having dreams about German coffee). Brain waves radiating in a dangerously high test cloud of fumes, we got to it in the library bar at the hotel.

Looong interview. But looong in a great way. One of the ones that feels like a lengthy conversation in which you are not so much the topic as you are someone with somewhat interesting things to say about many things, some of which have to do with your work. And interviewer that can naturally relieve you self-consciousness is both relaxing and dangerous. But me, there’s not much I can let slip that I’d regret the morning after. One of the advantages of having piled up a heap of next day regrets during my heavy drinking years is that I’ve little sense of shame left to myself.

One interview down, I knocked out the phone interview while gazing longingly at a bowl of onion soup on my room service tray. Food is essential on tour. Drinks come very naturally, putting your stomach around some food tends to require extra effort. The interviewer in this case seemed to have noticed that saliva was garbling my speech and cut me loose with the farewell, “Enjoy your lunch.”

Shopping.

Hate it.

Only kind i can really bear is gift shopping. But even then, shopping, blargh.

Gabi was heading out so I tagged along. A few stops on the local metro and we were in a studenty retail district. Shades of St, Marks in Manhattan. Funky boutiques, cafes, head shops, music stores, etc. Very familiar turf. Gabi and I cut each other loose, she to seek a curry wurst, I to seek gifts.

Beautiful weather, winding streets, everyone out to enjoy the clear weather as a shitty winter winds down.

Shopping doesn’t always suck.

And something about foreign currency always makes one feel a little like it’s play money. Even when you know the dollar to euro exchange rate has just taken a literally historic ass fucking, you just don’t care much. Five euro feels like it should be a bargain, even when it’s really almost eight bucks.

Math, hurt jet lagged brain. Besides, German gifts for wife and daughter are essential.

Managed to get back to the station next to our hotel without getting lost on the metro, and then got lost two blocks from the hotel.

Found the hotel.

Took a few minutes to observe the view from my window.

Spires, lots of church spires, gantry cranes of the port, construction cranes, very old buildings trussed in a manner that looked more sculptural than architectural, sharp lines of modern, post modern facets. Much like the cityscapes I’d already seen. But a better view.

And i loved it.

Fabulous sense of history and the future. An obvious concern for how very big things look when places next to one another, combined with a willingness to be adventurous about the whole thing.

I desperately wanted to not be falling asleep on my feet, or to have one more coke binge left in my heart.

But I was, and my heart used up its last coke binge years before I became a dad. Now it has better things to do.

We read at the Golden Poodle.

A waterfront rock club with a cafe on the upper floor.

Seated at the front of the room, Bernd and I read with the river on display through the window at our backs.

A modest but very full room, a beautiful chilly night, an unbeatable setting. Bernd and I were both determined to atone for Berlin, and we did. Bernd stuck to coffee, I to a couple very small Scotch and waters that did little more than lubricate my tongue.

Again, it is hard to imagine a comparable event in the States. As we wound down the club below was winding up and bass was vibrating our shoes. Patrons were heading downstairs or on to another venue to get their Friday nights in gear.

Gently buzzed, just in love with the city enough to forget what my responsibilities would be when I got home, I was being tugged to head out with Bernd.

But I did not.

A light shade of regret.

Perhaps next time. Silly thought.

It was the right call. Sleep was narcotic. The morning was a beautiful thing rather than dreadful.

Still, Hamburg, it’s like an itch I didn’t quite scratch.

The morning injected me into a Lufthansa slight to Munich, quick farewell to Gabi, and a change of planes.

My seat was broken, stuck in a semi-reclined pose. They tried to fix it. No go. Waiting for the purser, I asked if I could just move to one of the visible empty seats and was told that of course I could, or move to an empty seat in first class if I liked. On auto pilot I waved off the first class offer. No, not me, first class, don’t bother, I can just sit over here.

Not registering until I sat down that I’d blown the airplane lottery. On thirteen hour international flight, gifted with a broken seat, I passed on the apologetic first class upgrade.

Never would have happened if I hadn’t still been jet lagged.

Stayed awake the whole flight. Finished some Graham Greene and half of Richard Price’s “Lust Life.” Watched a movie, had a few glasses of wine and a few coffees. Mellowed out.

But couldn’t sleep.

Took many notes.

Thinking, man, that whole country, what a great setting for a gun fight.

-c

PS

Thanks to Heyne, Gabi, Markus, Frank, Bernd, Alexander, Christoph, Sabine, Claudia and everyone whose names I have forgot. It was lovely. You were wonderful hosts.hosts.

“Be Careful,” Spake the Porn Editor’s Husband

I was distracted by the wall.

About the time we passed the Brandenburg Gate, my head wad turned the wrong way, staring at a short strip of concrete wall, freestanding, supporting nothing but graffiti, thinking to myself, Oh shit, that’s what’s left of the wall.

The Berlin Wall featured prominently in the most dire of my childhood nightmare scenarios of a nuclear WWIII. When the shit came down, we were often assured, it would fall most heavily and immediately on Germany, both East and West.

The Soviet hammer would strike the American anvil at that point and the shock waves would blow everything else to shreds. Certain to happen before the end of the century. Count on it.

That pretty much sums up my sixteen-year-old vision of the future.

I really didn’t imagine that we had one. Which probably serves as some kind of indicator that I may be a glass-half-empty kind of guy.

And also generally wrong.

Which it’s nice to be upon occasion.

Indeed, if the world were not here, I’d have missed the surreality of walking into a hotel along Berlin Alexanderplatz in the former East Germany and into the shadow of a looming five-story tall fish tank hovering over the front desk in the middle of the atrium.

Someone with an expertise in designing Vegas attraction had obviously been consulted. How else to explain the elevator rising through the center of the aquarium?

Hallo, Berlin.

Markus and Bernd displayed singular enthusiasm for the hotel and aquarium, insisting that I get a room with an interior view. I preferred a room with an exterior view where I might see, I don’t know, Berlin perhaps. Sadly, there was nothing available. Interior view.

I’d become aware on the flight from Munich that jet lag had not been entirely washed away. Latent waves were still pounding the shore. Hit by one of these waves as I entered my room, I was not reassured by the aquarium dominated view out the floor to ceiling windows. I was certain I saw divers in there. I approached the window to dispel the mild hallucination, but it was not to be. For there were indeed divers in there. Cleaning the interior? Feeding the fish? Enjoying a swim? Big ticket tourists on a special dive pack vacation?

I closed the drapes.

I was mildly restored by the presence of hard liquor in the mini bar. My two previous hotels has featured only beer and wine. All very good, but where the rubber hits the road you feel a bit more secure where you know there is a solid drink near at hand.

I teased at the cap of the tiny bottle of Jack Daniels, whispered to it, “I’ll be seeing you later.”

Gabi and Markus were waiting in the lobby. Lunch was on deck. Bernd had mysteriously decided to stay in. “Mysterious” in the sense that Bernd is aggressively social and loves good food. Nonetheless, we embarked without him.

We ate Japanese/Korean. When in Berlin, do as the Berliners.

The old neighborhood seemed very much untouched by reunification. GDR apartment blocks and eroded infrastructure were in great evidence. Berlin is a dead broke city. So broke that economic apocalypse in the rest of the world is greeted by a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders. Been there, done that.

Still, broke cities have low rents, and that usually brings in the artists. Berlin has a bit of the edge of civilized New York feel to it. Whichever neighborhood gentrification has pushed the artists to in NYC, there’s some of that in the air of Berlin. Especially in the border of old West and East.

Rag tag commerce and art mixed with sex, drugs and alcohol.

I needed a nap before interviews. I’d have liked to have joined Markus on a river tour of the city, but a wave had knocked my feet out and I knew coherence would be hard to muster without sleep.

I slept, blacked out really, dreamt, I think, of fish.

There were interviews, mated with coffee, I ate something in my room. Caressed the JD. And it was time to read.

Bernd appeared in the lobby with feminine company. Thus solving the mystery of why he didn’t want to go out during the afternoon.

And we began our brief stroll to Kaffe Burger. A brief stroll that was extended by the fact that none of us really knew where we were going, and Mukus’ sudden need for a slice of pizza.

We arrived late. I hate being late. But I had people from my publisher with me, so I could comfortably blame them.

Kaffe Burger, a holdover from the good old days of East German artist hangouts that evoked the Weimar. At least they did in James Bond movies.

Anyway, it’d the kind of place that looks vulnerable to a sudden foreboding chill when a dark man in a leather trench coat comes in and asks for your papers.

The only foreboding chill I experienced was the one that came when Gabi told me they wanted to wait for an hour or so and see if more people showed up.

An hour, a vast chasm of time to cross on jet lag seas.

I understood her point. A small venue, there was still more than ample elbow room. Still, I was dismayed. I’d already started my up-for-the-game whiskey. With an extra hour of pre-game to get through, I’d surely need another. At which point my judgement would become unsound. In strange city, perilously exhausted, facing an “intimate” audience, it would take very little for me to misstep.

Fortunately I had Bernd, a man who, by his own admission, did not drink very much. He would anchor me.

How sad to learn that the the pint glass in his hand was fill with vodka and Red Bull.

Bernd, oh Bernd, still I am disappointed.

Initially it was just flat and mistimed. We were off, pushing our jokes, sloppy in the readings. The audience was self conscious. Awry. It didn’t get really interesting until I tried to include one of Markus’ translators in the proceedings. She’d been introduced to me earlier in the evening, at which time Markus had informed me that she translated “porn” for him. He was being funny, she actually translated a few naughty books along with many other titles. Still, it was too good not to use. And had I not been in the midst of my second one too many drink, I might have swung it.
Instead, in the midst of discussing the chapter titled “Regarding Your Mother’s Pussy,” I improvized.

“Wait, we have a porn editor here we can consult with. Connie? Hey, where’s Connie? Connie edits porn.”
Evoking a weak titter or two, cut off by a voice from the audience.
“Be careful. I am Connie’s husband.”

Not said in play, I assure you.

It wasn’t the implied threat that dismayed me so much, nor the scale of the man (borderline huge), in fact, a little inside voice piped up and muttered, “Cool, a bar fight in East Berlin, let’s do it!” What really bothered me was the idea that I’d suddenly become the Ugly American. Drunken unknown writer, high on his own ego, traveling on his German publisher’s dime, making vulgar wise cracks at the expense of one of his hosts.

The act of apologizing from stage is awkward.

What air there was in the event went out.

Bernd reinflated things a bit with a strong rally, I kicked in some dead relative humor that seemed to help, and we managed to get through a short program without having any bottles thrown at us.

I opted not to join Bernd and his friend at a local music club, or Markus and his friends at another bar. Gabi found me a can and sent me to the hotel.

Where, with curtains still drawn tight against the fish, I ordered a hamburger from room service, and kept my promise to that bottle of JD.

Berlin, I’ll do better next time.

Next Stop: HAMBURG

-c

Upcoming Gigs, Details TBA

A couple appearances in the works with details TBA: 

On Sunday, July 12 I’ll be speaking at the American Library Associations annual conference in Chicago.
The conference is open to non-ALA member, but it is quite pricy.
Specific details of my appearance to come.  

I’ll be attending and speaking at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville Tennessee. Â
Dates are 10/9-10/11.
Specific details of my appearance to come. 

The Mystery Writers of America’s Southern California chapter has invited me to speak in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 7th.
Format for the engagement will be “A conversation with…”  Bobby McCue of The Mystery Bookstore will serve as my interrorgator and co-conversationalist.
The event will be open to non-MWA members, but there may be an admission fee.
Specific details of my appearance to come.

A Great Setting for a Gun Fight

Awoke to silence.

Lost hour.

Blackout curtains drawn.

No voice of jet lag in my head.

11:00 am local.

Awake. Well rested. Hungry. Sane.

Hello, Munich.

Munich on a sunny morning after a good night’s rest is so far beyond stunning as to be nearly comical.

From the aspect of an ignorant American who failed to read a single word about the country before boarding a plane for his first visit, it is easy to arrive with the impression of two Germanys.

Germany number one is featured in WWII movies.
Germany number two is featured in BMW and Mercedes commercials.

One knows, because one is not an utter idiot, that neither impression is accurate, but one hasn’t done anything to educate oneself about what the actual modern country is actually like, and so one touches down subconsciously expecting a cold machine-like, ultra modern megalopolis stretching from border to border, broken only by the swooping curves of the autobahn, upon which, one is has been reliably informed, there is no speed limit at all.

The alternative expectation of bombed out buildings and tank husks seems unlikely as one has also been reliable informed that WWII ended some time ago.

It’s not an expectation that rises to the level of awareness until one is wandering, clear eyed for the fist time in days, down a winding street where the ultra modern rubs against the old world in an unbalanced but still pleasing arrangement.

Oh, yes, here I am, in Germany. A place I know nothing about. How did that happen, me knowing nothing about this country? Odd. I thought I was educated.

A hidden platz behind the New Town Hall, lolling in the sun with my paper and coffee, a trio playing jazz somewhere on a side street, the woman next to me, nervous about an impending visit to the dentist, making conversation through her limping English and my ten words of German.

Me thinking, man, this is a great setting for a gun fight.

Segue to being introduced to Bernd Begeman.

Iconoclast is an overused word. And for all I know Bernd is a cliche of Germany: an amalgam of chanteuse, pop culture geek, humorist, intellectual, alt-cool taste maker and all around bon vivant. Picture Oscar Wilde and Lenny Bruce’s love child spawning with the equally illegitimate offspring of Elvis and John Waters, with Brigit Bardot providing the egg for that spermfest.

But to my eyes Bernd is a unique gem. Deeply flawed, and all the more precious.

Decked out in a suit with a style label that read: Scorsese Movie, Averna on the rocks with a lemon in his hand, Bernd took the stage with me in a Munich night club for the second reading of the tour.

To clarify, there is a nightclub/literary culture in Germany. A subcategory of cool. One attends readings in clubs, drinks coffee and or booze, then goes out for music, dinner, drugs, etc. There is no current parallel in America. Poetry slams are extreme niche and essentially theater. The reading culture in Germany is widespread, general, and involves people reading from works intended for the printed page.

Odd.

And cool.

If you like that kind of thing.

It helps to like that kind of thing if you’re accustomed to reading for fifteen minutes in front of half a dozen people, most of them staff, at a strip mall Borders. Contrast that experience with a rock venue audience of fifty to sixty politely attentive people who remain focused on the talking heads on stage for nearly two hours.

It’s another country, I’m telling you.

Alternating readings in English and German, Bernd and I managed not to get drunk, to stay amusing, and to get off stage before the energy in the room flagged.

Polished showman that he is, Bernd managed the evening perfectly, right up to and including his vocalizing on “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.”

A good time was, I believe, had by all.

The following night would find us in a small bar in the former East Berlin, having had too much to drink, flailing to keep our audience of a dozen half engaged.

But in Munich, we were tiny literary rock stars.

For a night.

NEXT STOP: Berlin.

-c

Mystery Solved

Regarding that one day traffic spike earlier in the week, it seems that writer, actor, uber-geek, and goalie Wil Wheaton made a passing reference to Caught Stealing and a miniscule fraction of his minions popped by pulpnoir.

Thus skewing my site stats forever. 

Thanks, Wil.

But all I really want to know is when we’re gonna see you in net again. 

-cÂ

LA Times Festival of Books 2009

My schedule for the ‘09 LA Times Festival of Books: 

Saturday, April 25th 

8:30 am
Riding the Vroman’s Bookstore Mystery Bus to the fest.

Details on the bus are HERE. 

10:00 am
Signing at the Mystery Bookstore booth #411. 

Noon
Signing at the Vroman’s Bookstore booth.
Booth number unknown, but it will be in the Festival map.  

That’s it.

Hope to see you there.Â

Odd Flavors of Loneliness

A cancellation in Bochum gave me a more or less free day in Munich.

Dropped at a business hotel on the edge of both downtown proper and the historic old town, I took one look at my bed, recognized that it would swallow me whole if I let it, and hit the street.

Sunglasses, not so big in Germany it seems. At least not on mid-gray days in March. Could be that I spent the last fourteen years of my life in New York and Los Angeles, but it seems odd to see so many exposed eyeballs.

Jet lag hissed a warning that I was making a spectacle of myself with my dark spectacles.

You’ll be spotted as an outsider for sure, man. Ground up, drained, made into blood sausage and shipped to Cologne. Where do you think they get that stuff?”

I took off my sun glasses, tucked my map and my copy of the Herald Tribune in my jacket, and tried not to look American.

The moderate sleaze that tends to adhere to areas surrounding large rail stations was well represented. Cheap tourist goods, fast food, arcades, call shops, German-equivalent pawn brokers, liquor stores, but all rather more clean than in America.

Plus more tiny cars.

And bicycles. With their own special lanes on the sidewalks. Charming until you realize all the nasty looks you’re getting are because you’re walking in the verdamnt bike lane.

And suddenly, jet lag fugue, open eyes and find myself in prewar Munich.

Close cobbled street, Gothic spires, and a plaza dedicated to all things wurst and bier.Jet lag demanded food.

Stomach rejected bier and wurst.Don’t know why.Mumbled German in a bakery rewarded me with a teutonic croissant.

Buttery and heavy.

Good.

Wind blew, almost blew me over, blew my brain sideways.

Calculated hours since actual food had been consumed.Lost count.Sleep?

No idea.

Sidewalk cafe. Menu.

Jet lag whisper.

You don’t know what this says. Don’t pretend. And don’t ask too many questions. They hate questions. Just order a bier. You know how to do that.

I ordered a beer.

Pils.

It goes down and it stays down.

Having mastered the fine art of ordering German croissants, I ordered one of those. Looked at my paper. Relaxed. Fell asleep with my eyes open. Reasoned it was a good time to go take a nap.

Did I get lost?

Hard to say. I remember a toy store, and I have German toys and books for my daughter that suggest I was in one, but I can’t be certain I didn’t rob a day care while blacked out.

At 7pm Markus called to ask if I was ready to have dinner and see Munich nightlife. I was not.

At 7:05pm Gabi called to ask if I was ready to have dinner and see Munich nightlife. I was not.

Thankfully, neither tried too hard to encourage me otherwise.

Fought sleep for an hour, too early.

Put on boots, went for a walk in the railway sleaze.

Casinos and girly shows called to me.

Come on in, you’re not going to sleep anyway. Imagine the particularly odd flavors of desperate loneliness to be found in German gambling dens and strip clubs.

My jet lag bared its fangs, crouched over my walking corpse.

He’s mine!

Jet lag won.

Hotel restaurant dinner.

I could have killed someone with the heft of those potato dumplings.

Back to room, Scotch in stomach, glass of impossibly heavy Italian red in hand.

Pay TV. Will “Hancock” be better in English or German? Will it matter? No. Just something to make noise while I keep myself awake another hour.

Pay TV screen in German. Recognize a request that I enter my zimmernummer.

417.

BANG!

BANGBANGBANG!

Instant BANGING on my TV. Three channels of nonstop German hotel porn, running like a goddamn faucet, on my TV. Eye searing in it’s banality. Flesh covered machines fucking. In close up.

I turn off the TV.

Having been only half successful in my quest to watch “Hancock” in German.

-c

NEXT STOP: Munich Day II

Who Are You People?

I don’t peek at the site stats very often, but I’ve been away so long I thought I’d take a look.  Yesterday showed a large  (for pulpnoir) spike in visits.  Over three times the usual traffic.  I’m assuming someone with a much higher traffic site blogged something about PN yesterday and a few sight seers came by.  I confess to curiosity.  If anyone knows why for the extra visitors, I’d appreciate an email. 

In the meantime, I’ve just about got my schedule for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and will post details later today or tomorrow. I do know that I’ll only be there on Saturday the 25th, but signing at at least three booths that day.

-c

My Own Door of Perception

Coming into Cologne, Gabi and our driver Michael began talking in German. Gabi had asked a question and information was being relayed in the most efficient manner possible, their shared native tongue. Plus they thought I’d passed out again.

I hadn’t. I was in fugue state. Drifting in and out. Trying to adapt to the scale of European cars. Small to tiny. A svelte BMW station wagon qualifying as a behemoth on the autobahn.

I asked Gabi what they were talking about.

She told me a building had collapsed a few days earlier. A big new building with apparent design flaws that caused it to collapse into the underground that ran below. It was national news. Michael was filling her in on the local details.

Fugue.

I drifted away.

Cologne became the place I had blood sausage and tried to accommodate the idea of a ten day city-wide literary festival, at which obscure American writers could draw an audience of 400.

Then I received an email containing a link to an article titled “The Mystic Arts of Emergency Informatics.”

And sitting at my desk, jet lag returned.

Fugue.

Next Stop (after the detour): Munich

-c

Blood Sausage and Bier

Six flights and one train ride transported me from Los Angeles to Dusseldorf to Munich to Berlin to Hamburg and back to Los Angeles, with changes at Munich again and Chicago.

Stir in a long car ride from Dusseldorf to Cologne, and any number of cab rides to and from various ports of entry, hotels, and reading venues.

And the whammy.

What’s the time difference between California and Germany?

With DST (praise god it’s good for something) the time difference is a mere eight hours.

An eight hour time difference requires a strategy. One has to board that flight with a sleep plan. Mine was simple. Stay awake from LA to Chicago, then take a pill that generally renders me comatose, and, because I find it all but impossible to sleep on any flight, pour whiskey on it. Sleep from Chicago to Dusseldorf, and arrive not entirely out of whack with the local clock having just woken up for my touchdown in the early AM.

Plans are meant to be shattered by the gods of jet lag.

And thus was mine.

Despite having to prop my eyelids open the first leg of my trip, I found no combination of sleep aids and free business class booze was up to the task of knocking me out.

I steadfastly remained reclined in my seat, but it wasn’t to be.

Too bleary to read, to resilient to watch the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, I remained dimly conscious as I slipped inexorably into strange realms of perception.

By the time I touched down and met Gabi Beusker from Heyne, and our driver Michael from Lit Cologne, I was projecting waves of surreality. I’d become my own door of perception, and I was wide fucking open.

To achieve a similar state of being in college, I’d had to resort to twenty-four hour acid trips and the come-down waves that kept me up anther twelve. True, I wasn’t perceiving illusory connections between god and cheese cake when I arrived in Germany, but I felt otherwise exactly as if I’d ingested something that had recently been harvested from a cactus or a bed of mold.

There are only so many ways to deal with such a state.

Sleep.
Coffee.
Alcohol.

I made a bid to use all three.

Bad call.

Alternating naps with tiny cups of intense German coffee, meant to revive my mind for quick burst of babble in an interview suite, spiked with bottles of minibar pilsner, meant to knock the caffeine sideways long enough for another nap, was the strategy of desperation.

By the time I was driven to the Cologne police station (don’t get too excited, it was the crime venue for the literary festival), I was being supported only by the awareness that if I could keep my feet for two more hours I could retreat to a bed without throbbing engines outside the windows.

Thank god for Frank Goosen.

Frank was my tag team partner. Novelist, humorist, critic, spoken word artist, and champion of all things Bochem.

Running the program, he made sure that our audience (400 people I was told), did not boo me off the stage for excessive displays of lethargy.

I don’t speak a word of German past bier, but he had me cracking up.

This is a funny fucker.

So I don’t hold it against him at all that following the gig I was not deposited in my bed by angels, but was instead dragged to a hoff brau.

Blood sausage.

Do I need to go further?

Look, let’s be honest, it’s good stuff. Yummy, creamy texture with a nice crispy skin, all those onions and apples on the plate, non-stop Cologne-style beer service, but blood sausage and beer after being awake for forty hours is a challenge to the soul.

I rose to it. Make no doubt. But I’m certain the effort shaved a year off my life.

Markus Naegele, my editor at Heyne, he had the steak and fries. Me and the girls at the table, we all had blood sausage.

Markus, you’re a sissy.

There may have been another beer from the minibar when I got back to my room. I don’t recall. Nor do I care to.

Was that a show about young Hitler on the TV, or did I dream it?

NEXT STOP: Munich

-c