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Frank Bill crosses the tracks

Last fall, I finally had the pleasure of meeting Frank Bill. This was about a year after we both appeared in Issue 5 of Plots with Guns and subsequently began to exchange notes, strategies and war stories from our respective crime-writing trenches.

I was inspired not only by his narrative voice (raw and poetic and brutal), but also his devotion and work ethic. Whereas, I stay up way too late to work on my novel, Frank rises way too early to do the same. In fact, there are times I’m just ending my writing here on the Pacific Coast when in comes a note from Frankie, who’s just getting started in southern Indiana.

At Bouchercon last fall, I found Frankie to be a genuinely kind, earnest and down-to-earth guy, which made it even more fun when we both (somehow) ended up at the St. Martin’s cocktail reception (it was like that scene from Seinfeld in which Kramer gets spun around at the Tony Awards by the “Clydesdale Surprise” people and ends up at all these “after parties”). We were in publishing culture-shock, in a good way. Hell, we were just a couple of pulp/noir writers snatching free food off the trays, trying not to stick out too much.

We were the kids from the wrong side of the tracks.

Well, for Frankie, not any more.

Frankie and his agent Stacia Decker announced yesterday that he has signed a two-book deal with Farrar, Straus & Giroux – for his novel, DONNYBROOK (a sneak peek of which I thoroughly enjoyed), and a collection of stories, CRIMES OF SOUTHERN INDIANA.

I am beyond thrilled for Frankie – his determination to put words on the page every day and his courage to tell brutal stories in a singular voice have paid off. The fact he also happens to be a great guy makes it even sweeter.

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Creative MeMe — Lies and Truths

You can blame Shea for this one ….

Shea tagged me for something the kids are calling a “Creative MeMe — Lies and Truths.”

Idea is, you tell “six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth – or – switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. Nominate some more ‘creative writers’ who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)”

Shea has some doozies. What a dude. Damn, I love interesting people.

Okay, mine: One outrageous lie, six outrageous truths …

1] A while back, an unusual sequence of circumstances had me hanging out with Travolta in a nearly empty “waiting area.” We’re chewing the fat for a while, and when he learns that I’m headed to the same place he is, he gives me this look like I’m a space alien, showing me that big smile and eye-twinkle, and says, “Who are you again? And what’s your deal?” … Wish I knew, John. Wish I knew.

2] The summer before college, as a U-Haul desk jockey, I seriously freaked out a customer (a complete stranger) by correctly telling the man that I had seen him one year earlier standing in line with two ladies at a water-slide park, in a city 30 miles away, and that he’d been wearing a blue Speedo and puka shells, and that the ladies had been wearing matching one-pieces. I even told him the date I saw him.  … You should’ve seen the way that guy looked at me. … One of my coworkers spent the rest of the summer convinced I was magic.

3] My dog Venus once appeared on ABC News.

4] On a college road trip to a Sierra town east of Chester, I lost a bet to a local. To settle up, I had to go out back of this bar and squeeze into a small cage containing — I kid you not — this bobcat he’d trapped, and I had to stay in there for 30 seconds. My friends laughed so hard, one of them peed his pants. … Me? I still have the claw marks streaking down my left calf and across the small of my back [all I did was curl up and cover my face].

5] Back in the ’90s, the lead singer of Hootie and Blowfish sang to my wife for the better part of a 90-minute performance at the Concord Pavilion, and for some reason I never really felt threatened. … Me? Oblivious dingbat? Maybe, but she was going home with me, bub. 

6] In college, I circled the United States for three weeks … on $450.

7] As a teen employee of Hickory Farms, I once walked through the mall with my baggy collar shirt tucked into my too-tight pants. That would have been fine, if only my fly had been zipped closed and an enormous portion of my shirt wasn’t protruding through it — unbeknownst to me, of course.

Okay, name the lie, and after ample time, I’ll come clean.

Meanwhile, to continue the madness, I have been asked to tag a “creative writer.” And I want sick, I want twisted, I want perversion. I want Phillips!

5

Greg’s Friends Doing Amazing Things — J.P. Gallagher

imgBio_JPBack in October of 2008, I blogged about J.P. Gallagher, a friend of mine who’d just learned he had stomach cancer.

It was a scary time. So many questions no one could answer. Was the cancer spreading? Would it respond to radiation and chemo? How would he and his wife  accommodate the birth of their third child just weeks after the docs would take out J.P.’s stomach? Life would change, for sure, but what would it look like, and how would they live it?

Well, I have good news. J.P. kicked the shit out of that cancer.

The past 20 months threw just about everything they could at J.P. and his family. Those 20 months gave, and they took away. A daughter was born. New friendships were made. Just weeks after J.P.’s surgery, his father died — later, his sister passed away, too. But the world kept spinning, and J.P. and his family kept fighting, and living.

Now, there’s nothing serendipitous about cancer. I know that. But there is something remarkable how a variety of circumstances came together to create something truly amazing out of something that had been downright awful.

Part of it was the fact J.P. always had a passion for the non-profit sector — he’d been elected chairman of the board for at the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC): Southwest, and he’d earned an MBA with concentrations in marketing and public/non-profit management. Another part of it was the fact that, through his treatment, J.P. had gotten to know some of the world’s leaders in gastric cancer research, and that he just happened to work for a company that made the computers needed to assist with that research.

Toss in the fact that, back in October ’08, his wife Cindy insisted he see a doctor about a swallowing problem and that, had he not gone, he’d likely be dead today, and you start to wonder if this is where J.P. is supposed to be — back in the saddle of life, full of energy, surviving cancer and starting The Gastric Cander Fund, which aims to do nothing short of finding a cure for the disease. With J.P.’s vision as well as the help of his employer, NetApp, the foundation aims to provide one lucky research group everything it would need — the money, the computers, the medical collaboration — to find the root cause of gastric cancer.

Pretty fricking cool.

And if you’re wondering how in the hell J.P. ever found the time and energy (let alone the vision) to start something like this while fighting for his life and mourning the loss of loved ones, on top of everything else, I don’t have an answer.

In October 2008, I asked you to pray for J.P. and his people. Today, I ‘m asking you to learn more about his new foundation, and to consider helping.

I’m thinking about a friend, and I couldn’t be more proud of him.

NOTE: This marks the beginning of what I hope will be an occasional series in which I tell you about friends doing some pretty cool things.

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Add Dorst to the stack

I had a chance to see a Doug Dorst at Kepler’s Bookstore last week.

I got to know Dorst as one of his students in a fiction-writing course I took in 2003. Long story short, the former Stegner Fellow led a great class and later helped me with the novel I was completing. Along the way, I got to know a little more about Dorst. Apart from being a genuinely kindhearted and insightful guy, he’s also pretty damn multi-talented — he’s everything from a former lawyer to a three-time Jeopardy champion. So when I learned that his long-awaited novel, “Alive in Necropolis,” had been released by Three Rivers and was winning critical acclaim (The New York Times gave it a nice review, and Amazon named it one of their favorite books in July), I was thrilled for him. Seeing him read from “Alive” at Kepler’s was an added bonus.

Dorst takes some big chances with “Alive,” does some interesting things, and makes it work, according to the large number of writers championing the book. At Kepler’s, he read the opening section and hooked a few more writers, including me. I bought a copy and added it to my ever-growing stack of unread books authored by friends. If there’s ever a reason to be happy about losing the battle against your reading stack, this is it.

0

A flurry

It’s a flurry. A flurry of action going down once again in my neck of the woods.

In fact, there’s so much going on I can’t keep up with it. I’m not talking about the fact I can’t seem to find the time to get a haircut and consequently have something close to a bouffant on my head. I’m not talking about the fact my late nights have left me with what my 4-year-old calls “red cracks” in my eyes. I’m talking about the fact I am liable to get buried alive by the fruit of my writer friends’ success.

First, Riske came out the other week with a sweet and succinct piece of flash fiction over at Pindeldyboz. Expect to read far more of Riske, because it seems like the literary-fiction crowd is really starting to give him the credit he’s long been due.

Next, I heard from Ayres, screenwriter of the indie noir film, Mosquito Kingdom, which made a big splash at the St. Louis Film Festival last weekend. Very cool. And be sure to keep your eye on this cat, too. I sense far more to come from Jed Ayres, in both film and crime fiction.

Then there are all the books coming out by some truly talented friends and blog buds. That tower on my nightstand? Yeah, it’s their new novels. There’s Swierczynski‘s “Severance Package.” There’s Gischler‘s “Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse.” And there’s Black‘s highly anticipated, well-reviewed debut noir novel “Paying for It.” Black, a journalist in Edinburgh, had written four novels before penning “Paying for It,” found agents for each, came close, but didn’t see them published. Now it’s his moment, and people are noticing. The Scotsman has taken notice, and Scottish actor Garth Cruickshank recently lent some excerpt narration to a gritty video featuring “Paying for It.”

In other words, there’s some great stuff out there right now. Check it out.

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Short-story fever

I got it. I got it bad. I got short-story fever.

I’m not the only one. At work, two other cats — Riske and Richardson — also have short-story fever. Real bad. In recent weeks, both of them have seen their short fiction accepted by online literary journals. Meanwhile, I just shipped off a tale about degenerate activities to a journal that, well, loves that kind of thing. And so the three of us can be found at different points in the day (during lunch, between meetings, after work, etc.) talking about short stories — about our own, about others.

You ask me, and I’d say one of the great things about short stories is the far more immediate emotional payoff for the writer, compared with novels. A short story can be written in an evening, and the chance of soon-after sharing it with the reading public is, of course, far greater than it is with a novel. And of course, as a writer, there’s so much freedom with short stories — one can write a compelling piece without getting into geographic locations, last names, character backstory, family members, or any number of other things that usually warrant the writer’s attention in a novel. And because readers are more likely to give an unusual protagonist or storyline a few minutes of their lives (compared to hours and hours of their lives with a novel), I think you can take so many more risks with a short story.

I still love writing novels. In fact, I heard back from my literary agent last week that my next novel is promising and that I should definitely keep working on it. I’m thrilled, so I’m making a point to focus on the novel. But I have to admit that these short-story ideas keep popping up in the back of my head, begging to be written. I just tell them, “I’ll write you; it’ll just be a while.”

Anybody out there with similar problems? How do you handle it, strike that balance?

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One of those moments

It feels like one of those moments, one of those moments when a lot of folks you dig are having, well, their moment.

Specifically, it feels that way for my writer friends. Lots of good things happening for some fine writers.

First, Bryon Quertermous had a hell of a week, with his short fiction appearing in no less than two printed anthologies. First Amazon sent me “A Prisoner of Memory: And 24 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories” (Pegasus; 432 pages; $15.95), which puts Bryon’s story beside those by heavy hitters Michael Connolly and Lawrence Block, as well as stories from Chimichanga friends Patti Abbot and Hilary Davidson. Pretty sweet. Then a few days later, I dropped in on the massive Barnes and Noble in San Mateo, where right on the front table I found “Hardcore Hardboiled” (Kensington; 352 pages; $14), which also features a Quertermous story with the rest of Thuglit‘s top stories in 2006. I’m thrilled not only for Bryon, but also another Changa buddy, Todd Robinson, aka Big Daddy Thug, publisher and founder of Thuglit, which ran my story, “Big Load of Trouble” last year. It’s Todd’s vision, tenacity and sharp sensibilities that have made Thuglit what it is today — one of the best places to read crime fiction online. One of the headlining contributors to “Hardboiled” is another Chimichanga bud, Duane Swierczynski, who’s thriller “Severance Package” (St. Martin’s; 288 pages: $13.95 pages) just hit the stores and is getting rave reviews.

But wait, there’s more. … Major Changa philanthropist Anthony Neil Smith just completed a road tour for his new novel, “Yellow Medicine” (Bleak House Books; 260 pages; $14.95), which continues to get great reviews for great reasons. Meanwhile, my good friend Al Riske recently won a short-fiction contest run by the Blue Mesa Review and will soon see his story, “Pray for Rain” in print. And lastly, prose stylist Tony Black, publisher of U.K.-based Pulp Pusher, which ran my “She Don’t Like Hecklers” last year, soon will see his first novel, “Paying for It,” released by Random House and offers the following video teaser. Congrats to Tony and all the others who are enjoying their moments.


2

Feeling good … for a friend

I’m feeling good.

I’m feeling good for a friend.

Today, a truly talented and thoughtful writer experienced one of those rare moments of pure joy and satisfaction. And I couldn’t be happier for him.

Enough said. The full story is here.

1

The agony and the ecstasy

The agony: Realizing there’s a great chance the manuscript on which you’ve spent countless nights and pre-dawn hours might never get published.

The ecstasy: Learning that a well-respected novelist likes one of your short stories so much that he sent it to his publisher.

The agony: Having a sobering conversation with your literary agent about how much more time he can spend on your project.

The ecstasy: Being able to tell a publisher that one of their novelists suggested they give your manuscript a good look.

The agony: Receiving a form rejection from said publisher a day later.

The ecstasy: Learning that one of your best friends, a talented and graceful writer, is a finalist for a fiction contest run by a great literary journal.

The agony: Dealing with radio silence as our stories and manuscripts “make the rounds” with editors.

The ecstasy: Discovering, to your great surprise, that an online magazine editor has nominated one of your stories for the 2008 Million Writers Award.

The agony: Failing to summon the energy to write after a long day of work and parenting.

The ecstasy: Coming home the next day to find your first-grader on the computer tapping out his own story, announcing, “If you’d like to put it on your blog, Dad, that would be fine with me.”

How could I, the “editor” of Chimichangas at Sunset, say no to this aspiring writer? So, after some light editing for clarity by Mom, I bring you ….

DINOSAUR IN THE CITY
by Jack Bardsley

Chaptr 1

One day a boy saw Nijl. He was driving a jeep the boy decided to follow but the jeep had DINOSAURS inside it.

When nijl got there he let two DINOSAURS out of it. The boy looked at the VLUSURAPTR it looked at him. the boy hid, but the raptor found him under the jeep. the boy ran uot.

From the jeep he went over the gate. He sees two DINOSAURS. he went out but it whas to late. The one DINOSAUR started to run. the boy ran home.

chaptr2 – the dinosaur

The dinosaur was veree fast it wus hard to run that fast. win he got home the teerecs chirnd uround and that mint things ar not gonu git good. so far thay hav noct over the pirumid and a cupl bildings. wot hav I dun?

thin uneagspedlee, anuthir teerex came and slamd into the uther. the uther TEEREX RAN UWAE. the teeRex behind it, he did not lic wut he did.

Chaptr. 3 the ter a bil see monstrs
— To be continued —
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