Writing is Stupid: Rimbaud Edition
I watched the Dylan/Scorsese Rolling Thunder flick the other day and got a little uncomfortable during the clip of Patti Smith at the start. I mean, she’s in full bloom and it’s a great document of Patti in her prime, but it’s tense. Like, jaw-grinding tense. She does a wild and rambling intro that, at […]
The Burden of Blurbs
I had this idea for a blog where I’d lay out my humble approach for getting blurbs as a way of steering some attention toward my new release. After a couple of tries, it was getting pretentious. All that “aw-shucks” I’m-so-humble shit. It pretty much boiled down to this: I was too chickenshit to do […]
I’m gonna miss you, John Prine
Back ’round Christmas 2011, I was asked by a tech blog about The Song That Changed My Life. This is what I told ’em: In 1992, I was 25 and stuck in rehab. Well, not really a rehab, but an Arizona horse ranch posing as a rehab. A place where we baked in the […]
Piggyback is back!
It’s back. The little novella that could does it again. The book that pulled me into this goofy game is being re-released by Down & Out Books today. Back in 2012, the idea was to write the most lean and pared down tale I could. One that kept moving, like a good short film. I […]
Announcement: American Static
I’ve been lying low lately. Only tiptoeing through the minefield that is social media during election season. But I’m coming out of the bunker because I’ve got some news. Good news. My new novel, American Static, the second in my Northern California Quartet, is coming out this June (2017) with Down & Out Books. Very […]
Unloaded.
Next Tuesday, Down & Out Books is releasing Unloaded: Crime Writers Without Guns, an anthology with a stellar line-up from all reaches of the crime writing community. Seriously, from way up the food chain with names like Joe R. Lansdale and Joyce Carol Oates to names like … well, mine. I thought I’d do a […]
The Little Cesar Syndrome
Okay, so the last time I sat down to blog, I was halfway through Don Winslow’s Power of the Dog. Great fuckin’ book, by the way. As corny as it sounds, a major achievement is the best way to describe the Dog. Incredible. Anyway, I was pondering how fiction models itself after real life. At […]
Discovering the Cheatin’ Shortcuts of Our Literary Heroes.
If you can’t use your blog to pontificate and force your bloated opinions into the world, then what the hell is it good for? I was thinking of reviewing the book I’m reading—you know, on Amazon, Goodreads, all those important places that value my commentary—but then I decided my thoughts on this particular work aren’t […]
Selective Memories …
Last week I went and saw The Replacements at the Masonic in San Francisco. While I was out there, alone in the crowd, being shoved and jostled by five thousand other Mats fans trying to recapture a bit of their youth, I was struck by a terrible thought. Well, actually, several terrible thoughts. A lot […]
Throwing Knuckleballs
Okay. I’ll be honest. It’s been tougher than hell to crank out a blog during these past few weeks. Mostly because I didn’t want to weep onto the page. Life has been throwing me its own series of Knuckleballs as I prepared for the release of the book. In fact it’s made me shy away […]