David James Keaton (Fish Bites Cop)
Brandon Tietz (Out of Touch)
Fred Venturini (The Samaritan)
J David Osborne (Low Down Death Right Easy)
Salvatore Pane (Last Call in the City of Bridges)

Please use the Facebook event page to RSVP, so they can get an accurate head count, because we’ve got our own area in the bar. The event itself is free, but not whatever comestibles you shove or pour down your gullet. It makes me proud to see people are driving and flying in from all over the country, as it’s not just about the authors, but a gathering of the literati and attendant book nerds. Sexy, sexy nerds.

I’ll be around the Loop from Friday night until Sunday sometime, if you’re looking to hang or say hey. See ya there! Oh, and here’s my interview episode from last summer.

B&B Ep 6: Gordon Highland/Winebox



Books and Booze LIVE in St. Louis!
Saturday, June 22, 2013
6:30 pm

Cicero’s
6691 Delmar Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63130

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Usually, this is where I would regale you with tales of torporific panels led by respected authors, new writerly techniques learned, rockstar-studded reading events, and sweaty hands shook. This recap will contain none of those. Okay, very few of those.

AWP is a yearly conference for writers, publishers, and writing programs. I’ve written about it before. Ten thousand literati descend upon some unsuspecting city, touting their wares and knit caps (my inbound flight featured a redolence of patchouli and a dearth of cosmetics), hungry to discover forbidden knowledge that’ll land them an agent or faculty position. Difference being, this year, I—and most of my peers—forewent the conference proper. We were there just for the hang, having burned ourselves out on its formalities in years past. Lodging next to the conference, we benefited from a contact buzz, and planned for many off-site hybrid events. Instead, we mostly kept our own company, while inviting along a few of our favorite, more-dedicated attendees.

When I say “we,” I refer to the ManArchy magazine staff. We come from various factions and intersecting circles, but ManArchy’s the one that unites most of us these days. That group includes folks from Booked. podcast, Perfect Edge Books, and LitReactor, among many. We enjoy one another’s company in more than just a professional capacity; we’re those people you find at the party congregated out on the patio deciding the fates of nations. AWP’s social opportunities were more appealing to us than its academic or creative ones. At least this year.

One official event did manage to transpire on our watch, which was a joint reading by authors from Perfect Edge and Lazy Fascist presses, held at an upscale poster gallery wary of such a hedonistic presence. I was enlisted as a last-minute emcee, and Caleb J Ross live-streamed its video to shut-ins worldwide. That’s embedded below (the audio cuts out in the first couple of readings, then returns for the remainder), and Booked’s audio recordings will be shared during their next few episodes. UPDATE: Part One | Part Two

The only other official haps was the free-to-the-public bookfair, whose entirety I walked while stopping only at a handful of tables to buy from and commiserate with such authors as Rob Roberge, Matt Bell, and Cameron Pierce. After all that indoor lone-wolf hiking (my peeps bailed early), I got lost for an extra two miles of downtown wandering.

I always joke that I’m excited to try chain restaurants in other time zones, and the area near the Prudential Center provided plenty such opportunities, whether it was The Cheesecake Factory, Coldstone Creamery, Five Napkin Burger, or Pinkberry. It felt like home. (Where’s that damned sarcasm font?) Our first night in town, we proceeded to get wicked shit-hammered in a tavern called Bukowski’s, but much of the off hours were spent lazing and blazing (okay, maybe hazing) in a hotel suite we rented to serve as the group’s social hub, often punctuated by the shushings that failed to repel the noise police before their multiple interventions. Also, the two feet of snow I thought I’d left at home in Kansas City followed me to Boston, making for some nasty excursions, limited as they were.

Highlight of the trip? The collected tweets of so many of our random utterances. I also got to meet people from as far away as The Netherlands, for better or worse.

Some quality photos below, courtesy of Lindielu, and you can also see some cellphone snaps in my Facebook gallery.

Look for other flash-length frights from Richard Thomas, Chris Deal, Bob Pastorella, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Caleb J Ross, Craig Wallwork, and Put Pujolas.

This web zine should top your bookmarks list, with several new weekly articles sure to entertain men and women alike, so please share/Like the ones you dig to help us spread the word. And while you’re there, peep my ongoing Telecine film/TV column.

As always, you can find all my published short stories (and some exclusives) linked here.

At the dawn of yet another universe (each repeating those that came before), Salem Ben, the last remaining man, searches for the elusive secrets beyond death in a time when all else is known, or can be known. The Soul Consortium is a collection of data files representing the lives of every human, able to be imprinted upon his own brain as he experiences the entirety of their lives in his quest. Millions of them, over billions of years. The novel focuses on the last handful of these immersions after discovering aberrations in the data: a mysterious, sinister presence called Keitus Vieta, who may hold death’s answers. Each of these lives is a first-person series of novellas/chapters, including a 20th-century serial killer, a dark-ages medium, a detective investigating the murders of enlightened monks, and a queen responsible for neurological breakthroughs but galactic destruction. One empty space remains in the Consortium, waiting for Salem to snuff out his own life, as all have done upon acceptance of their futile existences. His companion, Qod, is but a voice, the HAL-like AI who questions Salem’s motives while controlling operations.

I had the pleasure of reading a draft of this epic novel a few years ago in a workshop with Simon. He’s a friend (who also contributed significant editorial to my own Flashover). Even back then, I marveled at the balance he struck between the visceral/emotional storytelling and his impeccable research about astronomy, theology, classical mythology, and technology (am I leaving out any -ologies?). Dude’s a scientist, after all, and a former video-game designer, skills that serve him well in his literary pursuits.

The Consortium timeline is sheer madness, spanning billions of years, some of it familiar and some otherworldly, all grounded by transitional chapters in which Salem postmortems with Qod and summarizes his findings. A healthy amount of repetition/restating helps the reader keep up with the more challenging concepts the novel posits and evolves. Its characterizations are fantastic, my favorite being Orson Roth: serial killer, wherein we experience first-hand the childhood seeds of his malevolence as well as his own fate. He, too, was a man seeking forbidden mortal knowledge in the lifeless eyes of his victims. You’ve also got potty-mouthed monks, heretical puritans, lonely deities, tortured demigods, and a whole lotta dead people being re-spawned and rendered with skin-crawling detail. Plus just enough humor and wit to keep its metaphysical weight from burying you. The Soul Consortium is easily one of the best modern debut novels I’ve read, and I thank Simon for creating this universe and expanding my sci-fi IQ. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Normally I wouldn’t give every review its own post, but this is a really good one. Aside from the fact that they loved it (spoiler?), it’s a detailed look at the novel from several angles, making connections I wouldn’t have thought of, and confirming many that I did.

Booked Podcast Episode #89: S#!t Authors Say

Following the Flashover review, they tackle Praise of Motherhood by Phil Jourdan: a friend I performed two readings with this past week in Kansas City. In fact, I’ll embed one of them for you below. Powerful stuff. Then this monster-sized Booked episode concludes with a hilarious and disturbing conversation with author David James Keaton about the allegedly-nefarious publishing practices of one TonyG.

Somewhere in between readings by Phil Jourdan, Caleb J Ross, Hollie Hayes, Hampton Stevens and Brandon Tietz, here’s what I had to say. First up, an experimental meta piece, then some microfiction, and finally my short story “Fry Girl.”

To see the other authors’ readings, check out my YouTube playlist for the event. Tell you what, I’m gonna go ahead and embed Caleb’s below, just because it was really funny.

Thanks to Chad Cogdill Photography and Brandon Tietz for the pics. Videos courtesy of myself.

So if Saturday evening works better for you, come join us. You’ll still have plenty of time to go get your drink on afterward. Wait, sorry; I meant we’ll. We’ll still have plenty of time to go get our drink on afterward. Of course I’ll let you buy . . . what kind of question is that?

Click the image above to embiggen the flyer.


Scheduled readers, besides yours truly:

Phil Jourdan (author of Praise of Motherhood)
Caleb J Ross (I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin)
Iris Appelquist (A Good Cover)

UPDATE: Audio and pics from the event.

How’s My Hair? author reading (Facebook event page)
Saturday, May 26, 2012
7:00 pm

Prospero’s Books
1800 West 39th Street
“The Pit” upstairs (use east side entrance)
Kansas City, MO 64111
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In addition to whatever awesome slice(s) of storytellery I recite that night, several other authors will be trying to best me with their own. These include such characters as Phil Jourdan (author of Praise of Motherhood), and locals Caleb J Ross (I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin), Brandon Tietz (Out of Touch), Hampton Stevens (The Atlantic, Playboy), and Hollie Hayes.

Warming up your heart-cockles before all this literary lechery will be my acoustic duo, Winebox, performing singer-songwriter, rock, and pop music. This will likely be our first public show under that moniker, so Shannon and I are super excited about that. Maybe we’ll even bust out an ’80s tune or two in honor of ole Q-Bert up there.

It will be an evening of lies, fantasies, death, and a few laughs. Maybe some stories mixed in there as well. I realize the music starts pretty early for a weeknight, but I talked to your boss, and s/he said you could totally skip out early. Me, I’m taking the day off and making a long weekend out of the Memorial Day holiday. Why not do the same?

Click the image above to embiggen the flyer.


$@!# Authors Say (Facebook event page)
Thursday, May 24, 2012
5:00 – 7 pm   Winebox
7:00 – 9 pm   author readings

Czar Bar
1531 Grand Blvd.
Kansas City, MO 64108



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An expatriate Australian journalist who’s written/edited for Mixmag, Impact (UK), and Anime Insider (among others), Andrez Bergen has been entrenched in Tokyo for the past 10 years, where he also “hacks together” electronic/techno music under the moniker Little Nobody.

Read the entire interview at Welcome to The Velvet.

Also check out Booked Podcast’s Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat review episode.

My first AWP was Denver, now two years in the rearview, and I had a memorable time, even if no photographic evidence exists to confirm this. Sure, there were dozens of panels hosted by writers I respected (including my word-hero Michael Chabon), and just as many where the informative content trumped the unknowns presenting it. But let’s be honest: it’s really an excuse to get silly for four days and nights with my extended online family of writers who workshop together, support one another’s writerly trajectories (hopefully ascending), and conspire to commit all sorts of questionable acts that will ultimately shave years off our lives. Some have never met in person before, and others cross international waters to participate. It’s also an excuse to buy more indie books than will fit on my Goodreads shelf. To pawn a few of my own fictions. To feign enjoyment at listening to authors read their work aloud. To chat up fishnetted, becorseted, raccoon-eyed authors of amputee erotica in dark corners over a glass of absinthe. Though we all know such gals are usually costumed more like thrift-store managers, and prefer wine coolers to wormwood. I love them all the same.

Last time, I burnt myself out with too many back-to-back panels, and am taking more of a relaxed approach this year: just a few per day. After all, this is my so-called “vacation.” No secret benefactor is footing my bill; I’ve no obligation to present or perform anywhere (that I know of. . .). I’ll sleep in if I please. See the sights. Indulge. Endure an hour-long line for a gourmet hot dog, goddammit!

UPDATE: postmortem 2012 Chicago AWP photo gallery

But the real reason for this post isn’t to regale you with tales of literary conquests past, of syndicated television viewed in different time zones. It’s an invitation for you to come say hello, to let you buy me a pint, slip me a free copy of your book (paperback, please), or indulge me in droning on solipsistically about my own works-in-progress. Below is a preliminary list of the panels and events I may attend (unless something shiny or lacy distracts me) for those organizing their own stalking-and-accosting itineraries. I’ll be staying Wednesday through Saturday night (2/29 – 3/3) with my three ninja bodyguard/roommates at the Hampton Inn Majestic, right around the corner from the Palmer House (where most of the panels I care about are held, and where many attendees are staying). Gimme a shout in advance if you like.

Wednesday, 2/29
8:00 pm   Kick-Off Party @ The Empty Bottle (1035 N. Western Ave.)

Thursday, 3/1
9:00 am    R121. Atypical Points of View in Fiction Narration
12:00 pm  R170. Villains and Killers and Criminals, Oh My: Representing Evildoers in Lit Fic
4:30 pm    R233. The Renaissance of Midwestern Literature
8:30 pm    Margaret Atwood keynote

8:00 pm    The Wrong Kind of Reading @ The Galway Arms (2442 N. Clark St.)
9:00 pm    Karaoke Idol @ Beauty Bar (1444 W. Chicago)

Friday, 3/2
9:00 am   F119. Literature and the Internet in 2012
12:00 pm  F169. The Place at the Heart of Story
1:30 pm   F178. Natl Book Critics Circle Celebrates Award-Winning Authors

7:00 pm   Beautiful, Words @ Beauty Bar (1444 W. Chicago)

Saturday, 3/3
9:00 am   S104. Midwest Gothic: Dark Fiction of the Heartland
12:00 pm  S165. Mine Is Clouds: Revisiting the Life and Work of Richard Brautigan
3:00 pm   S215. Men from Venus, Women from Mars: Writing the Opposite Sex

6:00 pm   Ear Eater #13: The Impossible, The Extraordinary @ Beef & Brandy (127 S. State St.)