ŷ������

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Volatalistic Phil, Stone Hotel is now available once again in paperback. Get yours now.

After a slight delay, the first book in my chupacabra series is available from Necro. Enjoy!

My favorite writer is Andrew Vachss. Talk about a truly no-bullshit guy. His statements go right to the heart of the subject like a laser. I am unaccustomed to hearing things expressed so bluntly, with such directness and force. I find it bracing, refreshing, inspirational. We are so accustomed to hearing mealy-mouthed prevarications and double-talk from just about everyone in the media, social or otherwise, that I find it invigorating to hear a man speak clearly and forcefully.

His writing contains an extraordinary combination of strength and compassion. That’s what comes through for me when I read Vachss: his compassion for the damaged and the dregs of our society. His writing is hard-boiled but with enormous heart. One is never searching for a moral compass in his books. It’s right there, upfront, usually in the form of “Burke�� tossing a truly heinous creep off a building, or driving over them with a car. See? Toughness and compassion. Toughness because his characters are willing to do extremely rough things, and compassion because of the reasons they are getting rough. The violence is never gratuitous in a Vachss novel. He is an extremely moral writer.

Vachss is our titan, still going strong in the 21st century, and rather under-appreciated, in my estimation. The mainstream is perhaps scared off by his unflinching look at the most disturbing of subjects like child sex abuse, incest, and whatnot, but no other author can touch him, in my opinion.

I’ve never met him. He has responded to a few of my posts on-line. I find him intimidating. Even when he is in agreement with me, it almost feels like an upbraiding! Maybe that’s just the New Yorker in him, I don’t know. He was the same way with Oprah when he was on her show.(lol) I do know that he’s had a tremendous influence on me as a writer. And, more importantly, as a person. He makes me strive to be a better man. (How many other writers can you say the same of?) But his writing is an influence to this day. When I was writing Stone Hotel I tried to be as lean as Vachss. Someone once said of Vachss that he writes paragraphs that are “as spare and lean as a haiku.�� Well, that stuck with me. Some of the most admired aspects of Stone Hotel are the short sketches of fellow inmates—exactly the poems that were most influenced by Andrew Vachss. (Also ��1,000 Ways To Die�� by Henry Rollins. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that. Henry Rollins is another no-bullshit guy for whom I have enormous respect.) My goal was to capture the one defining trait of each of my fellow cons in prison and get it down on paper in as few words as possible. (I was also influenced by 88 lines about 44 women, remember that song? Lots of different influences go into making up a poem!) But Vachss has influenced my prose just as much. I try not to use too much verbiage, to be terse, stripped-down.


I credit some of my ability to survive prison to having read Vachss books before I went down. No shit. Specifically, Ghost’s experiences in Shella, but lots of Burke and Cross stuff too. I knew before going to prison what a lot of the predators�� scams and approaches would be, and I was able to avoid them for having been forewarned. Also the books of Edward Bunker (especially Animal Factory) served the same function; so I was armored, reinforced, with Bunker and Vachss! Not a bad combination to keep you alive in the penitentiary. See? Books are priceless.

i’ve slopped a mop
and i’ve pushed a broom
spent half my life in rented rooms
i’ve bagged groceries
and i’ve washed dishes
i’ve shoveled shit
and i've dug ditches
janitor, busboy, it’s all the same
welcome to the world of minimum wage

wanna go for the gold, the pie in the sky
but i’m always falling flat
and now there is this burning question
i’m just dying to ask,
do you want fries with that?

i wont get fooled again
that’s what i always say
but here i am still slaving away
for minimum wage
living on food stamps
i ain’t getting fat
i’m stranded on an island
in an ocean of crap
with my name tag, my hairnet
and my funny hat
and there’s this burning question
i’m just dying to ask
do you want fries with that?

I signed the sheets for the limited edition hardcover last Friday and just gave the final edit to the proofs. Rise of the Chupacabras, surely the most shocking and nihilistic of all the books in the series, should be available on March 24th.

It is really gracious of Hunter Shea to help spread the word about my series and I am stoked that he enjoyed the books so much. I am especially pleased that he told me he laughed out loud quite a bit while reading Revolt of the Chupacabras. I was really swinging for the fence with that one and I am glad that someone like him appreciated its over the top qualities. He hasn't read the latest, Rise of the Chupacabras, yet, but here is what he has to say about the series so far:

A Fistful of Pesos, the first in a six book series entitled "Common Criminals", is a cinematic, darkly humorous crime thriller.

Recently released from prison after serving seven years for dealing marijuana, American demolitions expert Zachary Taylor travels to Mexico City to help his old friend Pancho Sanchez and his motley gang rob a bank. However, the hapless would-be thieves arrive to find that another group of criminals has just robbed the same bank minutes earlier -- and they become trapped inside by the city police and the Mexican Army. Will they get out alive? Inspired by true events, believe it or not.


The second book, For a Few Pesos More, picks up mere hours after the disastrous bank robbery attempt, as Zach and Pancho aim to recoup their losses by kidnapping the daughter of a rich Mexican industrialist. But once again, things don’t go according to plan. Like the first book, it is fast-paced with plenty of black humor.


Jackson Ellis, editor-in-chief and publisher of Verbicide Magazine, had this to say about these books:

"The first novel is great, but this second one is simply fantastic. It moves along at a wonderful pace. It has one of the most interesting, twisting, unpredictable plots I’ve ever encountered. It has character development that is just deep enough, making the reader become emotionally invested in them, but also just superficial enough so that you aren't too bummed when horrible things go down. It's a great read for casual readers as well as bookworms -- accessible, but with substantial literary merit."

The remaining four books in the Common Criminals series take Zach and Pancho (plus their aging Communist sidekick Juan Gonzalez) all over the world, embroiling them in brutal, comical misadventures in the jungles of French Guiana, across the waters of the North Atlantic, and on the battlefields of Libya and Sudan.

The books in the series are as follows:

�� A Fistful of Pesos and For a Few Pesos More: A disastrous bank robbery in Mexico City is followed by a botched kidnapping attempt.

�� The Minimum Wages of Fear: In an effort to make easy money, the trio illegally transports trucks full of volatile rocket fuel through the harrowing tropical forests of French Guiana.

�� Fight at the Top of the World: Zach, Pancho, and Juan are held hostage on an oil platform in the North Sea by a gang of multinational terrorists.

�� The Dirty Half-Dozen: After escaping from terrorists, the criminals hunt for Gaddafi's gold during the Libyan Civil War.

�� Red Sun of the Desert: Zach and his cohorts use an armored battle tank to protect Sudanese villagers from the predations of the Janjaweed in the War in Darfur.

fortune cookie

i was in a Chinese restaurant
i don’t remember the name
i ate my dinner in peace
then the fortune cookies came

"You lover will never wish to leave you��, it said

i sighed and shook my head
the cookie lied
when it said
that

Wow. A Lot of things have changed since I was last able to remember my password in order to get on to this site.

I can feel my mind going, like HAL in 2001. ha. Not really. Or at least not too badly yet. But I am having difficulty keeping track of things. I have written virtually nothing except a few ideas for longer works that i cannot focus on long enough to even begin. My grasp of language and spelling seems to be deteriorating, or maybe I am just out of practice because I haven't been tapping at the keyboard in a long time.

Either I've had a minor stroke (!) or I am smoking too much weed (!) or I am just losing it.
I may not be able to remember how to get back on ŷ������ by tomorrow.

But while I am here and cogent I want to thank you all who've enjoyed my reviews. And especially a big grateful thanks to anyone who has read a book of mine and taken the time and effort to post a review, even if it's a negative review. Any kind of feedback is gratifying to a nobody like me.