Jesus, has it really been four months since I posted anything?

Yes, this is going to be a dopey year end review posts, so don't say you haven't been warned.

2011 was a hell of year.

Tons of changes and I can honestly say that all of them have been positive.

Here are some highlights:

Started a new day job

Bought a new house

Became a landlord

Went to Alaska

Went to St. Louis and attended my first Bouchercon

(And interviewed one of my heroes, Daniel Woodrell)

Saw my first book published

Saw CrimeFactory: The First Shift see publication (I also hung up my spurs as publisher of Crime Factory, which was a little sad, but it was time.)

Started writing for LitReactor

My darling daughter Sadie turned 5 and started kindergarten.

It' was a busy year, almost overwhelmingly so, but a good one. But like all the years before it, I'm glad to see 2011 hit the bricks

I'm ready for 2012.

My biggest hope for the new year, other than continued health and happiness for my family and friends, is for 2012 to be quiet.

That's right, more than anything else, I just want life to be nice and normal for a change.

What do I mean by normal?

I want to wake up in the morning, go to work, come home, pick up my daughter from school, make dinner, watch a little TV, put the kiddo to bed, come downstairs to my office and spend a couple of hours writing until I get sleepy and then go to bed.

And then wake up the next day and do the exact same thing day-after-day.

I know, all of that shit sounds boring as hell, but sometimes a little routine is what you need.

Anyway, that's it.

I hope you have a great New Year.

BTW, I finally updated the links over on the side bars and I'm fucking around with the blogs appearance a little

The wonderful, weird world of fiction writing

I've been struggling with this blog post, which usually isn't the case when it comes to blogging. Typically I just throw it up and then fling it at the world like a monkey, but for some reason or other I've been balking about the subject.

What I've been wanting to write about is how strange it is to be a writer in the modern world. Yeah, it's kind of a worn out subject, but one I've never really touched on before.

I mean, let's face facts writing used to be a very solitary(and when it comes right down to it, it still is) activity where the guy or gal doing the writing would labor for years and years perfecting their craft and accumulating drawer fulls of rejection letters until finally an editor or agent saw something in the writer's work and they were suddenly skipping down the road to success and bestsellerdom.

Or they would just keep pounding away at the keyboard and collect more and more rejections.

Or they would just give up and move onto other professions, other ambitions.

Of course, none of this really happens anymore. I'm sure there are more than a few folks out in the world who are laboring Bukowski style, living as artistic hermits, pounding the keys, wall papering their shack with rejection letters. It seems so romantic to live this way, yet in the modern world, it seems utterly impossible.

Ever since I began my "career" as a writer close to four years ago, I've been on some form of social media or other - hell, I still even have a Myspace page where you can find my early attempts at blogging and links to my early stories (Sadly, so many of those stories are long gone.) - promoting my writing and attempting to gain an audience.

Yes, I was trying to gain an audience even before I'd built a body of work or discovered my true "voice" as a writer. (I am, in many ways, still finding my voice)

Was this arrogant of me? Did I really think I was so great that I felt the need to broadcast to anyone who would listen that I had a new story or blog post or review or whatever?

No, it wasn't arrogance, it was because I could.

Now the next question is, just because I could, should I have done things this way? Should I have waited until my narrative voice matured before sending out and then broadcasting both my success and failures.

Once again, the answer - at least for me - is still no.

And for me, this is the most interesting- and the strangest- thing about modern writing. There's simply is no apprenticeship period where a writer labors with their craft. There is no private time of despair and self doubt because everything is done so publicly now. The reader can watch as the writer grows and improves, or in some cases, fades into obscurity after too much frustration or real life gets the better of them.

And the last question, is this "new" style of writing good or bad?

Coming from a guy who jumped headlong into this "new" (Yeah, I keep adding quotation marks because after ten years of social media promotion, there really is nothing "new" about any of this.) style of media, I can honestly say I have zero regrets.

Anyway, enough my blathering and onto stuff I've been up to.

Last week my story "A Beginners Guide to Dog Sitting" appeared in [PANK] Magazine's special crime fiction issue. I was included in there with the likes of Chris Offutt, (Kentucky Straight, and the television shows True Blood and Weeds) Anthony Neil Smith, (Yellow Medicine, Hogdoggin') Frank Bill, (Crimes In Southern Indiana) Kyle Minor, (In The Devil's Territory) Aaron Michael Morales, (Drowning Tuscon) Art Taylor, (Art's story, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", kicked the living shit out of the rest of us, so make sure to check it out.) and Mr. Eric Shonkwiler. So if you haven't had the chance to check out the issue, you can do it right HERE.

Also, LitReactor went live yesterday (Well, the landing page did. The site itself won't go live until October 1st.) I'll be conducting interviews and writing book reviews for the site and I'm super exited about this one. The staff that's been assembled for the site is literally a who's who of culture blogs and websites, and I'm still scratching my head wondering how I became involved with it . . . . But it's better to not look a gift horse in the mouth and simply roll with it and enjoy the ride. But if you want to stay abreast of all the happenings of LitReactor you can "Like" them on the Faceybook right HERE or follow them on the Twitters right HERE.

Last but not least, this time next week I'll be heading to St. Louis for my first ever Bouchercon. This one is promising to be huge and I already have three interviews lined up for the conference.

First up is St. Louis' reigning king of smut, Mr. Scott Phillips, next is my good friend Frank Bill and last but not least is the great Daniel Woodrell. I'm sure I'll have a few more lined up as the conference moves along and, of course, we'll be debuting Crime Factory: The First Shift at Bcon.

So if you see me (I'll be the pudgy half in the can guy with the flip video camera and armload of books...but then again that's going to pretty much describes everyone there.) don't be afraid to stop me and say hello or punch me or whatever.

See you next time, folks.

Revisited—The Need by Frank Bill

I’ve known and have been reading Frank Bill for close to four years now. I’ve been lucky enough to read a good sized chunk of Bill’s fiction before the rest of the world and for a time, there was a period where nearly every one of our stories shared page space, (including part 1 of the Hill Clan Trilogy, which was republished in the September issue of Playboy.) We even participated in this thing over at Elaine Ash’s blog.

With as familiar as I am with Bill’s output, the story I kept coming back to when I read and then re-read his debut collection, Crimes In Southern Indiana, is “The Need”. The story originally appeared as a couplet of pieces (along with “Tweakers”) at the webzine Beat To A Pulp. Both pieces were hard bitten tastes of rural noir featuring Conservation Officer Moon and both were powerful pieces of writing. But for one reason or another, “The Need” struck a chord with me.

The story’s focus is on a Afghan war vet named Wayne. Wayne spends most of his days living in his trailer on his widowed father’s property boozed up and high to the gills on meth trying to drive back the dark impulses he carried back from the war.

One night, good old boy Brady Basham stops by Wayne’s trailer asking him to come out hunting with him. After they're finished up for the night, they head back to Brady’s trailer to eat and while Brady’s daughter is serving the two hunters their late night breakfast, she begins flirting with Wayne and Brady takes offense to her forwardness and decides to whoop her ass which finally drives Wayne to act on his impulses. By the end of the story, three people have been murdered and he’s maneuvering through the bush being chased down by Officer Moon and reliving his time in Afghanistan.

What most impressed me with “The Need” was Bill’s ability to switch gears from the rough hewn fiction I was used to reading, to a far slicker, almost commercial style of story telling. Not that “The Need” still didn’t contain the same rough backwoods language that you came to expect from a Bill story, but reading “The Need” was almost like reading a traditional thriller along the same lines as Morrell. Wayne is a disenfranchised, lonely man who has been forced into too many situations beyond his control—too much death and betrayal—and the reader immediately empathizes with his brutal history.

No, “The Need” is not the most accomplished piece in Crimes In Southern Indiana, but in my opinion, it felt like Bill had reached a turning point in his career with the “Double Bill” of Frank Bill which “The Need” was apart of.

Or maybe I know Jack and Shit and Frank had actually turned the corner with “Flesh Rule”?

Whatever.

All I know is I’m damn proud of my friend Frank Bill and I’m convinced Crimes In Southern Indiana is the first step in a long career. So if you haven’t already picked up your copy of Crimes yet, you can do so right HERE.

Pimpin' Guantanamo Style

Are you getting tired of me pimping my wares?

Yeah?

Well tough shit, because I'm going to be doing it on a near daily basis for the remainder of 2011 going into 2012 (Well not daily, but pretty goddamn close.)

But this project, D*CKED edited by Greg Bardsley, Kieran Shea and Jedidiah Ayres - This one's special.

It's Special because Shea's holding my wife and daughter hostage until after I blog about this anthology

For the love of God help me!

The other reason is that my story, "The Many Loves of Art Snow", appears in it along with a gaggle of great crime writers.

Check out the full line up below:

PATRICIA ABBOTT
Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 75 stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. Recent stories appeared in Damn Near Dead, 2, Beat to a Pulp: Round One, Crimefactory, and Needle. She is the co-editor with Steve Weddle of Discount Noir. She lives and works in Detroit.

CAMERON ASHLEY
Cameron Ashley is the co-editor of Crimefactory (crimefactoryzine.com). He lives, writes and drinks in Brunswick, Melbourne.

JEDIDIAH AYRES
Jedidiah Ayres’s short fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Plots With Guns and Out of the Gutter magazine, as well as the anthologies Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll and Surreal South ’09. He is the screenwriter of Mosquito Kingdom and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.

GREG BARDSLEY
Greg Bardsley’s fiction has appeared in the anthologies By Hook or Crook: The Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll and Uncage Me. Other stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Plots with Guns, Storyglossia, 3:AM Magazine, Out of the Gutter, Crimefactory and Pulp Pusher. His debut novel, Cash Out, will be published by Harper Perennial in 2012. Visit him at gregbardsley.wordpress.com

ERIC BEETNER
Eric Beetner is the co-author (with JB Kohl) of the novels One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble. His award-winning short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Discount Noir, Murder in the Wind, as well as Needle magazine, Crimefactory, A Twist of Noir, Thuglit, Pulp Pusher and many more online fiction outlets. For more information and links to stories, visit ericbeetner.blogspot.com

TONY BLACK
Tony Black is Irvine Welsh’s favourite British crime writer. He is the author of the Gus Dury novels: Paying for It, Gutted, Loss and Long Time Dead. His new crime series featuring DI Rob Brennan begins in 2011 with Truth Lies Bleeding. He lives in Edinburgh. Visit him attonyblack.net

KEN BRUEN
Ken Bruen was a finalist for the Edgar, Barry, and Macavity Awards, and the Private Eye Writers of America presented him with the Shamus Award for the Best Novel of 2003 for The Guards, the book that introduced Jack Taylor. Among his many award-winning novels, London Boulevard is now being filmed, starring Colin Farrel and Keira Knightley, with Oscar winner William Monahan (screenwriter of The Departed) to write and direct.

JIMMY CALLAWAY
Jimmy Callaway lives and works in San Diego, California. You can find more of his writing atattentionchildren.blogspot.com

RACHEL CANON
Rachel Canon is the author of the political thriller, The Anniversary [Random House]. Her short stories include the winning entry in a contest that called for finishing a story started by Harlan Ellison, and her first published fiction was a mystery serial that appeared weekly in her elementary school newspaper. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.

HILARY DAVIDSON
Hilary Davidson’s first novel, The Damage Done [Forge, 2010], has been called a “razor sharp mystery debut” by Publishers Weekly, “Hitchcock writing for the hip Manhattan set” by Ken Bruen, and “a rich, haunting debut” by Megan Abbott. Her second novel, The Next One to Fall, will be published by Forge early in 2012. Hilary won the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story for “Insatiable,” and her short fiction has appeared in anthologies including Beat to a Pulp: Round One and Thuglit Presents: Blood, Guts, & Whiskey. Before turning to crime, she was a travel writer and the author of 18 nonfiction books. hilarydavidson.com

JASON DUKE
Jason Duke is a Sergeant in the U.S. Army who served 15 months in Iraq between 2007 and 2009. His short stories have appeared in Plots with Guns, Thuglit, Spinetingler Magazine, Crimewav.com, Crimefactory, Darkest Before the Dawn and A Twist of Noir, among others.

BILL FITZHUGH
Bill Fitzhugh has been described as “of average height” and “not particularly fast in the hundred meters, though quick enough to escape capture that one time.” According to the New York Times, “He is the author of enough books to keep you busy for a while.” Confounding critics and readers alike, his series of stand-alone novels explores the dark underbelly of the world of testicle transplants, the international kitty porn industry, and pie-eating contests. His novel, I Think I Need My Stomach Pumped, features a new protagonist: Angus McNaughty, a loner and an alley cat, who travels only with a toothbrush and furball medicine. Fitzhugh lives in Los Angeles with very little hope of a decent future.

MATTHEW C. FUNK
Matthew C. Funk is a social media consultant, professional marketing copywriter and writing mentor. He is the editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a writer for FangirlTastic and Spinetingler Magazine. M. C. Funk’s work features at numerous sites online, indexed at his Web site, and in print with Needle Magazine, Howl, 6S and Crimefactory. He is represented by Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

HARRY HUNSICKER
Harry Hunsicker is the author of the Lee Henry Oswald mystery novels, Crosshairs, The Next Time You Die, and the Shamus Award Nominee, Still River. Hunsicker is an active member of the International Thriller Writers, the Mystery Writers of America, and the Private Eye Writers of America. In 2008 he served as the Executive Vice President of the Mystery Writers of America.

NANCY LEE PHILCOX
Nancy Lee Philcox lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works as a graphic designer. She sings for The Shitfits (coming to a dive bar near you), enjoys motion graphics, animation, metal sculture, illustration, and painting. Nancy is the principal at Luminous Sky and Level Eleven™ where she hocks her design talent. You can see more of her diverse creations at level-eleven.com

SCOTT PHILLIPS
Scott Phillips is the author of The Ice Harvest, The Walkway, Cottonwood and Rut as well as The Adjustment, forthcoming from Counterpoint Press in 2011 and Nocturne le Vendredi, from les Éditions la Branche in 2011. He also is the author of the story collection, Rum, Sodomy and False Eyelashes. John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton starred in the 2005 feature film of The Ice Harvest, which was adapted by Richard Russo and Robert Benton and directed by Harold Ramis. Phillips lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

KEITH RAWSON
Keith Rawson is a little-known pulp writer living in the alkaline desert wastelands of southern Arizona with his wife and very energetic three-year-old daughter. His stories have appeared in Plots with Guns, Pulp Pusher, CrimeWav.com, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Beat to a Pulp and many others. He is a frequent contributor to BSCreview and a staff writer at Spinetingler magazine. He also co-edits and publishes Crimefactory magazine.

MARK RICHARDSON
Mark Richardson works as a marketing writer in Silicon Valley. His short fiction has or will soon appear in Crimefactory, Switchback, Nth Position, and Thirst for Fire.

AL RISKE
Al Riske is the author of the novel Sabrina’s Window and the story collection Precarious. His stories have also appeared in Hobart, Switchback, Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, Blue Mesa Review, 34th Parallel, and the Beloit Fiction Journal. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, copywriter and ghostwriter. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in California with his wife, Joanne, and their dog, Bodie.

MARCUS SAKEY
Marcus Sakey is the award-winning author of The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes, The Amateurs and other critically acclaimed books. He lives in Chicago.

KIERAN SHEA
Entrepreneur and veteran of the blue-chip advertising shakedown, Kieran Shea has published short fiction in Ellery Queen, Plots with Guns, Thuglit, Pulp Pusher and Dogmatika.

OWEN SMITH
Owen Smith’s illustration clients include Sports Illustrated, Time, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker, for which he has created 15 cover illustrations. He has recently completed work on a new children’s book for Simon and Schuster. Owen’s influences come from the WPA artists of the 1930s, Diego Rivera, and the lurid covers of pulp magazines and dime-store paperbacks of the 1930s and 1940s. His paintings have been featured in exhibitions in New York, Rome, and Milan, as well as solo shows in Los Angeles. In 1998, a set of mosaic murals Owen designed was permanently installed in a New York subway station at 36th Street in Brooklyn. Currently Owen teaches illustration at California College of the Arts and is designing permanent art for a historic San Francisco hospital, including murals, mosaic, and relief sculpture. Owen lives in Alameda California with his wife and two sons.

STEVE WEDDLE
In addition to being a writer, Steve Weddle is the editor of Needle: A Magazine of Noir and a founding member of DoSomeDamage.com. His website is steveweddle.com. He lives with his family in Virginia.

Yeah, it's an impressive line up and I will say this - "The Many Loves of Art Snow" is my favorite story which I've written to date. It's weird, it's funny, it's inspired by a painting owned by my fellow contributor, Scott Phillips.

So, make sure to pick up your copy today at D*CKED's Website (And go ahead and use one of these coupon's for an extra savings) (Oh, one other thing, Shea assures me that D*CKED will be available as an e-book in the next couple of days, so you e-reader people go ahead and take it easy before you get your panties in a bunch)

And while you're at, check out the official video trailer of D*CKED below

Now Available From Snubnose Press—The Chaos We Know

It actually went live over the weekend, but I’ve gotten into the habit of actually writing and spending time with my family on weekends instead of pimping my wares, so for all intents and purposes, let’s consider it live right now

Grab up your copy today at Amazon or Smashwords.

(BTW, folks, I promise not mention the collection every five minutes on Facebook and Twitter. Sure, I want you to buy the freaking thing. But, ya know, I don’t want to become that annoying asshole who only talks about his latest e-book.)

Autumn—I want you to hit me as hard as you can…

Let me tell you, folks, Fall can not get here soon enough. I’ll be the first to admit that even though I’m a sun/heat person, this summer in my adopted home of Phoenix has been a bear. But there’s other reasons why I want summer to hit the bricks and it's because this coming Autumn is going to be heralding some major changes.

So what’s coming in the Fall, you ask?

Okay, you all know about Crime Factory: The First Shift hitting the shelves. (Oh, speaking of Crime Factroy, have you downloaded issue #7 yet? I shit you not when I say it's the best issue we've put out to date, so get to it if you haven't already.)

You all know about my short story collection The Chaos We Know hitting the virtual shelves from Snubnose Press

Most of you know I’ll be at Bouchercon trying to keep Jimmy Callaway out of jail and Matt Funk and Cam out of bar brawls.

But here’s a bit more good news.

Recently the good folks at ChuckPallahniuk.net (AKA the Cult) put out the call for freelance writers and I figured, what the hell, I’ll try my luck and see what happens.

Well, what happened is that out of 500 applicants, I was one of the seven new freelancers selected to write for the Cult’s new home LitReactor starting in October.

Yeah, needless to say that I’m ecstatic to be writing alongside Cult regulars such as Stephen Graham Jones and Richard Thomas along with all the new kids.

Also, on top of the new writing gig, I’ll be helping out Crime Factory’s fiction editor extraordinaire, Jimmy “Don’t Call Me The Gem” Callaway, with a new venture which he’s heading up starting in September.

So come on Summer, get your ass out of here!

Oh, one last thing before I split out and just to prove summer ain’t all that bad, I figured I’d drop one more piece of news on you.

If you follow me on the Twitters, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been using this hash tag: #DICKED a lot

And typically speaking when I’ve used said hash tag I’ll usually mention something about Greg Bardsley being tortured, or Kieran Shea being a plant for the N.S.A or Jedidiah Ayres being transported to Guantanamo Bay…Well, there’s a reason for all of this, because D*CKED: Dark Fiction Inspired By Dick Chaney, edited by Greg Bardsley, Kieran Shea and Jedidiah Ayres is coming…

Alright, fellas, I outed you, so I’m sure the C.I.A will coming for the three of you sometime this morning.

A Couple of Quick Annoucements

Alrighty, gang, I'm going to make this quick because I'm on my lunch hour and I'm actually hungry, so I'll just jump right into things.

First off, Black Heart Magazine's NOIR issue guest edited by Crime Factory's own Jimmy Callaway hit the streets today and it's one damn fine wreck ball of an issue.

Here's the full line up in case you haven't peeped it yet:

WRITERS
Cameron Ashley
Christopher Benton
Josh Converse
Chris Deal
Garnett Elliott
Matthew C. Funk
James Gibbons
AJ Hayes
D.S. Jones
David Jordan
Nik Korpon
Alexander Kraft
Mary Long
Chuck Marecic
Richie Narvaez
Dan OShea
Dale Patterson
Keith Rawson
Stephen D. Rogers
Kieran Shea
Benjamin Sobieck
Leland Thoburn
Jonathan Woods
Changming Yuan

VISUAL ARTISTS
Nora Costello
Michael Fugere
Sophie Newman

COVER
Brian Roe
Ronda Pattison

GUEST EDITOR
Jimmy Callaway

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Laura Roberts

Yeah, it's pretty much a Who's Who of the current short crime fiction scene.

My poem, "Hard Candy" is part of the collection and to be honest with you, it's my favorite piece of poesy to date, so I hope you pick up an issue ASAP.

You can buy your copy for $2.99 right HERE

Okay, second piece of news.

My short story collection, The Chaos We Know, has been picked up by Snubnose Press to be published later this year.

I'm excited as hell to be apart of the Snubnose crew, (In case you haven't picked their inaugural anthology, Speedloader, you can snap it up right HERE) I've known and written for Brian Lindenmuth and Sandra Ruttan for the past three years and I like and respect both of them very much, so I know they'll do a great job with the book.

So anyway, folks, that's what I've got for you, have a great July 4th!