Ten Years ago

Earlier today on Twitter, a lot of us writer types (and a ton of non writer types) were reflecting on what we were up to at the beginning of the decade when 1999 turned into the shit storm of the year 2000.

Mine was this:

"Ten years ago, I was working graveyard shift at a gas station and spending my nights reading James Ellroy and Vladimir Nabokov."

A lot of people would say working graveyard shift at a gas station is a shit job, and God knows I got a ton of grief from customers, acquaintances, and family members who made sure to tell me whenever the subject of what I did for a living came up what a garbage job they thought it was.

Needless to say I'd want to smack them in the gob whenever their narrow little opinions came slipping off their tongues.

Because you know what, it wasn't a shit job. In fact, in a lot of ways, it was one of the best jobs I've ever worked.

And it wasn't because I found the position interesting or engaging. I mean, all I did was sit in front of a cash register and sell the barflys cigarettes and bottles of coke and pepsi as they filled up their tanks before they drunkenly endangered their lives and the other drunks on the road. (And let me tell you this, when you work graveyard shift, it completely fucks with your sleep pattern. To this day I still can't get more than six hours of sleep at night, and I still feel far more comfortable sleeping in the middle of the day.)

It could've been a downright boring job, too, because after 1:30 in the morning, the city of Mesa, AZ became a literal ghost town. But for me, it wasn't a boring job, largely because of the mountain of books I'd bring with me each night and the people who I met after the drunks went home.

Yeah, I had my fair share of tweakers and cokeheads who'd wander in and chew my ear off for ten or fifteen minutes and then run off to whatever past midnight hell-hole they crawled out of. (The most interesting weird-o I encountered was a guy who thought he was a wizard and claimed to have castrated himself and had then grown his junk back with the dark arts.)

But then there were the folks who were simply night owls and would stop by for a cup of coffee and intelligent conversation. Guys like Mike Benner (who later became the best man at my wedding.) who happened to stop by one night and noticed me reading Ulysses and we struck up an ongoing conversation that lasted nearly two years.

And then there was my friend Ed Besinger (who was also a member of my wedding party.) who would stop by once or twice a week and we'd talk for hours about music, movies and computers.

Both Ed and Mike are great guys and I still count them as friends even though we no longer live in the same city.

The other great thing about that job was that in a lot of ways, working at that gas station I believe saved my life. You see, in the ten years leading up to that job, I'd been living in a cloud of blacker than black depression and I self medicated with whatever substance that would cross my path, and when I started working at the now defunct Dobson Ranch Mobil, I threw all of the garbage from the previous decade down the shitter and decided to simply move forward.

Of course, the future Mrs. Rawson had a lot to with the whole moving forward thing as well.
(Nobody tell her, but she's pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me.)

There have been a lot of jobs since the gas station: Manager of a rehab center for disabled adults and children, tech support for a medical software company, and now the current job. But that gas station and those long nights with a cup coffee in one hand and a open book in the other. . .that job was my education.

And now as far as the past decade is concerned, in a lot of ways the first ten years of the new millennium was beyond shitty: War, the collapse of the world economy, etc.,but for me, they've been the best ten years of my life. . .especially the last three years with the birth of my daughter, and, of course, this whole writing thing.
And if things keep going the way they have been, I'm anticipating that the next ten years will be just as good as the previous ten.

Happy new years, folks.

Beating back the chill

Happy weekend, gang.
So has the week been as long for you as it has for me?
I don't know what it is about the Holiday season, but for one reason or another, I always find myself dragging and having to force myself to do even the most rudimentary tasks. And more often than not, I'll find myself coming down with the old winter time blues. Yeah, I know what you're thinking: Winter in Phoenix, AZ? What is it a balmy 80 degrees? (And to answer, no, it's actually been in the 60's most days for the past couple of weeks, which qualifies as winter coat and sweater weather out here.) But for me, it's not so much the temperature outside as it is the psychological effect these chilly months of winter have on me.
Most days are a struggle to push back the BIG black that is my natural personality and trudge on and do what I have to do in order to keep moving.
Fortunately, I have more than a few things to keep myself busy with and push my wandering, lazy spirit forward.

First and foremost, I've got this whole writing thing to keep myself occupied and semi sane. No, I haven't been churning out all that many short stories in the past couple of months, but I have been whipping a couple of my longer works in progress into shape (or vice-versa on some days) and I have been working on a few short stories when the WIP's are doing too hard of a number on me. Of course, the recent string of flash fiction challenges have kept me churning out a few shorts (BTW, the newest one sponsored by big Bad Dan O'shea will be hitting Monday.) and writing reviews and doing interviews for BSCreview. (with Short thoughts on Short Fiction, gang, I plan on resuming the column after the new year--other than my top ten online stories of the year which I'll hopefully have finished and turned into Lindenmuth by the end of the week. Trust me when I tell you this, it's been tough to write considering all of the great fiction that's popped up this year.)

Speaking of interviews, if you haven't seen my interview with the legendary Joseph Wambaugh,
go ahead and sneak on over right HERE and take a peak. Wambaugh was perhaps the most engaging interview I've conducted so far, and I'm pretty proud of it. Of course, more interviews are to come, including an eerie, atmospheric interview with Peter Robinson, (not that Peter was by any means spooky, it's just the lighting in the back room of the Poisoned Pen really added a sense of semi dread.) and in the new year, I've lined up a few interviews that have got me sweaty just thinking about them even though they're a month--and in some cases--months away.

But what's been keeping me the busiest has been the rebirth of Crimefactory. (Yeah, that's the secret project I didn't want to talk about just quite yet a few weeks back. Go right HERE over to Paul Brazil's blog where my partner in crime, Cameron Ashley, blows the lid off of our little secret.) Needless to say I'm pretty jazzed about the project because of a few different reasons. First off, it's giving me the chance to try my hand at editing. (Not that I've had much of a need to, the writers me and Cam have been working with have been turning in some seriously great, smooth as hell material. Yeah, there have been a couple of little bumps, but not anything that me and Cam haven't been able to laugh off and adapt to.) And Secondly, I'm trying my hand at Web-design which has been a fun and at times frustrating process. (BTW, folks, I'll be setting up the URL and Web-hosting service this weekend, and hopefully uploading the webpage within the next week or two.) And lastly--and what's been the most fun for me--is working with the great group of writers we've managed to assemble. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again, the generosity of the crime fiction community--and the writing community in general-- simply staggers me and makes me feel very proud to be a apart of it.
So once again to everyone who's chipped in a story, a feature, a review:
Thanks, you all are the best.

Alright, enough of the sappy shit.

The other way I've been beating back the winter time downers has been through reading. Like most of you folks who occasionally cruise by old Bloody Knucks, I spend most of my free time reading and over the past couple of months I've been tucking into my ever increasing to be read pile and I've managed to chop it down by a couple of feet. (to, of course, only add another three feet on top of it.) But the titles I've been cruising through lately have been keeping me all kinds of excited and turning pages. Here's just a few titles you may want to pick up if you'd like add to your stack as well

First up, as you all know, I've been a pretty big booster of New Pulp Press since Jon Bassoff started the imprint, and for obvious reasons. The titles Jon has published so far have been gritty, off the wall slices of psycho-noir. I was even more pumped when Jon announced they were going to start reprinting the novels of Gil Brewer. I'm a huge Brewer fan. I mean, seriously, if any one writer from the silver age of hard-boiled fiction could be described as "psycho-noir" it's Brewer. I was lucky enough to get my hands on an ARC of the first Brewer reprint, Flight to Darkness, and tore through it in a couple of hours. It's a hell of a read folks and it's going to be hitting your local indie bookstore on Tuesday and is already available on Amazon.com.

Another writer I'm a huge fan of is Sandra Ruttan. Ruttan's Nolan, Hart, and Tain thrillers are legitimate page turners and her newest, Lullaby for the Nameless, is no exception. Ruttan's strength as a novelist only seems to increase with each new title in the series. So if you haven't read
Ruttan's books yet, Lullaby may be a great place to start. (Although, I would probably recommend starting with Sandra's first one, What Burns Within--Yes, it's still my favorite in the series--and moving on from there.) Lullaby for the Nameless is already out, so go ahead and hustle on down to the bookstore for this one.

Alright, last book I want to pimp tonight isn't going to hit until February, but I'm already anticipating that it may very well be considered one of the finest releases of the coming year. I'm, of course, talking about Print the Legend by Craig McDonald. This was yet another title that I was fortunate enough to get my hands on early. I love the Hector Lassiter series, Head Games and Toros and Torsos are pulpy, yet incredibly intelligent page turners that I read in one sitting. I'm only fifty pages into Print the Legend, but with my darling three year old daughter staying at the in-laws this weekend, I imagine I'll be cruising through the remaining two-hundred-and-ninety pages in no time.

Okay, one more piece of pimping and then I'm hitting the rack.
As most of you who are friends with me on the old faceybook know, I'm a pretty big fan of Kieran Shea. The guy has amazing talent with both atmosphere and dialogue and his series character, Charlie Byrne has loads of potential. Over the past couple of months, I've been fortunate enough to be privy to a significantly longer Byrne story that Irish wrote for Crimefactory, and I'm telling you this right now, the character is meant for long form. (i.e., novels) So if you haven't checked out Shea's shit yet, make sure to read his newest offerings over at Beat to a Pulp, Charlie and Stevie Do a Repo and Blunt over at Yellow Mama.


Anyway, kids, good night.