You’ve probably figured this out already, but we at Crime Factory are a bunch of enthusiastic guys. We have a bi-monthly schedule we’re pretty determined to keep for the foreseeable future, as long as we suffer no drop in the quality and frequency of content received. The only thing that will slow the zine down is a drought of material, and all we’re seeing at the moment is a flood of incredible work. When we re-launched, we hand-picked people who not only shared our enthusiasm, but also had the chops to back it up and wouldn’t leave us stranded. We also put out the call for new material and, as I mentioned recently at the CF blog, we’ve been amazed by the overall quality of what we’ve received. It has all happened with surprising ease thus far too. Let’s hope I haven’t just jinxed it, because we’re about to push our luck.
Not content with cracking out a bi-monthly zine, we’re about to step things up a notch. A project should be announced later in the year that we can’t believe we’ve actually pulled off (to be fair, it’s Keith who did most of the pulling off with this one. That sounds a bit…weird, but you get what I mean). Another has already been announced, specifically June’s Crime Factory 3 1/2 (following hot on the heels of May’s CF #3) an all-fiction supplement featuring some awesome stories we don’t want to hang on and hog to ourselves any more. Finally, right now, I can announce one of our upcoming, one-off specials.
The idea behind the specials is to apply the CF manifesto to other genres we love. The issues will not be throw-aways or novelties, they will be crafted with the same care that goes into the regular CF and will have the same quality of content. We want our contributors to have some extra fun and also stretch their creative and journalistic wings a little bit.
One of these specials will be Kung Fu Factory, and this is where I get to the whole point of this bloggery stuff.
Kung Fu Factory will be a very rare opportunity to write some pulp potentially very different from what you may normally crank out. Specifically, we are actively seeking stories that are martial arts or even just fight based.
It possibly sounds crazy, but hear me out. For those of you familiar with the work of Joe R. Lansdale (and if you’re not you really should be), please recall a particular couple of stories: The Pit and Master of Misery. Joe crafted two very distinct pieces of cross-genre work with these two stories, both of which are basically fight-based. The Pit is obviously a horror mash-up, Master of Misery is very much a martial arts piece, but they both contain those amazing Lansdale touches that make both stories quite distinctly his. If you haven’t read these works, do track them down and you’ll see what I mean. Then, we would like you to do the same for us.
The Kung Fu Factory special is seeking:
Stories ranging from full-on martial arts fight-fests, to Fu Manchu-mastermind style stories, to boxer with a heart of gold stories, to stories about Luchadors or washed up MMA fighters or schoolyard bullies or ninjas, or all of the above crammed into the one story. If you have a tale with punches, kicks, nunchucks, a cracking plot and some memorable characters, bring it. We want it. If you work some crime into it somehow, you’ll be even more awesome. Cross-genre pollination will be held in high regard, however, if you want to write a historical piece featuring a 16th century master of Wing Chun, or whatever, that would also be brilliant. Variety and originality are vital.
4,000 words is your absolute limit. Bolo Yeung will come to your house and give you a beat down if you go so much as one word over this. Sure he was born in 1938, but he’s Bolo Yeung. Yeah. That’s right. Best stay way under to be on the safe side.
Unless you’ve been specifically invited, please follow the regular CF guidelines. i.e.: send a query/synopsis along with your details to crimefactoryzine@gmail.com with KUNG FU FACTORY in the subject line. Trust me; I’ll be getting back to you. We will have a limited number of spots available, so the sooner you get in, the better: even if you haven’t written the story yet, please register your interest so we can reserve a ringside seat for you should we like the cut of your jib. Please also spread the word and help us get this unique ass-kicker of an issue scheduled.
DEADLINE FOR STORIES: AUGUST 15, 2010. See the Bolo stuff above should you blow it. Sonny Chiba might join him. Sure, he was born in 1939, but...ahhh, you get the idea.
On the design front, Liam and I are already working out how to make the CF specials distinct, yet still very much a CF product. We have some cool ideas for Kung Fu Factory, so your story will look sexy, trust me.
That’s it. Thanks for your attention. Thanks also for your support and enthusiasm for CF and for allowing us the opportunity to put this stuff together. Keith, Liam and I are having a blast. Quite clearly, we couldn’t do this without the stuff you give us to publish.
Right. Go roundhouse kick something to calm down from all this awesomeness and write us something.
Cheers,
Cameron Ashley.
Master of the Deadly Art of Beer Drinking.
(This post was brought to you by CRIMEFACTORY issue #2, Which you should download immediately, or we'll come and kidnap your puppy.)
Much like writing, it's a labor of love and at times, it can be frustrating as hell People get busy, they lose interest, they move onto other projects. I hate it when I see yet another zine go down. In the last three years I’ve been reading crime fiction online, I’ve seen Demolition, Hardluck Stories, Flashes in the Gutter, DZ Allen’s Muzzle Flash, Shred of Evidence, Mouth full of Bullets, Crooked, Eastern Standard Crime, the Feral Pages all go down for various reasons. Some of these publications were down right groundbreaking. Some were so-so efforts. But all of them served a purpose. They provided an outlet for emerging writers, a source of entertainment for readers. And once again, I get it, people get busy, but I still hate to see it.
And it makes me even sadder to report that Tony Black’s Pulppusher is now kaput.
Shitty.
In the past when this type of thing happened, you shrugged it off and moved on. Maybe you sent it out for reprint at a zine like always excellent A-Twist of Noir, or the story just sat on your hard drive.
Well, I’m going to offer to do something for those authors who formerly had stories, interviews and articles on Pulppusher.
If you’d like, I will convert your story into a PDF and I will archive it on the Crimefactory website.
If the response is great enough, I’ll gather the stories together and edit them into an e-book anthology so that these stories will never disappear.
If you’re interested, contact me at rawsonkeith_at_gmaildotcom
Alright, folks, as I mentioned in my review of the Deputy by Victor Gischler over at Spinetingler Magazine earlier today, I'm going to be throwing another contest to celebrate the release of the Deputy, where the prize is going to be an Advanced Readers Copy of the Deputy and just like my last contest, I'll throw a mystery book your way to spice up the deal.
So, much like the last contest, you've got to do a little something in order to qualify. But, of course, I like making it fun.
For those of you on the Twitter, most of you are aware that Victor does this little thing four or five nights a week called 'Ask Gischler' where he invites his Twitter followers to ask any question of him (but please, no math.)
Here's some gems I've asked the all knowing, all seeing Gischler in the past:
WHY DOES THE BURGER KING KING MAKE ME NOT WANT TO EAT BURGER KING?
WHAT ARE SPAGHETTI-O MEATBALLS MADE OUT OF?
You get the point, right?
Anyway, what I want you to do, my dear readers, is post your 'ASK GISCHLER' questions in the comments section of this post and on April 5th, I'll randomly select the winner.
Now, just in case you don't win the copy of the Deputy (and by the way, folks, it is an uncorrected ARC.) you should think about heading over to one of these fine, fine retailers and pick yourself up a copy. (And, hey, as much as I like free shit, but I like supporting my favorite authors by buying their books just as much.)
TYRUS (Shipping and handling is free if you order direct from Ben and Allison) AMAZON (Yes, still the evil empire, but fuck it.) B&N (Really, they're just as bad.) INDIEBOUND
Alright, gang, get cracking!
Oh, and one last thing before I go, folks. Spinetingler (Yeah, I'm full of all kinds of Spinetingler stuff tonight.)Magazine will begin running a new series of Conversations with the Bookless. Lindenmuth and I have been sending out invitations the past couple of weeks and we're geared to start things up again in the next couple of weeks. The series of interviews was a ton of fun last year when Lindenmuth ran it over at BSCreview, so I'm really excited to see it this year over at Spinetingler. So make sure to keep your eyes peeled on the site in the weeks to come.
So we had 23 entry's in Old Bloody Knucks first ever contest and there were some great ones(All except for Jed's, of course.) and last night I numbered twenty-three slips of paper and allowed the daughter to pick the winner out our magic salad bowl. And the daughter choose.....
Chris Holm's dandy little blurb:
"This shit just got raw, son."
Chris, to claim your prize of a copy of Roger Smith's Wake Up Dead and a mystery book, email me your address at rawsonkeith at gmaildotcom
Now, for those of you that didn't win, don't despair, I will be running a brand new contest starting on Friday, so stay tuned for details.
As revealed in the comments section of the post, #3 is a true story.
I got to thinking about the experience and thoughtit might make a decent blog post.
So here we go.
First off a little background.
Back when the wife and I were getting ready to tie the knot after five years of living in sin, I’d spent four years working at a gas station about a mile away from our apartment. I started out in that job as the part time graveyard shift attendant and eventually found myself working there full time on the 6-to-2 shift as the assistant manager.
It was a fun job.
There wasn’t much responsibility involved in it, the money wasn’t all that bad, and it was within walking distance of our apartment. (The wife and I shared a car, and since she worked in downtown Phoenix at the time, obviously she needed it more than I did.)
Now, along with getting married, the wife and I were also buying our house, and the money we earned was more than enough to qualify for a decent size loan, but we’d still be stretching our wallets a wee bit in order to make the mortgage.
We needed more money to be coming in.
For those of you who’ve ever taken the leap and purchased a home, you’ll know that your finance company doesn’t want you making any erratic money moves—things such as opening new credit cards, financing a new car, or changing your job—while they’re procuring your funding, and saying that the home we were buying was a new build, we had a long time to wait before we could change jobs and start making more money.
So what I did was get a part job and that part time job was working with developmentally disabled kids.
I had worked with developmentally disabled individuals before while living in Flagstaff, AZ, but with high functioning adults in an independent living situation. The job in Flag was an easy gig, like the gas station, there wasn’t much involved with working at my first job for the developmentally disabled. Like I said, the clients I worked with were very high functioning. They worked during the day and the staff would be there at night to help them with things like grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning their apartments.
To be honest, the clients I worked with were so high functioning that most of the staff didn’t do anything except sit around, watch TV, and occasionally sneak away to get high or grab a few drinks.
My part time job with the kids was pretty similar, except it was an after school program and my job was to pick the kids up after school and then take them out for various activities until it was time to run them back home. Of course, by the time I’d started working with the kids I’d been clean going on four years and instead of thinking of the kids as a burden—like I did with the adults back in Flagstaff—and actually enjoyed the job. I felt I was making a difference in these kids’ lives (and I’ve come to find out I actually did. I ran into one of my junior high kids—who’s now 21—while I was at the local craft store with my wife and my daughter and he instantly recognized me. I gotta admit it felt pretty damn good.
Anyway, I liked the job so much, that after the wife and I were finally moved in, a manager position became available for the adult program. The position paid the same as my two jobs combined, so I decided to apply for it and I was hired.
Great, I thought, no more fourteen hour days and home at a reasonable hour every night.
Wrong.
As I was soon to find out, being the manager of the adult day program was a little slice of hell on earth and the reason why I got hired on for the job so quickly was because there was only one other applicant, and the upper management of the company who ran the day program had their eyes on him because they suspected him of palming drugs out of the meds closet.
Here’s why the adult day program was such a nightmare. Like most mental health programs, they’re operated by private corporations and like most private companies, the one I worked for liked to make money—gobs and gobs of it. Well, how they went about doing this was by taking on the most disturbed, radically violent clients—or “consumers” as the company called them—they could find. And, of course, the company I worked for cut corners anyway they could, which meant they didn’t pay the support staff shit, which meant lots of turn over, which meant every time a staff member walked off the job after taking a punch, the manager—me—had to take over that former staff’s shift.
Long story short, I continued to work fourteen hours day, but now I only had to drive to one location instead of two.
And of course I was miserable beyond all reason and making everyone else in my life just as miserable. (Yeah, it was mostly the newly minted Mrs. Rawson who I was driving batshit.)
But let’s fast forward to the day I took the punch.
I’d been doing so well at my new job (i.e., I was willing to work a 14 hour day) that that management decided to put me in charge of its newly created pre-school program. I didn’t mind too much because it was a chance to work with kids again, which I loved doing. The major issue was that we couldn’t have the kids in the building at the same time as the adults. Most of the time this wasn’t an issue because my preschool kids showed up at seven in the morning and most of the adults didn’t start showing until nine.
Except the morning I took the punch.
It was six am and I had just unlocked the doors to the center and I was out front grabbing a quick smoke before the day began when I spotted one of the group home vans pull up at the corner of the building and someone got out the passenger side and started walking towards me. I thought maybe it was a group home staff coming by to see if I needed any extra help with filling the day’s shifts. (I always needed the extra help no matter what.) but to my surprise, it wasn’t staff, it was a client. My most reviled client walking up the front steps of the center unaccompanied, which was a big no-no with a capital N-O!
For the purposes of this post, I’ll call the client, “Doug”.
And the reason why Doug was so disliked was because the dude was a rapist.
A repeated rapist
And Doug, the big, retarded sick fuck, he liked raping kids.
He’d been caught raping or attempting to rape 3 kids—both girls and boys between the ages of 10 and 15—and the only reason he got away with it (No, he was never convicted.) was because of his disability. No body liked working with the guy and for obvious reasons. Yeah, he was chemically castrated and he was on enough anti-psychotics to choke an elephant, but he was still enormous and he made you feel creepy as hell just by eyeballing you.
Anyway, here’s big Doug, making his way up the steps, saying good morning me and telling me that he felt like going to the movie room. I tossed my smoke and led Doug into the office I shared with the afterschool supervisor, locked the door, and got on the phone to try and get Doug’s day staff to come in early.
By having Doug in building I was breaking all kinds of rules. If it was just me with none of the adults coming in until later on in the day, everything would’ve been fine, or even if I had extra staff to greet the preschool parents I could’ve taken Doug out in one of the vans and driven the sick fuck around until his staff made it in. But I didn’t have any of that; I was alone until the preschool staff and Doug’s regular facilitator made it in. So I did the best that I could, keeping Doug locked in my office, ushering the kids into the TV room as soon as their parents left, and going between the two rooms to make sure nothing was out of order or that nobody went AWOL.
Luckily Doug’s staff had agreed to come and the preschool staff would be there any minute. But old Doug, Doug was getting pissed. The motherfucker wanted in that TV room; he wanted to watch the Lion King, or one of the dozens of Disney flicks we kept in the video closet. I tried calming him down, redirecting him, none of it was working. He was pacing the tiny room, a string of obscenities boiling out of his mouth, knocking small stuff off of my desk, ripping posters off of the wall. I was tensing up, getting ready for the worst.
He finally made a move for the door and I grabbed his upper arm.
That’s when he swung on me.
The punch was a clumsy swing, no real force behind it, but it rocked my head back and knocked off my glasses. I think it was old Doug knocking my glasses off that pissed me off the most. Like most people who read and write a lot, my eyesight is for shit and the wife and I, neither of our jobs offered health insurance as an incentive, so if this drooling shitheel broke my specs, it was going to cost me an arm and leg to replace them, especially with my complicate prescription.
So I’m not too ashamed to say I reeled back and threw a hard punch into Doug’s chest. There was something damn satisfying listening to the dude’s breath rush out of his lungs. I was getting ready to throw on him again when Doug’s regular staff opened the door. He knew what was going on, I’d seen him almost get violent with Doug a time or two, and I was pretty sure they’d punched each other up a couple of times when it was just the two of them. Doug was recovering his breath from my punch and decided to come at me, this time, however, me and Doug’s staff restrained the big man and took him to the floor.
I lucked out and Doug ended up not telling a soul that I’d punched him. If he had narced me out, I would’ve lost my job, and probably would’ve been charged with assault.
Not that any of this mattered. A couple of months after, I was fired from the job for not reporting a bite I’d taken from one of our nonverbal autistics. The afterschool supervisor was the one who reported it to our supervisor.
To be honest with you, it was a relief. I hated that job.
A month later, I got a temp job working tech support, and then I got hired on permanently at my current gig.
Anyway, that’s the story behind #3.
* * *
Okay, folks, a couple of things before I sign off.
First up, if you haven't seen my interviews with Craig McDonald over at BSCreview yet, you can take a gander right HERE for part 1 and right HERE for part 2. I'm really proud of the interview and I hope you take a couple of minutes to give them a watch.
Also, on the fiction front, some of my wayward stories are finally starting to find homes. Aldo Calcagno of CrimeWaV.com, Powder Burn Flash, and Darkest Before The Dawn, picked up my story, "A Clip Joint Romance" for DBTD and should be coming out some time this week. Also, Full of Crow picked up my story, "Shit Detail", and an old favorite zine of mine will be making its return into the world soon with my story, "Flaming Shits". (I've been fond of using 'shit' in my titles lately.) And last but not least, Steve Weddle picked up a story of mine for the debut issue of Needle magazine. Pretty excited about that one. And on a sad note, in case you didn't know it yet, the Feral Pages is no more
And to round out the evening, as most of you know, I'm a pretty big fan of New Pulp Press. Jon Bassoff runs a pretty tight ship and is publishing some vastly entertaining and innovative books. I'm also a fan of one of Bassoff's writer's, John Woods, whose debut short story collection, Bad JuJu & Other tales of Madness and Mayhem, will be coming out in April. I appeared alongside John in issue #7 of Plots With Guns and Crimefactory will be publishing John's story, "The Old Man" in an upcoming issue. Anyway, John's put out a pretty awesome trailer for Bad JuJu, so I hope you enjoy it and buy the book when it hits the stands.
I spent the day moving my in-laws into their new house. Needless to say, I'm falling down and pass out on the carpet exhausted, at least physically. My old hamster wheel of a brain is running full tilt, though. Mentally, I could stay up all night writing, editing and prepping for a few upcoming interviews.
But chances are that's not gonna happen.
Chances are I'll be in bed within the next couple of hours trying to keep my eyes open so I can read a few more pages.
But for the time being, I'm chugging away. I'm hot and bothered, so I'll get this post done and move onto the next project.
Okay, as far productivity for the week, if you haven't read it yet, check out my first print interview to appear at Spinetingler magazine with the extremely talented and gracious Roger Smith. (And don't forget about the contest to win a copy of Roger's newest novel, Wake Up Dead, right HERE.) Roger is the first in a series of print interviews I'm hoping to conduct for Spinetingler in the coming months. I'll still be doing video interviews for BSCreview, but I'll largely be doing the print interviews with authors who don't normally make it out as far west as Arizona while they're on tour for their books. The Spinetingler gang also has some pretty exciting stuff going down in the next couple of months, so make sure to stay tuned to the site for further developments.
Okay, more contests. If you're a regular reader of my delicate flower of a blog, you'll know I'm a big supporter of Dennis Tafoya. The man is one of the most talented novelists to come around in quite some time, and I've been strongly anticipating Tafoya's second novel, the Wolves of Fairmount Park. Now, the hardcover won't be out until the middle of June, but if you're as excited about the novel as I am, you'll want to head over to the man's blog, Dennis Tafoya's Bad Neighborhood, and you can enter to win an Advanced Readers Copy of the Wolves of Fairmount Park. And do it now. because copies of this are bound to be going fast!
Alright, another Pennsylvanian writer I'm quite fond of is Duane Swiercynski. Duane's one of the truly nice guys of noir and when I first started dipping my toe into the icy waters of becoming a writer, Duane was one of the first authors I ever contacted to ask for advice. (He still gets the occasional harassing e-mail from me to write something for Crimefactory and I still have no issue with asking for advice.) So when Duane puts out a new novel, it always ends up being a book that I try to push into the hands of others so they can get hipped to one of the most original fiction writers out there. And Duane's Publisher, St. Martin's/Minotaur, are also big into promoting Duane's stuff, so if you want the chance to win a signed copy of Duane's newest, Expiration Date, and some amazing artwork to boot, click right HERE.
Okay, last but not least, if you haven't seen Steve Weddle's newest baby (and I'm not talking about his new dog.) you should check it out immediately!
Yeah, Needle magazine, a straight up print hardboiled/noir journal. It looks bad ass and it's hard to believe the whole idea only started a week ago when Steve, Anthony Schiavino of Pulptone, Anthony Neil Smith, John Honor, Dan O'shea, and myself were talking about the lack of places to publish as a hardboiled/noir writer over on the Twitter. But Steve being Steve, the man decided to move it beyond good conversation and take it to the next level with the incredibly talented John Honor and get things rolling. It'll be interesting to see what happens with this bad boy, but both John and Steve know they can count on me to support the project in anyway that I can.
Anyway, folks, hit the bricks, it's time for me to get to get along to other shit.
rs,
