Giant Instamatic

Here's a picture of me holding a giant Kodak Instamatic 126:

This was an outtake from my 1985 (or '86, or '87) Christmas card, shot in the portrait studio at Moler's Camera in Wichita, where I worked at the time. The plaster bust of Lincoln came from an old schoolhouse, I think.

BOOK TOUR 2013!

 Here are the dates, times and places where I'll be shocking young, old and in between: 

Date	Location	Time
6/13	Square Books
	160 Courthouse Square Oxford, MS 38655 662-236-2262	5 p.m.
6/15	Murder by the Book	1 p.m.
	2342 Bissonnet Houston, TX 77005 713-524-8597
6/16	Mystery People	7 p.m.
	Noir at the Bar With Jedidiah Ayres and Jesse Sublett for a night of music & noir at Opal Divine's Austin Grill. 3601 South Congress Avenue Austin, TX 78704 512-707-0237
6/18	Nightbird Books	6 p.m.
	205 W Dickson St. Fayetteville AR 72701 479-443-2080
6/19	Watermark Books	7 p.m.
	4701 East Douglas Wichita, KS 67218 316-682-1181
6/20	The Raven BookStore	7 p.m.
	6 East 7th Street Lawrence, KS 66044 785-749-3300

Paris Obstetrics

Here's a picture I took out my apartment window in 1982, when I was managing the cafeteria. Having the apartment instead of living upstairs meant getting up at 5:30 and catching the Métro to get there in time to start breakfast, but it was a swinging bachelor pad in the Marais, so what the hell.

The owner of the apartment was a somewhat shadowy figure whom I never met face to face. The previous subtenants (it was a summer rental only) pointed out to me that he had a stash of pharmaceuticals in a cupboard, all of them seemingly childbirth related. We called him the Phantom Obstetrician.

This image started life as an Ektachrome slide.

Finally, the video....

Below is the link to the book trailer for Nocturne le vendredi, which came out November 2 in France. There will be an English version before the book comes out in the US next June. Ideally I will have  rerecorded the voice-over as I did a poor job the first time; this is all the more frustrating because Lane Davies, doing the voice of the psychopathic actor, gives a great performance.

The whole thing was edited by Jenna Marguerita, who also produced and co-directed the scenes with the actors, ably assisted by a group of students from the film department at Webster University. Thanks to them and to Jenna's company, Bitdepth Productions LLC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnGPwYwQXA&feature=autoshare

(p.s.: Click the link above, not the pic below.)

New Book! And Trailer!

My newest book comes out in France today:

That's my eye on the cover, taken right in my publishers' office. It's part of a series of thirteen novels, all set in Paris and all taking place in part on Friday the 13th. (Nothing to do with the series of horror movies of the same name, although my friend Scott Phillips of New Mexico wrote a Jason tie-in novel a few years back, so this is really going to confuse the shit out of people.)

Three of the novels are already being turned into TV movies, and I'm hoping this will be the fourth. It's loosely based on a period in the early nineties when my friend Lane Davies and I were running around Paris trying to raise money for a movie. Lane was the star of a soap opera, "Santa Barbara," that was broadcast with great success during prime time in France, and was such a celebrity there that we were certain we could get this thing made. We didn't but hijinks ensued and when les Éditions la Branche asked me to write something for the series I asked Lane if he'd object to me depicting him as a murdering psychopath (in the novel, things go slightly more haywire than they did in real life).

Hell, no, I don't mind, he replied, can I play myself in the TV movie?

We just got done shooting a book trailer and are just starting to edit. Here's a shot of one of the sets, showing tireless cinematographer/editor Jenna Marguerita with indefatiguable grips Tony and Nathan, and seated at the bar, Anita Romero, playing Esmée, the femme fatale:

And here's the lovely Anita in character:

The book will be out in July of 2013 from Counterpoint Books under the title "RAKE," with one of the best covers I've ever had. Until then, you can get the French version here: http://www.furet.com/nocturne-le-vendredi-2084107.html

My Old Writing Space

In the interests of posting random and uninteresting pieces of my past, here is the door of the tiny squalid fetid cramped dusty room I used to rent on the rue Yves Toudic in the 10th arrondissement in Paris for 500ff per month, about $100 at the time:

My next door neighbors were an elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter, who always smiled sweetly in the stairwell but who shrieked the vilest of obscenities at one another inside their apartment. They ended up in a novel and a short story both, as did the junkie who used to leave his works in the communal toilet down the hall. In the lower right hand corner you can see part of my porno trunk, a "must" for a young lusty bachelor!

AWOL Russian Soldier in Budapest, 1990

In 1990 I went with my friends Mike Gebert and Susan Snyder to Budapest. A large number of Russian soldiers were still there, just because of the logistical difficulties involved in repatriating so many troops from so many different countries all at once. We met this guy on a pedestrian bridge selling Russian army insignias, pins and caps:

I don't know for a fact that he was AWOL but the hair and chin fur suggest he's been spared a military grooming for a while. No idea what happened to the medallion I bought.

Bookseller

I found my old B. Dalton Bookseller nametag in a box of old slides I've been scanning:

This provoked a very vivid B. Dalton dream last night. In the same box, three photo booth pictures from around 1982, smack dab in the middle of the B. Dalton years:

In the top one I'm doing my Stan Laurel face. I also had Stan Laurel hair. I was very, very young. And callow!

Jake's Wake/Kirby's Reunion!

Last weekend in Wichita some friends organized a reunion of the grizzled sots and wised-up former grifters who hung around in Kirby's back in the 8-0s and early 90s. Unfortunately the thing turned into a wake for uber-regular and comic genius Jake Euker, who died earlier in the week. Nonetheless a good time was had, as they say, by all, and in the best tradition of wakes many Jake stories were told and many glasses lifted.
Without naming names:

 Standing outside in the grand parking lot tradition.

 Who is this sultry, leering temptress?

 Someone looks surprised! Perhaps an "off color" remark?

Music! Featuring on vocals a young lady whose parents were regulars before she was even born. Proud papa is on sax at left.

This guy's laughing because he doesn't own the place any more.

For a view of the place in those long-gone, halcyon days, see: http://pocketfulofginch.blogspot.com/2010/03/kirbys-88.html
More to come!