Snake Farming

When I heard that my ZP brother, Gareth Spark was having a launch party for his new short story collection, SNAKE FARM I immediately typed the words ‘up north’ into my car’s satnav and hit the road. Some five hours later I arrived in Gareth’s hometown of Whitby on the north east coast of the UK. What followed was an evening of Brit Grit fiction, poetry and Scrumpy Jack Cider, with a little blues guitar thrown in for good measure.

Chris Firth, head honcho of Electraglade Press kicked things off. He was followed by and local up and coming poet Sam Brewster who read superbly in spite of this being her first time in the spotlight. Then it was time for the main event. Gareth started off with some crime tales, including two of my favourite Spark shorts, ‘American Tan’ and ‘Regal Kingsize’ before mixing it up a little with a western first published on the now sadly defunct Big Adios site and rounding out with a gritty horror. It’s fair to say he nailed all of them.

Hearing Gareth read reminded me why I love short fiction. Distilling a whole story into a couple of thousand words is a real skill. If it’s done well it can to blow you away. Gareth Spark does it very well indeed. Go buy a copy of SNAKE FARM and check that out for yourself.

The All New Badass Big Adios

         

Originating as a weekly online western fiction magazine, The Big Adios has graduated to a quarterly print digest with this debut issue featuring the works of David James Keaton, Tom Pitts, Jim Wilsky, Dawn Vogel, Paul Lorello, Robert Lowell Russell, Coy Hall, Aidan Thorn, Gareth Spark and Christopher Davis. Here you will find the west in all its guises. We’ve got the weird and the wild and a whole lot more besides.

The debut edition is out on 22^nd September in both dead tree and electronic formats. You can pre-order it right HERE for your kindle doodad for the princely sum of a buck 99.

Zelmer Pulp Is Back!

That’s right, and this time we’ve brought friends.

While working on the Springsteen-inspired noir collection TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND with Gutter Books, we figured we'd be idiots not to capitalize on that tidal wave and we decided to start work on a noir collection all our own.


The end result is, MAYBE I SHOULD JUST SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE, a gritty no holds barred take on crime fiction that will leave you beaten, bloody and thirsting for more.  New Jersey-based photographer Mark Krajnak is contributing some stunning noir themed photographs to both the Springsteen collection and MISJSYITF, which will add a whole other dimension to our publications. The cover for MISJSYITF (above) is still a work in progress, but you get the idea.

If that wasn’t enough we have added 28.6% more awesome to the ZP gene pool with the permanent addition of Gareth Spark and Benoit Lelievre to the team. Gareth is one of England's leading noir voices and all-around hard-hitting presence, he came onboard as a guest writer for MISJSYITF and we soon realized we would be crazy not to ask him to stick around full time.  Ben is the eloquent but brutal mastermind behind the website DEAD END FOLLIES and author of numerous hardcore fiction pieces. There really wasn’t any discussion needed about inviting these two guys to join the party. Something just clicked. It just felt right. And there is no doubt that we will be stronger because of it.

Look out for MISJSYITF soon and for TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND in the fall.

Maybe I Should Just Shoot You In The Face?

Apart from working through the frustratingly slow process of getting our Springsteen based crime anthology, TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND (did I mention both Dennis Lehane AND Ryan Sayles are in it?) out into the world, it’s been quiet pretty on the Zelmer Pulp front, too quiet. 
All that is about to change with this dark hit of Noir. The talented Isaac Kirkman is taking a well earned break, but MAYBE I SHOULD JUST SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE will feature stories from all the other Zelmer regulars, Brain Panowich, Chuck Regan, Ryan Sayles, Chris Leek and our very special guest, Gareth Spark. Add to that an introduction by Brit Grit Legend, Paul D. Brazill and you have a book that will bring world peace, stop global warming and get you pregnant*. This puppy should be rubbing up your leg in the next couple of weeks.

*These are lies. This book will not do any of those things and any conception that may occur while reading it is purely coincidental.

Book Deals, Births and Buddies

This past week has been crazy and I have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll start by saying how delighted I am that the wonderful people at Snubnose Press will be publishing my novella NEVADA THUNDER.  It’s a fast, hard-boiled ride full of dive bars and bad decisions. Here’s the blurb:

The sun isn’t the only thing that beats on you in the Nevada desert. Johnny Gregson learned that the hard way. He used to be a fighter, sooner or later people will realize that he still is.

 His only knock down came from Carlo Martinez, but it didn’t happen in the ring. Martinez is no boxer. He’s the Las Vegas front man for a Mexican drug cartel. When Gregson refused to throw a fight, Martinez paid him back with a trumped up drug charge. Call it a technical K.O.

 Gregson did the time and came out a little older and maybe a little wiser. He didn’t want revenge, but that wasn’t going to stop his surrogate sister, Kara from trying to get it for him. Her naive attempt at blackmail has landed them both in a world of trouble. Part of the problem is that Kara doesn’t have anything on Martinez; the other part is Martinez believes she does.

If everything goes to plan NEVADA THUNDER should hit the shelves by the end of the year. It goes without saying that I’m pretty stoked about the whole thing and honored to be joining the Snubnose family.

I owe a lot of people a lot of things (money mostly), but I also owe a big thank you to my Zelmer Pulp brothers, Chuck Regan, Brian Panowich, Isaac Kirkman and Ryan Sayles for reading the early drafts of NT. They helped me make it a much better book.

Talking of ZP it’s been a landmark week for Ryan Sayles too, his wife, Donna gave birth to a happy and healthy baby boy on Thursday. Congratulations guys and welcome to the world Gus!

Brian Panowich also had some good news this week, but that has to remain under wraps for now. All I can say is well done, man. It’s no less than you deserve.

Some other happenings:

The Godfather of Brit Grit, Paul D. Brazill has my favorite British writer, Gareth Spark over at his Out Of The Gutter column this week. You can check it out here: BRIT GRIT ALLEY

Tucson writer and all round good guy, Chris DeWildt was interviewed on Bud Smith’s radio show the other night. He talks about writing, noir and reads a couple of stories from his excellent new collection, DEAD ANIMALS. Here’s the link: THE UNKNOWN SHOW

Tom Pitts, author of the fast-paced thrill fest, PIGGYBACK is also hitting the airwaves this week on Nikki Palomino’s Monday night show, DAZED. Tune in from 10pm EST on the 9th: DIGITAL RADIO 103

Finally, no blog post is ever complete without mentioning Joe Clifford. His band, The Wandering Jews have just released a new album, ALL THE PRETTY THINGS. If you dig the rock storytelling of Springsteen and the driving melodies of Gaslight Anthem then you really need to hear this. You can download it right now from iTunes: ALL THE PRETTY THINGS

Plenty to hammer down on there, folks.

Last Call For Alcohol

Time is running out to submit to the shiny new Out of the Gutter 8 Anthology. The doors close on 21^st November.  I’ll let Editor-in-chief, Matt tell you all about it...

Brace yourselves! OUT OF THE GUTTER is back with Out of the Gutter 8: 21st Century Digital Love, featuring contest winners, essays, and new tales of wretchedness and woe alongside 2012’s very best from The Flash Fiction Offensive and the Bareknuckles Pulp Department!

Contest: We will select two stories (one flash, another between 3,000 and 5,000 words) that hit the theme of modern digital love. What’s that mean? You tell us. Guns, girls, good intentions gone bad spring to our minds, but there's no limit on subject matter, setting, or style, as long as it's in the pulp tradition. Pure story, in other words. All submissions for the contest will also be automatically considered for inclusion in the anthology.

 Fiction Submissions: Open submissions for the anthology (i.e., not for the contest) can be your regular ol’ gutterish stories. We’re selecting some flash, some longer. Only requirement is to adhere to the strict quality standards of The Flash Fiction Offensive and Bareknuckles Pulp. Hit us hard, hit us raw.

Non-fiction Submissions: We're also looking for non-fiction and essays on the subject of modern technology and love. Anybody have thoughts on Internet porn? I mean, those few of you degenerates who've actually visited such sites. We've been too busy visiting the confessional (mostly to confess to how much Internet porn we watch). Gmail chats gone wrong? Girls (and boys) gone wild? The suckiness of Instragram? What have you got?

Best of 2012: You didn’t think we’d forget our loyal contributors, did you? FFO and BKP will select the top stories from 2012, based almost entirely on the number of hits that story has received. You want a book deal? Pimp your work! Rack up the hits! Any story published by either e-zine in 2012 is eligible. So forward that story of a meth-dealing dead hooker to grandma’s sewing group and get them to share!

There have been some fantastic bad-ass stories published this year and many are worthy of inclusion. If it was my job to choose (which thank god it’s not) these would be my top picks.

Flash Fiction Offensive:

McRib Therapy Alleviates Seasonal Depression by CS DeWildt

We all got problems, man. Some of us are misguided loners; some of us are dead in basements. Some of us are just giant red, chain-smoking clowns with a busted foot and bad attitude. Who are you to judge?

Bareknuckles Pulp:

Kin by Gareth Spark

Here’s some damn fine Brit Grit from this side of the pond. You can choose you’re friends, but not your family. Well this sure as hell ain’t the Walton’s.

There are also many, many other fine pieces worthy of your time; while you’re over there perhaps you could find it in your heart to humor this deluded pulp scribbler and check out my efforts as well.

The Legend of Johnny Kool by Chris Leek

A Redheaded Woman by Chris Leek