How much is free?

Well, for starters, I wanted to say how pleased I am with all the people visiting Woofreakinhoo lately. My hits have grown every month since I started being a bit more dedicated. It's also exciting how many people are getting into Bent Highway (hell, I am kind of getting into it myself). It looks like August will be my biggest month.

So in the spirit of that, here's something else fairly exciting.

This Friday, for 24 hours, Correction Line will be free. Yep, the f word.

Now wait a second, you say. Didn't you just talk about how you won't sell your book for .99. Saying something about a good quality pair of boots. (If wonder what the hell I am talking about - read this post. Picked up by the smartass times no less).

The short answer - it's a promo baby. Just like I have told my design students when explaining the power of promotion. Say you had a store, and it only had one product: gold bars. And you gave these expensive gold bars away for the unbelievable price of $9.99 (Hey, you're eccentric).

So you get yourself a little store and you wait. You don't take out any advertising, print, TV, radio or internet. You don't even put a sign outside. I mean, why bother - you have a great product at an amazing price. Who wouldn't want it?

And you wait.

And you wait.

Hmmm. How many people do you think would visit the store? Right.

I digress, but not much.

Rather than give a fable-like lecture about advertising, I am just saying that my hope is to draw more attention to Correction Line by giving it away for free. But you don't need to know all this back room strategizing. You can just go pick up the book.

Lastly, some folks have asked, "Hey Craig, I don't have a Kindle. You got any paper copies of that there book?"

(Regional accents. But nice people.)

So no, unfortunately, I don't. And you can only get it on Kindle right now. But here is the thing - if you have a smartphone, a laptop, a computer, a blender (okay, maybe not that one), you can get a free app which will allow you to read Kindle books.

Go here for the app: Free Kindle App

Lastly, and finally, yep, it's free on Friday.

Thanks for reading.

Roachkiller - Post-modern Noir with a touch of Dystopia

Roachkiller and Other Stories by R. Narvaez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As more and more noir creeps into my own writing, I have decided to explore some of the classic, best, and brand new voices in the genre.
I think it is common to compare newer writers to the classic ones by creating some sort of mathematical formula. One part Hammett, add two parts Ellroy and a touch of Leonard and stir - that sort of thing.

After reading R. Narvaez's story collection, I have a hard time coming up with such a formula - the work is very fresh, inventive, full of touches of humour, brooding violence, suspense, and damn if he doesn't sneak some satire in there. Basically, this guy is the real deal - and sure, he has shades of lots of writers in the genre, from Pelecanos to Dick, as in Philip K. Wait - that sci-fi guy? Yeah, that one.

The first chunk of stories start on the streets of Brooklyn, with a pregnant numbers running housewife, and move down into Puerto Rico with the superb Juracan - a Maltese Falconesque story that is in the running for best of the collection (if there were not so damn many good ones). Later in the collection, the stories jump into the near future for some dystopian hard-boiled tales that bring up memories of Bladerunner, Oryx and Crake, and somehow even A Canticle For Leibowitz.

Now, to be clear, I only came up with these comparisons when I started this review - in the midst of the stories, I was too lost in the characters. The problem with a lot of s.s. collections is you finish a story, where you were committed to the characters, and then another one starts up while you are still thinking of the previous ones. I kind of think this is why people don't read a lot of short stories. The jump cuts, and compression of the narrative is hard on the brain - and often, the stories are uneven. What amazed me about Narvaez's writing, story after story he came up with compelling characters that hooked me from the first page.

Sometimes he did it with an interesting POV - as in the title story. Roachkiller is in first person, but the lead character (recently released con and hired killer), refers to himself in the third person.
"Roachkiller knows what you're thinking. But there was a time Roachkiller would have killed a man for a six-pack."

I found myself in Roachkiller's head, and soon after, in the head of Bianco a truck driver stuck in the middle of a badly planned heist (Santa's Little Helper). I also loved the diversity in the stories - Unsynchronicity and Ibarra Goes Down are shaggy dog noirs that play with the idea of when bad things happen to good people (which so often happens in noir). I have to admit in delighting in watching these characters spiral downward.

I had to shave a star - but really it is half a star - for some of the endings. They do leave you hanging at times, not a lot of resolution. But for what they lack in closure, they gain in resonance. These people stay with me. Small beautiful scenes that makes me want to read the collection again (and I plan to).

The closing stories with the Philp K. Dick vibe might seem out of place within the collection. I am guessing there could be another collection with just these stories. It was a risk to push the genre into sci-fi dystopia here - but I think it works. In fact, Rough Night in Toronto, might be the best story - a clever satire of men trying to live with (or under) machines that not only have AI, but basically run the earth. At one point a character is on an "integrated train" across from a pair of robots (known as "arties")

"The male had a copper mohawk and a huge scarf wrapped around his neck. The female had long, copper metal tresses and had spray-painted her face pink. Liberal hipster arties. The worst."

I laughed out loud.

The final aptly titled story, Zinger, has a convict on the electric chair at the throwing of the switch suddenly swapping bodies with an innocent single dad who happens to be a comedian. I finished the book, and thought, holy crap, the guy does George Saunders, too.

One of my favorite reads in a while. Highly recommended reading for noir fans, and P.K. Dick fans alike. Definitely a writer to watch.

View all my reviews

Bent Highway: Chapter Five

Truth

So chalk girl had a name, or an initial at least. I ripped the note off the steering wheel, slammed the truck door and cranked the engine. What the hell else was I going to do? Lately, driving was the only constant in my life.

I thought back to that day I'd cut out from Harold and his Lime Green Slurpee. Or it might have been a Gulp, who knew? I'd being living in the same town, same hockey rink, same bar with the same beer on tap, and the same shoe leather pizza. I stayed in the same place all those years, but I was still adrift. After both my parents died and my sister left town for who the hell knows where, the sadness moved into a lingering depression and then a deep apathy. 

There was a part of me that longed for another time, not my time – I couldn’t imagine an age that was any better than any other – but some other time when life made more sense. Or at least something that was more beautiful, or simple, or both. Truth was, I didn’t know what the fuck I was looking for. I just knew I had to leave.

I didn't hit the road looking for adventure. I didn't have romantic notions of long twilight drives on open roads with stars shining down on me like God's pinpricks of truth or some crap like that. Truth was listening to the smack of a grasshopper nailing your windshield and brushing away his fronts legs with your wiper, or hitting a bump that you knew used to be a raccoon and making it part of the road. Around me there was life, fields of wheat and barley and mustard, creatures scooting through the long rows, birds overhead in arrow formations, swirling with wind. And there was death. All around me.

I let my mind drift between those two states of being: alive and dead. Which one was I escaping from? I’d done the alive thing for more than thirty years – I considered plowing into a speeding locomotive just to try the other state for a while. 

I was picking out the railway crossing when I met L.

It all came back, flooded in, the whole conversation, her face, those great lips, the smell of the bar in Clarksville. Everything.

"You want to talk about it?"

That's how she introduced herself.

"You're assuming I have problems," I said.

"We all do, but I think you have more than most." She sipped a glass of clear liquid. "But let's start with saying no matter what happens, you're not getting in my pants. Just put that the fuck out of your mind."

"Fine with me." It had crossed my mind. "But what's the point of telling you anything. It could all be bullshit."

"Try me."

I told her about my life the last few years. I started out by trying to make it more interesting than it was – but then she reminded me of the pants comment. Right. So I laid it out. Bored as hell. Waiting for something interesting to happen or someone to put a gun to my head or possible do it myself.

"What about you? What's your deal?"

She drained her drink, motioned at the bartender and crossed her legs.

"Similar story, maybe mine had a bit more rape and abuse in it. Fear creates a kind of boredom. So does anger."

"So what did you do?"

"Well, I thought about the bullet to the head approach. Until I met a guy who showed me the ultimate escape."

"You're a junkie."

"Sure, call it that. But not like you think. Walt showed me a way to escape this plodding life, where one second follows another, and that drips into a minute and hour and before you know it, you're in the rest home watching the Price is Right and actually giving a fuck who wins the showcase."

I laughed."Never thought of it that way. So who’s this Walt guy? Can I meet him?"

"Sure. But you'll have to get pissed first." She motioned to the bartender again, pointed to her glass and to me.

A table full of shots and glasses of draft later, I fell into a wide crack in the floor. I don’t remember much of the journey through it, dark outlines of people, a lot of country music (as weird as that was, twangy guitars and vibrating mandolins made sense), and then I landed in the middle of a field. Or I stood up in one anyway.

It was high noon, just like in that old oater. I swore I heard a clock ticking, but it couldn’t have been a mind retina burn from the movie. A tall figure came toward, walking through waving prairie grass. A wolf trotted beside him. When he was just about on me, I saw that it was just a dog, or maybe part dog. The eyes were a icy blue, staring at me like I’d look good with a gash in my throat.

I glanced behind me. Chalk girl had not followed me into the crack.

“Sun.”

The voice rippled through the air, a deep bass that I felt in my chest. I bent my neck, held my hand across my eyes and peered into a dagger of light.

“Son.”

I couldn’t figure out if he was talking to me, the dog, or just pointing out the obvious. Just then the ground swelled underneath me, I lost my balance as it rolled. Flat on my back, I felt a series of diminishing ripples move under me and away. It was like being on a small boat. Except I wasn’t.

“Wave.”

I stood, my knees still a bit shaky, getting my sea legs, in a wheat field.

“Where is this?” The field stretched out in every direction, not a building or a road in sight.

“Straddle the line, your body, your blood, needs to be in both places.”

I was surprised when the giant, because that’s what he seemed like, had strung together a few words. I gave my most intelligent response.

“What?”

The dog moved toward me and I flinched.

“Both places.”

I relaxed as the animal brushed up against me, nuzzling my hand just like the German Shepherd I had as a kid. Something flashed in the hand of the one that chalk girl called Walt.

________

I clenched the steering wheel remembering the pain. Was it the blade or the dog’s teeth that sunk into my arm? And what happened after that?

I was shaken out of the memory as I braked to avoid a couple of cars crossing the highway. They must have been on their way to an antique show. I never was a car guy, but these had to be from the forties, and in mint condition.

Now that I thought of it, which city were they headed toward? And why I didn’t remember the highway being this rough? I flicked on the radio to try and catch a local station. More country twang of course, but at least this had a bit of a swing to it.

“Well there you have it ladies and gents, that new sound we’ve been hearing a lot of from Bob Wills and a fine group of fella’s called the Texas Playboys. Sweet sweet melodies.”

New sound? I recognized the name and was pretty sure the guy they mentioned had been dead for years.

I leaned over to twist the dial and had to slam on the brakes. Those two antique car owners had turned their cars around and formed a line across the road.

My truck squealed to a stop. Two men got out of each car. White shirts and suspenders, sharp creased pants with neat cuffs, all of them wearing fedoras, all of them smoking. But what most caught my eye is the tire iron one was carrying. Another slung a Louisville slugger over his shoulder, the third guy held clenched fists at his sides. The last guy was carrying a fiddle, but not like he was going to play it.

Bent Highway: Chapter Four

Tequila

The Spireton was more shack than bar, and shack might have been a compliment. Six scarred tables that would have been at home in a bingo hall were placed haphazardly in the room. A row of red vinyl stools lined up against the bar, only one wasn't ripped. Water dripped from a crack in the ceiling into plastic pail. It wasn’t raining out. A yellowed sign behind the greasy haired bartenter read Occupany:54. Between us and the other patrons we still had 49 more to go.

"Do you have Tequila?" She leaned against the bar.

The bartender peered down her t-shirt. "Might have a bottle somewhere. Don't sell much of that stomach-burner."

"Do you have any lime?"

"This ain't some fucking fruit bar." He ducked down below the bar and started to rummage in one of the cupboards. After a bit of clinking and crashing he pulled out a dusty bottle with a golden label. "My cousin brought this back from Mexico. Tastes like turpentine if you ask me."

He set two highball glasses in front of us and poured until each were half full. 

"You want some coke in that?"

"This will be fine."

He looked down her shirt again and then back at me. A voice from one of the bingo tables yelled for a pilsner. 

She handed me one of the glasses. 

"How are you doing? Things beginning to straighten?" 

She brought the other glass to her lips threw her head back and drained it. Damn, there had to be four fingers in there. I took a sip and my mouth caught fire. I’d drank tequila before, but never like this. She made a flipping gesture with her wrist. I brought the glass up again and finished it. I slammed the empty glass back down gasping, trying to stifle a huge cough. Someone snorted from the back of the room.

"Two more."

"I like a goddamn chick that can drink." The bartenter sloshed another four fingers into each glass and winked.

"You wouldn't like me after a few of these. Trust me." She carried both glasses over to a bingo table and slid out the chair. She put both drinks in front of me and repeated the wrist thing.

"I—"

"Drink." 

Pilsner guy started to say something, until she gave him a dick-shriveling look. She got up, walked across the bar to a dusty jukebox. I watched her bend over,  someone muttered "damn". I drained one of the glasses. The fire travelled down my throat, swirled in my guts and then found some unknown path up to my skull. A wheezing viloin player cranked up, followed by wavery mandolin strings. A high-pitched voice sang about shifting sand. I brought the other highball to my mouth, the rim felt thick on my lips, invisible odours drifted up the sides making my eyes water. I knew this song. I was just about to name it out loud and then my head folded in on itself. I fell back in my chair, reached for the edge of the table, and waited for my body to slam into the concrete floor. Instead, I went through it. My body tumbled and turned in an inky liquid, glycerin bubbles floated up (if that was up), one by one they burst with a soft ping.

I set the glass down. Empty. I was now on one of the vinyl stools, but these were navy blue, and shone like a freshly waxed Corvette. It was a bar like the Spireton, but not quite. For one thing, the place was half full. A trio of musicians teetered on a stage crammed into the corner. They were playing a Hank William’s cover.

"Buy you a drink?"

I spun around and glared at the chalk girl – it was her, but she was dressed differently. In Spireton, she had wore that painted on black t-shirt and tight Levis. Now she was wearing a short floral dress, her black hair held back by a lime-green hair band. Her lips were still the same shade of stunning red, they opened up into arc of white that excited me and scared me at the same time.

"Where are we?"

"When might be a better question. We're still in Spireton." She smiled. The band stopped, there was scattered applause as they walked off the tiny stage.

"We went through a rip." The word just came out of me. I looked down at my checked sleeves. I’ve never worn plaid in my life. I stared farther down into a pair of dust covered cowboy boots, shit-kickers we used to call them.

"Now you're getting it. I keep telling Walt that tequila works a lot better than water. Eventually you can do it with water or any liquid, but it’s never as effective, or even as fun."

"Walt's the tall guy," I swallowed and touched my knee, "with the knife." 

"That’s what I call him. I don’t why, but he reminds me of Disney. The theme park, not the guy.”

“One of the scarier rides.”

“It's the only way you can straddle both lines. Of course, you need to be close to a rip. Eventually you won't black out any more, and it will still hurt when a rip is close. That's what you felt in the diner. You want a beer?" She held up two fingers and waved them at the cleancut guy swiping down the bar. "Black Label." She turned back to me. "Hell of a beer, nothing like what we have now."

"We've talked about this before haven't we?"

"Yes, but I don't expect you to remember everything yet. When Walt first cut me, it was six months before my head cleared." The bartender plunked down two stubbies and opened them for us.

"Why?"

"It just takes a while that's all – you're wired to experience life in a linear fashion. Think about it this way: recalling the past can release a powerful emotion. It's more than simple nostalgia, for some of us it’s a deep longing, or a pain we're trying to escape. We let our minds drift back to a different time both when we dream and in our daydreams. You've done that right?"

I nodded.

“But why do it?”

"Walt figured out a way to go farther than dreaming. He tuned himself to the rhythm of the chronos."

"Chronos?"

"Time. He found it's rhythm, its flow. And then he started to find the rips."

I took a deep swallow. The cold beer eased the lingering flame of the tequila. People in crisp stetsons and bolo ties swigged back mugs of beer. Most of the women were in dresses, hair piled up high and lipstick giving chalk girl a run for her money.

“This is bat-shit crazy, you know that?”

“Yeah, you said that last time.” She swigged her beer and winked.

Someone hit the table across from us, an open-palmed smack, and the place erupted in laughter.

"How did he find them?" I asked when the sound died down.

"I'm not clear on that. Something to do with astral projection." She laughed. "Remember that? There was a big movement in that for awhile – a couple of doctors swore they could prove it but no one took them serious. Anyway, that's where Walt found the rips and Philo."

"You lost me again."

"The thing you were calling a wolf." Her elbow spasmed. "Drink up." She gulped down the rest of her beer. 

“What? Why – we just got, uh, here.”

She turned her neck fast, like someone had grabbed it and twisted. I looked over while I drank and saw this huge mother of a cowboy take a step toward us. As he walked he unsnapped a side holster and pulled a knife out damn near as big as his hat.

I abandoned the beer, letting the last swallow dribble down my front as I leaped up from the stool. Out of the corner of my eye, another figure appeared, large and moving fast. A flash of metal appeared in his hand, and as if someone took a snip out what was happening, he was on me, his breath hot against my face, smelling of freshly toiled ground. I opened my mouth to speak. 

“Walt.”

A guttural sound, in between human and animal.

“Let it happen.” Chalk girl’s voice from across the room.

It felt like someone had just sliced off my kneecap. My eyes slowly filled with ink, I slipped through a crack in the red vinyl.

I awoke face down in the back of my truck. I got to my knees and stared at the empty parking lot. A neon closed sign, shone out of the Spireton bar window. The “c” and the “d” were burnt out.

Back in the cab a note was thumbtacked to the steering wheel. 

"Just Drive", it was signed "L".

The Noir Inside Me

A friend gifted me a set of Jim Thompson paperbacks the other day. I've read Thompson before and love the movies The Grifters and The Getaway (Peckinpah and McQueen please, let's not even talk about the other one). I know how dark Thompson is, and to be honest I do like the dark. In my bookclub, I have the reputation of bringing the darkest and bleakest books to the year's reading list (introduced them to The Road, American Pastoral, and DeLillo's, Endzone to name a few). 

But here is what I have been wondering - how do these dark, bleak books affect me? I don't read for escapism, I never have, and if I wanted to escape, then why into a dark book? Incidentally, I also love all of Graham Greene's work (notably Power and the Glory and the Comedians), and Flannery O'Connor, and Faulkner, and... well, the list goes on.

So, if I am not reading to escape, and some of my favorite authors live in the dark, am I a dark and brooding guy? Is violence bubbling up within me, climbing to the surface, ready to explode at any minute? Well, if you know me, I think you'd say the opposite.

I recall someone on our bookclub asking me why I like this stuff. Don't I ever read "happy books"? I can't remember my exact response, but it had to do with facing into a broken world. Lately in the news there have been two more mass murders. When I hear of these, I am sickened, I can barely read the news article - and I certainly do not follow the coverage on CNN. But somehow within the confines of fiction, I can confront the darkness that exists in all of us. I don't try to make sense of it, but I do want to be aware of it. I don't want to sleepwalk though life, only waiting for the next sale at Walmart, or worrying about the best lawn fertilizer. It seems weird (and I am not trying to create some convincing argument), but I can better contemplate the darkness of the world, and that which exists inside me, through fiction.

When I finish a great book (like Richard Ford's Canada), I am changed. There is a lot of sadness in that book - and the realism dances close to the edge (similar to reading articles about the shootings). But the resonance of a broken family, the idea of crossing borders, both physical and mental, and the landscape itself, seep into me, and make me think a different way. This is always my highest praise for a book - it changes the way I think.

Now, I can't say this about noir books like Thompson's, and I don't read a lot of them. James Ellroy is a bit this way for me to. I couldn't read more than one Ellroy book in a row - and I often need the space of a year or so in-between. I have been reading more crime fiction lately, partly because I do dabble in it. Correction Line has "brooding violence", as one reviewer called it. There is violence in my other novel, Fall in One Day, and some of my short stories. Reading Thompson, and Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake), I am struck by the lack of graphic description, and yet the terror implied, even more so, by what is not said. When Stark says, "Then I shot him and he fell in the hole.", and that's it... there is so much more resonance and power than the overly graphic detail of some modern writers. Read the last part of A Good Man is Hard to Find (O'Connor), and you will see what I mean.

This is a longer post than I intended - and maybe I will return to this topic. Just to end it, I wanted to add that when I read these books, it is not the crime or the violence that I am interested in - it is the characters, and what they say about us all. The Sheriff in No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite characters in fiction. He struggles to understand what the world has come to, and how he fits into a world that allows a killer like Chigurh to exist. In another, very different direction, Joe Lansdale's Hap and Leonard books explore male friendship - and better than most books I read. They are in a violent setting, a violent culture, and they themselves are violent (though, Hap struggles with it). But within that setting, they have a very deep friendship. They are also funny as hell, which I think you gotta be.

Cuz, life is funny, not ha-ha funny, peculiar I guess. (Thank-you Eels).

More another time.