A Chump At Oxford

This is part 3 of my book reading disaster stories. To see parts 1 & part 2 click or scroll down. This one I was going to call, The Night Old Dixie Drove Me Down, but that's misleading, really this one was no one's fault and certainly not the fault of the store, one of the greatest bookshops I've ever had the pleasure to enter: the awesome Square Books, of bucolic Oxford, Mississippi (right)... Anyway, I'm in Oxford, Miss to promote Dead I Well May Be. I visit Faulkner's lovely house and chat with Bill at his final resting place. I had brought a bottle of Old Overholt thinking it would be cute to leave it graveside but about 50 other people had had the same idea and the place was bloody littered with booze bottles so I kept the Old Overholt and took someone's 16 yr Laphroaig which was far too good to be wasted on a dead guy.

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A glass of rye and a glass of whisky and its book reading time. I discover that I'm part of a whole show, with music, other readings, more music etc. Its very exciting and this being Miss they take their literature seriously so the place is packed. I'm looking forward to my bit. I go up on the stage and they're about to cue me when someone tells me to remember that we're being broadcast live on the radio so they can't have any swearing, sex or violence.

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Have you read Dead I Well May Be? Can you find a page without any swearing, sex or violence? What about a paragraph? I walked into the spotlight, 200 smiling faces, dead air. I quickly abandoned the idea of reading the kneecapping sequence from chapter 1. But what could I read? "You're on!" the cue guy whispered. I grabbed the book like a lifebelt and began reading. Time slowed down. Everywhere I turned I saw profanity, sex, murder. It was like the LBJ Whitehouse tapes. The F word as verb, noun, adjective, adverb, subject, object, particple. How could I have written this stuff? I began picking my way through a sentence like a blind man with a dodgy knee in a minefield. I hesitated, I stopped, I searched for alternatives. "'For flip sake Scotchy, you are a fine fellow indeed,' Michael suggested," was one horrific sentence. My invention began to fail me. I began to panic. I started just mumbling through the f bombs and the sex and the violence. The cue guy to the left held up two fingers. Only two minutes to go. Thank God. I mumbled, skipped pages, mumbled some more. Sweat was pouring off me. The audience was silent, perplexed. Surely it must be over. I looked over at the cue guy. Now he was holding up three fingers. Three fingers? I keep reading, now he was holding up four. Oh my God!...It wasn't four minutes to go, I had only be reading for four minutes. I had twenty one minutes to go! Did you ever see Goya's Disasters of War? The guy in the white shirt. That was me, that was.

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I have been told that there is a full audio version of this reading on the internet, but I have never played it and I'm certainly not going to link to it. If your heart is cold you can probably google it and listen...After the reading the people at Square couldnt have been nicer. There was an afterparty, but I took myself to a diner and this time I was the guy in Hopper's Nighthawks. The guy who doesnt get the girl and not as well dressed.

Denver Redux

I've been glued to MSNBC watching the Democratic Convention. No life you say? True. Anyway I just saw Mayor Hickenlooper (yes that is his real name) talk about Denver's "perfect climate." Mayor Hickenlooper might be forgetting the six blizzards that hit the city from December 2006 to March 2007. The first one dropped 36 inches of snow in our back garden, closed the uncloseable airport and brought the city to a standstill. This street in front of our house was frozen solid for four months until they brought in ice breaking equipment from Canada! Oh Mayor Hickenlooper, the not quite as fantastically named Willy Wonka is more credible than you.

master of disaster

Inspired by the generous response to my last book reading story John Cleese Again (below)I thought I'd give you another. The Place: Boulder, Colorado (right). The Time: November 2003. I'm at the Boulder Book Store to read from my debut crime novel Dead I Well May Be. Pre pub I had lunch with the buyers, owners and manager of the Boulder Book Store, introduced myself, talked up the book, was super charming, all that jazz. September 2003 DIWMB gets reviewed in the trades. Publishers Weekly is ok, but Booklist, the Library Journal and Kirkus all give me starred reviews. (PW gives starred reviews to my next 3 books so I dont hold a grudge.) A great review comes out in the Rocky Mountain News 3 days before my reading. Also the Boulder Bookstore says it proudly promotes local authors and I'm as local as it gets from Denver just down the road. So the signs are good right?
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It's my first (or possibly my second) reading so I'm a little bit nervous. Its for 7 pm on a Thursday and I turn up at 6:45. Boulder is a student town so there are a lot of youngsters in the store, getting coffee or browsing, another good sign, I think. I go to the information desk on the ground floor, which has a big poster for Carrie Fischer who is either coming to Boulder in December or came last December. Either way it's not tonight. I tell them I'm here for the reading and the hipster behind the desk says "oh there's no readings on tonight, just a massage clinic on the ground floor."
"But I'm supposed to be GIVING a reading," I tell him. He looks skeptical. Calls his boss. The boss comes, also looks skeptical, but finally they send me upstairs where thirty chairs have been set up in front of a podium and a small display of DIWMB. I sit there in one of the empty chairs, stomach churning and finally an employee comes with a note for me. Its from the Simon and Schuster rep, apologising that she can't make it. (She's the one that set the reading up.) More waiting. More churning stomach. (Dont worry this story doesnt end with me puking.) Time passes. There are groans from the massage clinic downstairs and furtive looks from staff members shelving the books. 7 pm comes. At 7:05 my wife's cousin Michael shows up. Michael has a type of leukemia and has literally dragged himself from a sick bed to hear me read. I tell him I think we'll just go to a pub, but cousin Michael - one of the zenest people on the planet - says he really wants to hear me do my thing. So I go to the podium and start reading chapter 1 of Dead I Well May Be. I get to the bottom of the first page and another hipster from the Boulder Bookstore interrupts and asks me if I want to stop the reading so they can tidy the events space before closing the store. Humiliated and confused I say ok, but Michael stands up and says that they should let me finish, especially because one of the browsing patrons has sat down now and she is listening too. A crowd of two is by definition infinitely better than a crowd of zero so I'm feeling ok. Sighing like a teenager whose playstation just died the hipster flounces off downstairs for reinforcements. A minute later he comes back with two other members of staff and they begin systematically and very noisily folding away the empty metal chairs as I attempt to read. Chapter 1 mumble mumble, CLANG CLANG CLANG, hipster laughter, chapter 1 mumble mumble, CLANG CLANG CLANG. They fold about fifteen chairs before Michael stands up, glares at them and does some kind of (to continue the Star Wars theme) Jedi Mind Trick that sends them scurrying downstairs. Thanks to Mike I finish the reading and end up selling a book to the young lady who was browsing!
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Ok, that's it. I've got a dozen more like this at least, if you wanna hear 'em drop me a comment, maybe next time we'll do: No Sleep Till Brooklyn (Unless You're at My Book Reading) or perhaps The Night I Accidentally Drove Old Dixie Down and Nearly Got a Kicking.

Wikipedia!

A friend sent me an email this morning telling me that I have a Wikipedia entry. From the history it looks like it was mainly written by three people whose wiki names are Mxpule, Reilly and Master Builder. Thanks a lot guys/gals whereever you are; I'm very impressed that you took the trouble to do this.

Worst Opening Sentences

Every year the Bulwer-Lytton Competition asks people to come up with the worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel. This year's winner:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
- Garrison Spik, Washington, D.C.

The rest of the winners here. You should jump on over, there are some classics. My fav is the winner of the romance section. Brilliant. There's also one by Diana Moloney near the bottom which cracked me up.

john cleese again

Inspired by a convo over at Detectives Beyond Borders this is the start of a little series I'm going to post about the worst book readings I've ever done. (The relevance of the picture will become clear at the end). Over the years I've had quite a few memorable readings that have been humiliating or disastrous or both. A while ago someone published an anthology of authors recounting their worst writing experiences. When I read the book I laughed at the chutzpah of Stephen King complaining about geting an early morning phone call from Stanley Kubrick or Martin Amis whingeing that only 4 people had showed up for one of his readings. How about no one coming to your reading? FOR THREE EVENTS IN A ROW. How about no one coming to your reading in your home town? How about having no one come but a homeless person in out of the cold? How about having a book store owner's daughter impersonate a fan so that at least there was one person in the audience? How about getting big footed and metaphorically shat upon by a famous Irish novelist at a joint reading? How about getting booed in a bar because I was reading too loudly while the Yankees game was on? Four people at your reading? you'll have to do better than that my friend. Anyway, here's the first of my nightmare stories. I'm calling it:
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The Boston Heckler
Ever been heckled at a book reading? Well I have. The time: oh about 7:15. The place: Boston, Massachusetts. I'm in town to read from my book The Dead Yard. Decent crowd. A dozen people. Front row, a guy in a leather jacket, ripped jeans, twitchy. I knew there could be trouble because Boston is a pro IRA town and The Dead Yard gently suggests that the tiny faction of the IRA who rejected the 1999-2004 peace agreements are probably crazy. My plan was to read only from chapter 1 which avoids politics and is about a football riot in Spain. The book opens with this line: "Dawn over the turquoise shore of Africa and here under the fractured light of a street lamp, brought to Earth like some hurricaned palm, I woke before the supine ocean, admist a sea of glass and upturned bus stands and the wreck of cars and looted stores. The streets of Playa de las Americas were flowing with beer and black sewage and blood."
"What does all that mean!" Mr Mad Jacket yelled.
I ignored him, carried on reading.
"What are you talking about?" he persisted.
"It's a book reading, I'm reading a novel," I explained.
"I don't like Africa," he countered.
It was now obvious to me that the man was not quite right in the head.
I continued reading chapter 1. He lulled me into a false sense of security for five minutes before wondering: "Who are you to stand up there and lecture us?"
"They invited me to talk," I said firmly and already my fight or flight response had kicked in. He stood up. I closed the book. It was the hard back so I knew it might make a handy weapon.
"You can't tell me what to do!" he said.
"I wouldn't dream of it," I replied.
He made a fist and shook it. This was a Barnes and Noble so they had security but security were off arresting elderly shoplifters or something. The man then began a long diatribe that seemed to have only tangential relevance to the subject of me or books or anything really. Several times he mentioned The Government, then he grabbed the back of his chair, I grabbed the book...
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Actually, speaking of tangents, here's one: One Christmas when I was working at the Barnes and Noble at 82nd and Broadway an elderly homeless lady died in a chair. My friend Scott and I were on the information desk and we got the tip from a member of the public. Scott, I think, went over and touched her and realised she was dead. We told security and they told the manager and her solution was to keep the store open and ignore the dead lady. Paramedics game, ascertained she was dead and refused to take her away. B&N was making money hand over fist, so our manager threw a sheet over the lady and kept the store open while we waited for the undertakers. They finally showed up at 1o o'clock at night and by that time mortis had set in. They had to carry her out still in the chair. Everyone did that New York thing of not noticing, but how B&N kept the scandal out of the papers I'll never know. And creepy, immoral, an example of unbridled capitalism out of step with the spirit of Christmas? Aye, all that stuff.
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What was I talking about? Ah yeah, the heckler. Oh he got fed up heckling and wandered off. I finished the reading and sold zero books. Stay tuned for another reading debacle coming to a blog near you.

reviews are like world wars, you wait ages for one then two come along at once

Peter 'The Man' Rozovsky reviews The Dead Yard over at Detectives Beyond Borders. Peter's take on the strange second book of The Dead Trilogy? I'm not going to spoil it, hop on over and find out.

The Sunday Times reviews The Bloomsday Dead. Their verdict on the last book in the trilogy? Again why should I ruin it for you? Jump across to see.

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Gentlemen the pair of them. Sort of like this kindly old gent (right) though hopefully not as drunk. And I'm sure they've got someone to iron their shirts.

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August 10th update. A nice review from Gene McEldowney in the Irish Independent here. Thank you, I appreciate it. Mr. McEldowney's shirts are always pristine.