Last fall, I finally had the pleasure of meeting Frank Bill. This was about a year after we both appeared in Issue 5 of Plots with Guns and subsequently began to exchange notes, strategies and war stories from our respective crime-writing trenches.

I was inspired not only by his narrative voice (raw and poetic and brutal), but also his devotion and work ethic. Whereas, I stay up way too late to work on my novel, Frank rises way too early to do the same. In fact, there are times I’m just ending my writing here on the Pacific Coast when in comes a note from Frankie, who’s just getting started in southern Indiana.

At Bouchercon last fall, I found Frankie to be a genuinely kind, earnest and down-to-earth guy, which made it even more fun when we both (somehow) ended up at the St. Martin’s cocktail reception (it was like that scene from Seinfeld in which Kramer gets spun around at the Tony Awards by the “Clydesdale Surprise” people and ends up at all these “after parties”). We were in publishing culture-shock, in a good way. Hell, we were just a couple of pulp/noir writers snatching free food off the trays, trying not to stick out too much.

We were the kids from the wrong side of the tracks.

Well, for Frankie, not any more.

Frankie and his agent Stacia Decker announced yesterday that he has signed a two-book deal with Farrar, Straus & Giroux – for his novel, DONNYBROOK (a sneak peek of which I thoroughly enjoyed), and a collection of stories, CRIMES OF SOUTHERN INDIANA.

I am beyond thrilled for Frankie – his determination to put words on the page every day and his courage to tell brutal stories in a singular voice have paid off. The fact he also happens to be a great guy makes it even sweeter.

Sometimes you come up on something, and it’s so freaking cool you just want to be  a part of it.

I felt that way about Nancy when I met her in the college newsroom some 20 years ago. The rest, as our kids would say, is history.

Same goes with cool fiction. Super cool fiction. I’m not saying I want to marry and impregnate cool fiction; I’m just saying that when I see it — when I read it, experience it — I want to be a part of it. It happened when my buddy Riske and I were in Keppler’s one lunch hour and he literally tossed the debut  edition of Murdaland to me, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it (I never was, unfortunately, but I tried). It happened when I went to a Sun Microsystems party with Nancy in ’95 (she was working there) and I saw all the people saying wild stuff, doing amazing things, and I thought, I want to write for these people. And it happens over and over again every freaking time I check out a new edition of Plots with Guns.

PwG INSPIRES me.

Plots with Guns is freaking cool. Way cool. Phenomenal stories. Crazy-fun art and design. This whole high-brow/low-brow thing going on. Anything goes, as long as it socks you in the gut, takes you somewhere you hadn’t yet been. It’s Gary Busey waxing poetic. Or Hume going off the deep end, on mescaline. It’s a bunch folks hanging out in the dark corner of the Town Lounge, completely unresponsive to the posturing and BS swirling around them.

All of which is to say that Plots with Guns has a new issue out — and it makes me wanna be a part of it, again. Amazing pieces — all of the them — from Shea, Bill, Tafoya, Ashley, Knight, Kiewlak, Hess, Thomas, Kerr and Elliot. No wonder everyone wants to get in PwG.

In short time, Crimefactory has ramped operations with stunning velocity.

Since Issue 1 in January, Crimefactory’s barbed-wire studded conveyor belt has rolled out top-notch essays, interviews and fiction by everyone from the legends (people like Bruen) to the unknowns (people like me). It’s raw and smart and cool, and it continues to produce at an amazing pace — its smoekstacks billow night and day. Credit goes to shift bosses Keith Rawson, Cameron Ashley, Liam Jose and Jimmy Callaway — apparently, these guys never sleep, if you consider the hundreds of pages Crimefactory already has published.

In Issue 3, the conveyor belt spits out my story, Headlock, which involves … well, you get the idea. [Fair warning: If stories about marathanon headlocks, disgusting private encounters and low-functioning, extra-hairy house guests are *not* your thing, you may wanna pass on this one]. As thrilled as I am to see it roll off the line, maybe I’m even more thrilled to see it there with the products of fellow line workers Kieran Shea, Jed Ayres, Dennis Tafoya, Sandra Seamans, Dan O’Shea, Roger Smith and Leigh Redhead.

Suggest you venture into the Factory. Just be sure to put on a hardhat.

Retire?

How could I retire from guacamole after this past Sunday, when I made a batch of Guacamole Gregorio that seemed to achieve what so few of mine had done in 2009? Sunday felt like the 2008 season all over again. The avocados were soft and ripe. The hair-trigger ingredients danced with each other in an intoxicating rumba. The bowl was scraped clean – my mom, who’s staying with us, even asked for a spoon to collect the final strips of green.

Retire?

Me?

Hell no.  

Call me the Brett Favre of guacamole.

The Helen Thomas of the green stuff.

I ain’t going away just yet.

So yes, by the powers invested in me (by the International Commission for the Guacamole Arts), it is my pleasure to open the 2010 Guacamole Season. Let there be Mexican beer in frosted glasses. Let there be Latin jazz beating in the background. May the sun shine on you and your lemons and red onions. May the guacamole gods smile on your cumin and cilantro. May you embrace thick, authentic tortilla chips.

In other words, I wish each and every one of you nothing but the very best.

Not too long ago my story, Crazy Larry Smells Bacon, had quite day.

First, in the morning, I received the news that Crazy Larry, which originally appeared in the transgressive-fiction journal Plots with Guns, had been selected to appear in the anthology, By Hook or by Crook: The Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year: 2009 [Tyrus Books], edited by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg.

Then, that night, I learned that judges for the storySouth 2010 Million Writers Award had named Crazy Larry a “notable story” of the year (along with pieces by many others, most notably Kieran Shea, Kyle Minor and Mike MacLean), and that it’s still elligible for higher praise, however unlikely.

For all the love Larry is now receiving, I can thank PWG editor Anthony Neil Smith. Neil’s push-backs on the piece, and his suggestions for spry ol’ Larry, really made a difference. … I’m also glad to tell you that Larry has a solid role in the novel I have been writing; it’s a relief to see that Larry actually ineterests more people than just Neil and me.  

Not that there would’ve been anything wrong with that.

You can blame Shea for this one ….

Shea tagged me for something the kids are calling a “Creative MeMe — Lies and Truths.”

Idea is, you tell “six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth – or – switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. Nominate some more ‘creative writers’ who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)”

Shea has some doozies. What a dude. Damn, I love interesting people.

Okay, mine: One outrageous lie, six outrageous truths …

1] A while back, an unusual sequence of circumstances had me hanging out with Travolta in a nearly empty “waiting area.” We’re chewing the fat for a while, and when he learns that I’m headed to the same place he is, he gives me this look like I’m a space alien, showing me that big smile and eye-twinkle, and says, “Who are you again? And what’s your deal?” … Wish I knew, John. Wish I knew.

2] The summer before college, as a U-Haul desk jockey, I seriously freaked out a customer (a complete stranger) by correctly telling the man that I had seen him one year earlier standing in line with two ladies at a water-slide park, in a city 30 miles away, and that he’d been wearing a blue Speedo and puka shells, and that the ladies had been wearing matching one-pieces. I even told him the date I saw him.  … You should’ve seen the way that guy looked at me. … One of my coworkers spent the rest of the summer convinced I was magic.

3] My dog Venus once appeared on ABC News.

4] On a college road trip to a Sierra town east of Chester, I lost a bet to a local. To settle up, I had to go out back of this bar and squeeze into a small cage containing — I kid you not – this bobcat he’d trapped, and I had to stay in there for 30 seconds. My friends laughed so hard, one of them peed his pants. … Me? I still have the claw marks streaking down my left calf and across the small of my back [all I did was curl up and cover my face].

5] Back in the ’90s, the lead singer of Hootie and Blowfish sang to my wife for the better part of a 90-minute performance at the Concord Pavilion, and for some reason I never really felt threatened. … Me? Oblivious dingbat? Maybe, but she was going home with me, bub. 

6] In college, I circled the United States for three weeks … on $450.

7] As a teen employee of Hickory Farms, I once walked through the mall with my baggy collar shirt tucked into my too-tight pants. That would have been fine, if only my fly had been zipped closed and an enormous portion of my shirt wasn’t protruding through it — unbeknownst to me, of course.

Okay, name the lie, and after ample time, I’ll come clean.

Meanwhile, to continue the madness, I have been asked to tag a “creative writer.” And I want sick, I want twisted, I want perversion. I want Phillips!

You never know how your life might change as a result of meeting someone.

When I met Al Riske in 1999 as a fellow ghostwriter at Sun Microsystems, I couldn’t have predicted the writing adventures and deep friendship that would follow. Over the course of the next nine years — during lunches, coffee breaks and hallway conversations — Al and I would compare notes on our fiction pursuits.

It didn’t really matter that he wrote literary and I wrote transgressive. We supported each other – critiqued each other’s pieces, read each other’s books, ridiculed each other’s rejection letters, dissected literary-agent  search strategies and, eventually, celebrated the successes that started to develop.

Along the way, I was lucky enough to read a story collection Al had written, revised, added-to and massaged for the better part of twenty years. The stories were beautiful — elegant without trying, revealing without really showing why, brief in a satisfying way, scandalous with a light touch — and they stuck with you, key images and dialogue etching themselves into your subconscious.

His stories began to stick with other folks, too, including the editors at Hobart, Blue Mesa, Pindeldyboz and Word Riot. One story won a contest. But literary agents didn’t come running — the conventional wisdom seemed to be that there was no commercial market for short story collections, unless you were Tobias Wolff or John Updike.

Then Al learned about Luminis Books, a brand-new small press that wanted to publish “beautifully crafted prose.” Luminis, it seemed, was interested in publishing books it likes, and less obsessed with producing a New York Times bestseller.

Next thing he knew, Al had a book deal.

A year later, Al’s collection, Precarious: Stories of Love, Sex and Misunderstanding, is shipping from Amazon and selling at bookstores. Publishers Weekly called it “charming.” Novelist Catherine Ryan Hyde announced, “The art of the short story is alive and well in the hands of Al Riske.” Bookstores and literary groups have invited him to read from his collection. Every week seems to deliver a new first, a new adventure.

When my copy of Precarious arrived, the whole thing hit me hard in a wonderful way — here in my hands was the fruit of Al’s inspirational talent and persistence.

I couldn’t be happier for him.

A few years back, a friend’s dad visiting from the East Coast told me a “real writer” is someone who has published material on the printed page. Until he was published on paper, this man wouldn’t consider himself “a writer.”

I always hated the whole effort to create that distinction — “Are you a real writer, or not?” I recall back in college, my first week as a news staffer, I had to stay inside on Labor Day to write a bunch of stories, and a roommate’s friend visiting from San Francisco returned from a day of tubing and drinking and promptly freaked out at the sight of me in my room writing newspaper pieces. “Dude,” he said in this half-California/half-British accent, eyes enlarging as he gazed at my copy. “Dude, are you a writah?”

I always thought being a writer is not about anything other than a mindset. Period. But I think  Dan O’Shea, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Bouchercon this fall, says it even better, and more clearly, right here.

Frickin’ right on, Dan.

Small items, big shit: While my people are all salivating to get a piece of the Noir at the Bar action run by Ayres, my dear friend Riske is headed the other way. He just did a reading in a Palo Alto art gallery (granted, the first reading Al ever did was indeed not only in a bar, but in its basement, so that gives him Noir at the Bar street cred, no?). Truly bummed I couldn’t make it, but I know there will be more Riske readings to attend, if the quality of his soon-to-be released story collection is any indication. … Speaking of Ayres, my fellow Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll alum has a story in the brand-spanking-new anthology, Surreal South ’09. Check it out. … And finally, Shea, my roomie at Bouchercon, has a new flash piece at Yellow Mama that gives us an insider’s view into the mind of a vacationing creative who’s dealt with one too many knuckleheads. Loved it. Hey Kieran, just how many voices can you successfully master? I’ve lost count.

I don’t post here like I used to. Lots of reasons for that, but basically it all boils down to the fact I’m freaking busy.

Work. Family. Friends. Household duties.

And when I do have time — at night, when everyone is finally asleep — I work on my fiction projects. With one project, it’s in my agent’s hands. With the other project, a new novel, I have more to write. But I’m making progress nightly, and gaining speed.

To get here, I’ve sacrificed a lot of couch-vegetation, blogging cycles, Facebook cruising and sleep. I’m not the only one, to say the least. For an authentic look at the realities of  trying write novels in the face of 21st Century life, you really should check out the gut-wrenching blog post by the talented and well-reviewed Irish crime author Declan Burke, and the responses from authors facing similar challenges.

My own challenge is to keep the energy. When I’m halfway fresh, I’m dying to get to the writing. Then the remainder of the day takes another chunk of flesh out of me. When the day is nearly over and I actually have my personal time, I need to coach myself to the computer.

Self-talk.

Get your lazy ass off the couch, Greg. Turn the fricking TV off, now.

No, don’t look at that book; walk to the computer. Now.

Don’t wander into the kitchen, and don’t you dare check your email.

This is your time.

Tomorrow you’ll regret this lost opportunity.

Sure, you’re exhausted, but who isn’t?

“Mommy mommy, I’m tired. I can’t write. Waa-waa-waa.”

That’s my internal dialogue, at least.

Most days I make it to the computer, and once I’m there, I have a blast, get a little closer to creating something that might turn out kinda cool, something that might have a little something to say about life in a fun way. We’ll see. It’s all a huge gamble, but I guess I have to take it — as if I had any say in the matter.

Tomorrow night, another fight.

Friends have asked what one does at Bouchercon.

As this was my first Bouchercon, here’s what I now know:

You show up after an all-night, can-of-sardines American Airlines experience, thanks to your poor planning skills and August bravado. You  hunt down your hotel roomie, Shea, and after years of emails and zines and journals, finally meet Smith, Bill, Gischler, Phillips, Quertermous. They tell you Ayres just left Indy after swaddling himself in your bed sheets and inhaling a mound of Embassy Suites breakfast buffet. You meet Bill’s buddy, Donny, an actual cop who’s packing heat, decide not to make any fast moves. Great guy.

You take a deep breath, realize, I’m home.

You realize you read about one-tenth the amount Shea does, and about one-fifth the amount of everyone else, feel like a dull turtle, a turtle watching a pack of cheetahs in full sprint. … You check out some great panels – the notion of “social issues” presented in crime fiction is your favorite, followed closely by a panel on crime and humor. John Jordan sees your name badge, asks you to sign a copy of UNCAGE ME. You hang out with your tribe, people who understand why you write what you have to write. You just hang, and talk. Beers. More beers. You meet folks, wonder if you seem like a fanboy or a writer or both, try to govern the excited praise rocketing out of yourmouth –Abbot, McDonald, Nikitas,  Gagnon, Olson, Littlefield, Crouch, Starr, Sakey, Barker, Grabenstein, Neville. You meet folks who just made it to the other side (Rector and Charbonneau and Parks), and folks who are like you. You compare notes, talk about Bruen and Ellroy and Huston. You tell  everyone about this guy they just have to read – Black. You talk projects, compare agents. You’re tugged to the St. Martin’s party,  do more of the fanboy/writer routine over more beer and two pieces of melon. You reconvene back at the main bar. More beer. More introductions.  End of night, you crawl into bed, realize you’ve eaten nothing in 24 hours but a Subway pita and the two melon pieces … and you fade to black.

Next day, you work the hangover. Shea pours a handful of vitamins down your throat. And you lard. You lard hard. More panels, more books. Meet some folks about a  project. Rendezvous with the tribe at the Rathskeller. Serious German sausage and beer. Lots of it. Huge moose heads. Lots of middle fingers for Phillips’s camera. The way back to the hotel, ribs with Shea … and then more drinks at the Bouchercon bar, more connections made, ideas exchanged, laughs had.

You get home at  midnight Sunday. You’re wiped. Your brain is shutting down — a squirrel monkey could destroy you in  tic-tac-toe. Hobbling home, almost there, can’t wait to see your family, can’t wait to get into bed, thinking, God, that was great.