Fun & Games Across America: Noir at the Bar! L.A.! Tonight!

You know this whole Carmageddon thing? Let me tell you, it's been kind of a non-event. I took the back roads (through Burbank, and up around Lake Hollywood Drive, then down in Beachwood Canyon), worried that I'd be late to a party... and I've never seen the streets of L.A. so frickin' deserted. Same thing coming home on the 101 up to Studio City. Deadsville.

So, SoCal residents... this means you have no excuse for not venturing down to the very first Noir at the Bar L.A.!

The event is free; hardboiled-types, noiristas and booze will be in abundance. I'm lucky enough to be sharing the bill with Josh Stallings, Holly O'Neill West, Stephen Blackmoore and Eric Beetner. We'll all be reading from our work. Instead of Fun & Games, however, I think I'll be reading a sliver of a forthcoming novella I've been working on for a while. There's cussing and much violence in this selection; it just feels right for this crowd.

Also, rumor has it... okay, okay, the Facebook event page has it... that noir legends Gar Anthony Haywood, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips and Terrill Lankford will also be dropping by

If you're nowhere near L.A., no worries. There may be a livestream of the event tonight. I'll post details as soon as I receive 'em.

That's Noire With an "E," Pal

I swear, I have the receipt to prove it.

I pre-ordered my copy of L.A. Noire, the forthcoming detective thriller game from Rockstar, back in January, many weeks before I even caught wind of any anthology, let alone the idea that I might be part of it. Now, I'm not much of a gamer. The last video game I really went wild for was Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto III way back in December 2001, in those lazy, crazy months before I became a father. (Our son Parker, the hardcore gamer in the family, was born the following March.)

But the siren call of L.A. Noire was too great to resist. Like GTA III, the game offers the opportunity to wallow in crime and mayhem in a sprawling urban environment. In GTA III, it was the fictional "Liberty City." In L.A. Noire, however, you're racing around a breathtakingly-accurate postwar Los Angeles, solving crimes straight out of the darkest film noirs and crime thrillers of that era. The game's out May 17, at which point my son Parker will have to surrender his X-Box controller for a few weeks. (Sorry, son. But I am bigger than you.)

This is why I was insanely excited to contribute a story to L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories, an anthology of eight tales spinning out of (and around) the L.A. Noire universe. The lineup (present company excluded) is flat-out stellar: Megan Abbott. Lawrence Block. Joe Lansdale. Joyce Carol Oates. Francine Prose. Jonathan Santlofer. Andrew Vachss. Each story will roll out separately over the next few weeks, and then released as a Mulholland Books ebook on June 6, complete with an introduction by Charles "Hard Case" Ardai. You can find the complete rundown of stories, along with a teaser excerpt of Megan Abbott's "The Girl," right here at the Rockstar website.

My contribution is called "Hell of An Affair," and I'll let you guys know the minute it's online. The best part of the research process was traveling up to Rockstar Games for a top-secret preview of the game. I am bound by nondisclosure agreements, so I can't reveal a blessed thing, but let me just say this: I am very, very glad I pre-ordered my copy. The boy will just have to deal with it.

For Ed Gorman

Here's a photo from the inside of the Beachwood Market, in Beachwood Village, the gateway to the Hollywood Hills. If you click on the photo and expand it, you can see a still from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was shot in the area.

When David J. Schow brought me here the other day, he noted that the still had been placed directly above the vegetable section. Which, if you've seen Body Snatchers, is amusing to no end.

Tumblr-ing through L.A.

I have a Tumblr account, though I'm not sure why. I never update it. I hardly ever think about it. But two years ago, I uploaded a few photos revolving around a loose theme: favorite writers, and where they ate, slept or wrote. After my recent trip to L.A., I've added a few more. They're right here, in case you want to take a look. But seriously, don't expect much.

(Above: Charles Bukowski's favorite liquor emporium, the Pink Elephant. My friend Brett and I toasted Hank's memory with a couple of cold Millers, purchased here.)

My L.A. Times Book Fest Schedule

Last time I attended the L.A. Times Festival of Books I helped Sean Doolittle and Victor Gischler break into a pool, got a wicked sunburn, and almost scored an underaged California trophy wife. God knows what'll happen this time around. If you're around this weekend, here's where you'll be able to find me:

Friday Night (4/23): The Mystery Bookstore's Pre-Fest Party (1036-C Broxton Avenue). I'll be there probably around 6:30 or 7, depending on my flight/traffic from LAX. I think I booked the exact same flight three years ago, and I showed up at the party slight dazed. Which later led to the pool break-in. So, fair warning.

Sunday (4/25): I'll be signing at the Mystery Bookstore's booth (#411) at noon, along with Eric Beetner, Reed Farrel Coleman, Gar Anthony Haywood (who recently started blogging, by the way), Attica Locke and Gary Phillips. You'll probably also see me hanging around the booth area for much of the morning. And wearing sunscreen this time.

I'm also hoping to take Esotouric's cool-sounding Charles Bukowski bus tour ("Haunts of a Dirty Old Man") on Saturday afternoon. I've heard nothing but great things about these tours, and I say you haven't really seen a city until you've nuzzled its soft underbelly.

The Whole Amazon eBook Price War Came to Mind...

... when I read this passage in Gavin Lambert's short story, "The Slide Area":

She scratches her nose with a jewelled and freckled finger. "Are you sure you haven't read The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I shall have to take it on trust. With an opening paragraph like that I think..." She breaks off vaguely, fumbling in her crocodile bag and giving the assistant a quarter.

The assistant says: "Thirty-five cents, please."

She takes an alarmed step backwards. "You mean it's one of the expensive ones?"

"It's thirty-five cents."

The Countess replaces the book in the Westerns rack. "Much too expensive," she says firmly, "when no one knows if it's really good. I adore pulp literature but one must retain one's sense of values. Where is your selection of twenty-five cent crime novels, please?"

Reprinted in David L. Ulin's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America, 2002).

"They Called My Husband a Gangster!"

I spent some time in a used bookstore today, and this was the hands-down find of the day: a 96-page paperback from 1952 entitled They Called My Husband a Gangster, by Mrs. Jim (Alice) Vaus. For only two bucks, and with a title like that, how could I pass it up?

But there was another reason this one caught my eye. The publisher was "Church Sales Corporation" in L.A., and a quick look at the foreword by Mrs. Billy Graham explains why: Alice's husband Jim was a former Mickey Cohen associate who "found Christ" and reformed. Now the name "Jim Vaus" would have meant nothing to me if I hadn't coincidentally been reading John Buntin's excellent L.A. Noir, a history of the war between Cohen and Police Chief William Parker during the 1950s. Vaus indeed was a Cohen man; he was a wiretapper who gave Cohen some primo blackmail fodder to use against the head of the LAPD's vice squad. This was in 1949; by 1952, Vaus had apparently found God at a Billy Graham "Big Tent" meeting and rejected a life of syndicate crime. All of which is utterly fascinating.

Apparently there's also a "he says" version of the story from Vaus himself (see below, from the back cover copy). Wonder if I'll be able to track this down. I'm also wondering if Vaus found Jesus for the long haul, or if he crept back into his old ways. Guess I'll have to keep reading L.A. Noir to find out...