I had a great time road tripping up to Camarillo with Louis Armand this week to visit with Sean Carswell and his students at Cal State University Channel Islands. It’s a gorgeous campus that, believe it or not, used to be a state mental hospital and is the inspiration for the Charlie Parker song “Relaxin in Camarillo.” (Srsly.)

It was the perfect setting to read from “Forest of Fortune” and Louis’s fantastic new novel “Cairo,” a madcap romp through time and space that was shortlisted for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Louis has a website for the book with excerpts, insights and all kinds of interesting ephemera that’s definitely worth checking out. 

Then we read together again on Saturday night along with Heather Fowler, Megan Tuite and TBD at the Media Arts Center in an event organized by The Radvocate and sponsored by So Say We All.

Radvocate reading with Louis Armand, Meg Tuite and yours truly. (at Media Arts Center San Diego)

Radvocate reading with Matt Lewis, Keith McCleary, Heather Fowler and Kiik AK (at Media Arts Center San Diego)

My Damage

This has been in the works for a long time, but I’m very happy to announce that my next nonfiction book project is going to be a collaboration with Keith Morris, founding member of Black Flag, Circle Jerks and OFF! on his memoir: My Damage: 40 Year on the Front Lines of Punk (Da Capo, Fall 2016). I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a true iconoclast who at age 59 is still making records and touring all over the world. Bottles to the ground, this is going to be a hell of a fun ride! 

Louis Armand and me ready to terrorize the student population. (at California State University, Channel Islands)

Veteran Writers in Oceanside

I’ll be taking part in the inaugural showcase of So Say We All’s Veteran Writers Program, featuring men and women across several generations of military service detailing the poignant, surprising, and darkly funny struggles, missteps, and unforeseen pitfalls that come with transitioning from military to civilian life. 

This event will be held on December 6, 2014 from 6pm to 8pm at the Oceanside Library 330 N. Coast Highway in Oceanside, CA. I’ll do a multi-media presentation of a salty story form my past and sign books after the show. 

Horror Business

You know Ryan Bradford as the editor of Black Candies and from his hilarious San Diego CityBeat columns. He has a novel coming out early next year called Horror Business and he’s been asking people for their favorite scenes from scary movies. I came clean and confessed to my ridiculously unreasonable reaction to Salem’s Lot, a made-for-TV movie adapted from a Stephen Kind novel. (The photo above holds the clue to what freaked me out when I was 11 years old.)

In the movie, a young boy named Ralphie Glick goes missing. His family thinks he’s been abducted but the audience knows the truth: he’s been turned into a vampire. His brother Danny finds this out the hard way when Ralphie turns up one night, tapping on his bedroom window. Somehow Danny doesn’t notice that Ralphie isfucking floating in the air and opens the window for him.

Now it’s on and these creepy Glick Brothers are tapping on windows all over town and going on a blood-sucking rampage. Danny sets his sights on his friend, Mark Petrie, a horror movie buff with a Luke Skywalker haircut. Mark knows his monster movies and he repels Danny with a cross. You can watch the scene here.

Ryan also says some very kind words about “Brains for Bengo,” one of the spookiest stories in my collection Big Lonesome