Tag Archives: forest of fortune

The infamous bloofing scene from Forest of Fortune. The audio is pretty good despite a noisy back bar. Many thanks to my publisher, Ben LeRoy at Tyrus Books, for shooting the video, and to Curbside Splendor for hosting Small Press Night at the Crooked Pint in Minneapolis on Wed. April 8 at AWP.  

Forest of Fortune playlist

Many thanks to David Gutowski at Largehearted Boy for publishing my Forest of Fortune playlist. Here’s the introduction:

My novel is informed by the five and-a-half years I spent working at an Indian casino. One of the characters, Alice, is a Native American woman who is haunted by trains. The inspiration for this character comes from a period in my life in the 1990s when I went to grad school in a mountain town on the edge of the Navajo reservation.

The songs are from a surprisingly un-punk roster of artists that includes Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Cypress Hill, PJ Harvey and Santana, whom I loathe. Read the rest of the essay

3 Questions

Many thanks to Red Cell at the Santa Fe Reporter for doing this short interview  where we talk about casinos, addiction and my love of pulp fiction. An excerpt:

Your book has the attitude of a crime drama in the vein of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Was the hard-boiled genre an influence on your writing?

Yes, absolutely! When I got out of the Navy and college, I wanted to be a writer, but I had no idea how to go about doing it. I really didn’t feel like I learned how to write in school. I started reading crime novels by Jim Thompson and David Goodis, and a lot of pulp writers that were published in Barry Gifford’s Black Lizard series.

Read the rest of the interview here.  If you’re in Santa Fe this Friday, I’ll be reading at Collected Works.

Available Now!

When I worked at the Indian casino, there was a sign in our office posted right above the security camera that read, “THIS IS NOT A CAMERA.” I loved that sign. It was both a bit of da-da absurdism and a reminder that big brother was always watching. Naturally, I stole it.

THIS IS NOT A CAMERA is a zine about my experiences working at the casino that served as the inspiration for Thunderclap Casino in my novel Forest of Fortune. The zine is free. I’ll be giving it away at readings like at Noir At The Bar-San Diego this Sunday, the AWP book fair and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books to name just a few. Or you can order it online.

Forest of Fortune at AWP

I’m honored to represent Tyrus Books at Small Press Night AWP kickoff party on April 8 at the Crooked Pint House in Minneapolis. Here’s the lineup:

Dasha Kelly (Curbside Splendor)
Cyn Vargas (Curbside Splendor)
Jon Paul Fiorentino (Anvi Press)
Brandi Wells (Civil Coping Mechanisms)
Mairead Case (featherproof books)
Justin Marks (Barrelhouse)
Jim Ruland  (Tyrus Books)

Deets.

Forest of Fortune Spring Events

Later this week I’ll be hitting the road to promote the paperback release of Forest of Fortune at Noir at the Bar San Diego, Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Santa Fe, Uptown Pubhouse in Flagstaff, AWP in Minneapolis and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in L.A. (Click for more details.) Although the official release isn’t until April 3, the paperback is available now online and in stores.