For the last two plus years I’ve started my week by getting up at 3:40 in the morning, making coffee, and driving to L.A. During those long dark drives up the 805 to the 5, over to the 73 and then on to the 405, Brad Listi’s Other People was my co-pilot. No one feels like doing anything that early in the morning, but as I made my way to L.A. I would become inspired by the stories the writers on Other People shared. The heartache and loneliness of the struggle. The validation and joy of achievement. They all taught me something. Even the insufferable guests who never bothered to listen to the show and were baffled by Brad’s line of questioning were instructive. During those drives, I often thought about what it would be like to be on the show, what I would say, how I would craft my responses. Then, when my turn came to be on the show, it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. It felt like having a conversation with an old acquaintance. Hats off to the host for doing a good thing extremely well and making it so easy to enjoy. 

Many thanks to J Ryan Stradal who interviewed me for The Rumpus at a super secret Oaxacan restaurant in Hollywood to discuss Forest of Fortune, and Indian gaming. Using his Minnesota mind tricks, J Ryan got me to talk about the series of dispatches I wrote for McSweeney’s back when I worked at the casino. It was during the recession and I was terrified of many things but mostly of getting fired so I never really told anyone about them. I even used a pseudonym, the origin of which escapes me. An excerpt:

Rumpus: Are you implying, in a way, that Indian casinos are a social justice enterprise?

Ruland: Absolutely. In a way they are, except when they aren’t. Casinos have given many sovereign nations economic autonomy, which is the only thing that matters to institutions of power and control. In 21st century America, governance is a game you have to pay to play. Wealth from gaming revenue got many tribes a seat at the table, and they were able to use their capital to influence decisions that concerned their interests. Casinos have allowed many tribes to make substantial investments in their infrastructure that simply weren’t imaginable twenty years ago: schools, hospitals, daycare facilities, recreation centers, gymnasiums, museums. The list goes on and on.

In this review of Forest of Fortune for HTML Giant, Sean Carswell unpacks how advertising works in casino culture and what it means for the people stuck in its vortex:

We’re often seduced by advertising, untroubled by the knowledge that we’re being lied to, uncritical of the alternate reality it sells. We want the story regardless. In almost every case, it’s the story we purchase. The commodity is just the bi-product, something we’ll keep around until the story loses its luster.

A really sharp and savvy take that makes me seem much smarter than I am. To quote Pee Wee Herman, “I meant to do that.” 

This is one of the stranger reviews Forest of Fortune has gotten or is likely to get: Curtis Dawkins is the chief book reviewer for BULL Men’s Fiction. He’s also an inmate of Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, Michigan, and he writes the appropriately titled prison reviews. Dawkins’s reviews are fascinating because they offer a glimpse of his life behind bars. For instance, in this review he talks about getting gassed.

This particular extraction apparently required tear gas and through the open windows or ventilation system, the gas found its way to sections of the blocks around the actual gassing. We didn’t know they were extricating or gassing someone, of course, so I had no idea what was going on when my eyes began watering, my throat burned, and I began to sneeze.

The review is mostly positive, though I question his math when he break downs Pemberton’s cocaine consumption. $100 a gram? Now that, my friends, is a crime. 

Los Angeles Magazine names Forest of Fortune to their list of Six Must-Read Books to Finish Out the Summer.

An alcoholic, an epileptic, and a gambling addict walk into a casino. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but in local author Ruland’s Fortune, it’s a sad-sounding reality.

Forest of Fortune gets a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. No spoilers, but lots of love:

Ruland brilliantly blends the darkly comedic crime fiction sensibilities of Charles Willeford with creepy paranormal undertones à la Dean Koontz in his addictively readable debut, the chronicle of three hard-luck losers who try to turn their lives around in an Indian-owned casino in a remote region of Southern California…. The existential angst in this story is palpable, and Ruland is particularly good at describing the casino’s customers: “addicts, imbeciles, and thrift-store bimbos.” Powered by adept characterization, darkly lyrical prose, and an unexpected but oh-so-perfect ending, this is the literary equivalent of a slot machine jackpot.