GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #607: 200

 

It's my 200th day from booze, and while I was taking a break from writing GF columns, I found the first bottle of booze I ever drank.

Yeah, all right, I save weird things sometimes. I'm a pubic hair's width away from being a hoarder, and I guess my discovery of whiskey had enough of an effect on me that I knew I'd want to remember the bottle that started it all.

Except the whole thing got out of hand pretty badly. I've gone over that before, so I won't ramble about it again. Suffice to say that I don't think I became an alcoholic until my mid-thirties. I bought this bottle in my early twenties. I might still have been in college at the time.

Look at that! Only six faces on the label! Booker Noe was still the distiller back then. That would be the guy Booker's is named after, and that is my actual favorite whiskey in the world. Wild Turkey 101 is my favorite that I can afford. Booker's probably goes for $80 a bottle now.

Jim Beam was my choice back then because that was Gramps's favored drink (since no one could ever make a Manhattan to his satisfaction). Near the end of my boozing days I recognized how out of control things were getting. I was drinking Canadian whiskey that I bought at five bucks a handle, for Christ's sake. I made the decision that I would never drink anything cheaper than Beam. A lot of drinkers scorn the Beam choice, but it's fairly inexpensive, and it gets the job done.

Although if I could afford better, I usually got that instead.

I miss booze, but I'm a rare alcoholic who actually enjoys the taste. This seems like heresy, but I'm wondering if there are any non-alcoholic bourbons out there. That might be nice to look into.

Anyway, my next stop on the no booze wagon train is my year mark. Let's see if I can get there.

This man has no idea how awesome he's going to be in Zardoz.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #606: REREADING POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS

 

I found myself recently in a position where I felt it necessary to reread one of my books. For reasons. Reasons that may or may not become clear at some point in the near future. Anyway, that book was Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks.

I haven't read it since I edited the final draft, so it was . . . an experience. I've come a long way since writing this book, and it really wasn't published all that long ago. I found myself grimacing at times. Not at content, mind you, but at wording and phrases. Stuff I'd never do today. I kind of wanted to go back and do it all again, but I'll refrain from that. Once a book is out there, it's out there. Unless you're Stephen King, in which case go ahead and do it.

But I'm not Stephen King, and there will be no revised Gunslinger edition of Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks.

I also caught a few typos, which embarrassed me, and you know how difficult it is for me to feel embarrassed. It was kind of rough.

The good news: it's still the ugly, graphic book I'd always meant it to be, so that's good. It's merciless in its pursuit of poking at the class war that is constant and never ending in America. All in all, reading my own book did not make me feel too much like a loser. Just awkward. I imagine this is the same feeling parents get when their kid does something odd. Not necessarily evil or wrong, just unusual. Yeah, that's my kid. He's . . . weird, but he's OK.

Perhaps soon you will learn why I had to do this. There are things in the works . . . Stay tuned.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #605: ANDERSON'S

 You've heard me mention Anderson's as my favorite bookstore before. There are three locations. There is the original in Naperville, which is where authors usually go for signings. I've met a lot of people there, from Clive Barker to Weird Al to Penn Jillette to Dave Barry to Sarah Pinborough to . . . hell, I've met a lot of authors there. It's a great place, and their signings are always worth it.

There is another location in Downers Grove, which is also a pretty good store. It's a good backup if I can't get out to Naperville. And then there's the LaGrange location which I've only ever been to once. Parking is annoying, and I have to walk a distance to get there, which is never good for my bad leg. I also don't like the layout there.

Once upon a time it was easier to get to an Anderson's because there used to be one in Elmhurst a mere ten minutes from my place. I miss that one a lot. Back when I was still doing Tabard Inn I even got issues one and two in there on consignment. It was a great place. Elmhurst really needs a bookstore.

But Anderson's hasn't been in Elmhurst for maybe 20 years. Before that there was this great used book place called the Thrifty Scholar, where I got a lot of awesome books before they disappeared almost overnight. And then there was Ye Olde Book Worm, but I've mentioned that here before a few times. That really was the best bookstore Elmhurst ever had.

Now Elmhurst doesn't have a bookstore. Not really. There's A Book Above behind Mama Maria's on Vallette five minutes from me, but I've only ever been there once. It's more or less a children's bookstore with some stuff for any adults who may be waiting for their kids. It's not a great place. The only time I was there I bought a book just to be polite and left.

We need a real bookstore in Elmhurst again. Every once in a while I fantasize about opening a bookstore of my own, but I know it would fail in no time flat. I know books very well, but business? I have a rudimentary understanding, and that's no way to run a bookstore. Besides, the rental costs for apartments are out of control in Elmhurst. I can't imagine how much it would cost to rent a store.

Until someone thinks to bring a real bookstore back to Elmhurst, I guess I'm stuck driving great distances to get my fix. There's also the Frugal Muse in Darien, which is great, but also it's quite a distance. There's always Half Price Books, but I'd much rather go to indie bookstores. Ah well.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #604: FUCK IT

Child of Rage by Jim Thompson

 

A while back--A LONG WHILE BACK--I wrote about how I was saving Child of Rage by Jim Thompson as the last book I will ever read. Now that I'm older (and possibly wiser) I think maybe I've made a terrible mistake. And according to that old GF column I knew exactly why it was a terrible mistake, and I decided to go ahead and make it anyway.

Well. Fuck it.

Considering all the shit I've been through, there is no way to guarantee that I would know when I was dying. I mean, I've been there before. I survived one death sentence, and I've survived a dozen brushes with death. I could have gone at any moment, and I would have not gotten to Child of Rage. I don't know how I'll die. Right now I'm not certain that I will die. Surviving all the crazy shit I have? It's a shocker that I still walk amongst you. Yet here I am. Maybe the world can't kill me? Although for a while I thought that I had died, and that I was living in the afterlife. 

(If you missed it, when I got out of the hospital in 2020 after going through king hell alcohol withdrawals, I thought I might have died in the hospital and that I was going through the motions of a very boring and annoying afterlife.)

I'm fairly certain that when my time comes, it will be a heart attack. It's the way I'd prefer to go. I don't want to linger for months on end. I don't want to be a burden to others. I don't want to suffer. A heart attack puts you down nice and quick, and you don't have to deal with long goodbyes. So if I'm right, I'll never read this book. What am I going to do, stop a heart attack so I can read a novel?

And remember, I wondered if it was possible that the book was bad. Thompson wrote a lot of great books, but there were a few stinkers in there. I'd feel like a dumbass if I saved this as my last book and it turned out to be shit.

So fuck it. I'm reading Child of Rage now. Watch, it turns out to be Thompson's best book and definitely worth saving it for last. Ah well. We'll find out soon.

I may have said this before, but I'll say it again. Once upon a time I drank a half a fifth of whiskey and wrote a story called "If I Drank as Much as Hemingway." It was a very funny and spot on parody. Then I finished the bottle and wrote "If I Drank as Much as Faulkner." It was funny, but it was also a mess. I told myself that one day I'd drink two fifths and write "If I Drank as Much as Jim Thompson." But I'm pretty sure that would have killed me even at the heights of my boozehound powers. Jim Thompson was a rare alcoholic. He made it to his seventies, boozing at full force. He literally died from drink. So yeah, maybe it was a good idea that I never did that one.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #603: A QUANDARY

 Whenever I see a Kindle book for free, I pick it up. I have a library of unread books on my phone, but I will get to them all eventually. It takes a while because I only read them when I'm on lunch at work (I don't want to soil the pages of a book with my crumby fingers, so I use my clean pinky to swipe at the screen) or when I'm waiting at a doctor's office or something along those lines. But I feel it's important that when I pick up those books, I leave an honest review. That is the unspoken cost of a free Kindle book, and I never want to ignore that.

So now I come to a quandary because I'm currently reading a really, really bad Kindle book. Whatever you're imagining, it's waaaaaaay worse than that. I don't really want to leave a review because it could only be harmful, but at the same time I don't want to shirk my responsibility.

\

It occurs to me that a few of you reading this might think I'm talking about you. Don't worry. I'm not. I'm not naming the author, but I'm 99.9% certain I don't know this person, and this person doesn't know me.

Anyway, I thought maybe a wishy-washy way to get out of it and still complete my duty would be to leave a one star review and say that it didn't do it for me. But a part of me feels that it's not fair.

What I really want to do is leave constructive criticism. Because I get the feeling that this is the author's first book. Or, possibly, the author is a teenager who doesn't know what they're doing yet. There is a statement at the front of the book about how the author wants to become a better writer, so why not offer my assistance?

Except I've been told that when I give writing advice, I can be very abrasive. I swear I don't mean it that way. I try to be as nice as possible, but for some reason, almost every time, that person tells me I'm being a dick. Considering how I have a somewhat known name in the writing community, it would probably look like I was punching down. That wouldn't be my intention, but I feel certain that would be how it would be taken.

I'm probably going to finish the book during my lunch break on Saturday, so I have that long to figure out what I'm going to do. I could just not finish it and delete it from my Kindle library and pretend I never saw it, but that would be the coward's way. I'll probably figure something out. Maybe.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #602: FAILED IDEAS

Can't stand my work? Blame this book.

 

So here's a peek into my thought process behind ideas, in particular ideas that I should not have had. This happens to me often, sad to say. I come up with this great idea before I realize that it already exists in a very blatant way. This is the most recent idea that went south on me.

Writing last week about Vivian Schurfranz made me feel nostalgic for the kinds of things I used to write. My first stories were imitations of the Hardy Boys, so I started thinking about those books on Friday and throughout the weekend. I kind of wanted to go back and read some of the classics. 

If you don't know, the Hardy Boys were created in the early 20th Century. They're brothers who follow in their father's footsteps to become detectives and go on all sorts of adventures.

Then I started thinking, why don't I do something like the Hardy Boys today? Except they'll be actual teenagers instead of the sanitized all American clean boys that we know. These teenage brothers would think about things like sex all the time, just like actual teenage boys. And hey! What if they hunted monsters instead of criminals? Wouldn't that be cool?

It would be cool. Except at that moment I realized there already was a duo of young brothers following in their father's footsteps, hunting monsters. Supernatural, in other words. Whoops!

Although that goes a long way towards explaining why I enjoy that show so much. It's not just a love of horror. It brings back a feeling I used to have often as a child. It scratches that same itch.

Maybe one day I'll tell you about the time I came up with the idea to have a detective tracking down aliens and bigfoot and other monsters while accompanied by his skeptic partner . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #601: WELL, THAT DIDN'T WORK

 So once again I'm rethinking my self-promotion plan. When I started pimping one thing every weekday, there were mixed results. Sometimes it worked out. Most times it did not. Plus it started to become a bit of a hassle. Sometimes I'd even forget to post something. Or I'd remember and get annoyed at it.

So maybe I'll try something else. Here's what I'm thinking. I have copies of my own books, so I figure I'll pimp those. One a week. If someone buys from me, there will be some additional incentive. Not sure what that is yet. I'll figure it out. So I'm taking a week long break from promoting my own shit while I sort out the details.

Ah! Maybe a sampler package of my work! That could be a good incentive. I'll put together something digital. Put a complete short story in there. Maybe novel excerpts. Things like that. Would anyone be interested in that kind of thing?