Noir at the Bar - Washington DC

Last Saturday night Ed Aymar hosted Noir at the Bar at the Wonderland Ballroom in Washington. Ed picked a great line-up (plus me), and no one disappointed. (My established standards are such that I rarely disappoint anyone.)

First, kudos to Ed and everyone connected with the venue. The weather was crappy, parking is difficult in that part of DC, and yet the room was SRO. Events such as this sometimes come down to writers reading for their peers on the bill. Not this time. A large and enthusiastic audience was there. This was such a good crowd, I sold a book. Can’t get much better than that.

Lest you think my sale skewed my thinking, here’s who else was there:

Peter Rozovsky (his excellent noir photos of the event are at his blog, Detectives Beyond Borders.)

David Swinson

Ed (E.A.) Aymar

Nik Korpon

Sarah Weinman

Art Taylor

Austin Camacho

Jen Conley

There were a few raffles sprinkled in, with books and booze distributed free gratis to several lucky winners. I was one, scoring an ARC of Davis Swinson’s The Second Girl, scheduled for a June release by Mulholland.

I’m not going to try to sum up the stories. First, I couldn’t do them justice in summary, and, B.) you didn’t go, so it sucks to be you. Suffice to say the standard of writing was high, the atmosphere was perfect, and it’s safe to say a good time was had by all.

Noirs at Bars are popping up faster than Republican presidential candidates all over the country, and gaining a foothold in Europe. If you hear of one near you and are into excellent noir-ish fiction, by all means, go. Admittance is free (of course food and beverage are on you; literally, if you’re not careful around the bar) and you’ll be in the company of others who not only take their crime fiction seriously, but know how to have fun with it.

Ed hopes to make a pre-Bouchercon DC event a regular thing. I know I’ll be there. Whether I get a reading slot, or not.

Breaking News on Grind Joint; Noir at the Bar Baltimore

Relative quiet here has masked lots of activity on the Grind Joint front. To wit:

· An audio book, read by Mike Dennis, will be available through Amazon, audible.com, and iTunes, hopefully within the next week. Mike’s done a hell of a job, making subtle differences in the accents and inflections in a book with a shit ton of speaking parts, and, best of all, lets the reader decide what’s exciting and what isn’t. I’d never worked on an audio book before, and the process was enlightening. More details will be provided as the launch approaches.

(By the way, Mike’s a fine writer his own self. His work has appeared on more than one of my year end lists, with Setup on Front Street and the short story, “The Session” standing out for me. Check him out in more detail on his blog, http://mikedennisnoir.com.)

· A lot of people have asked when the e-book for Grind Joint will be available. (All right, two people have asked; one asked twice. “A lot” can mean different things to different people.) I now have an answer: soon. By “soon,” I mean by the end of the month. Weather permitting. (I have no idea why weather would not permit the publication of an e-book, but it sounds like something I could ascribe tardiness to, as the weather is entirely out of my control, thus leaving me blameless should the date slip.) Right now I have only the formatting to do, and am waiting on a cover design to be finalized. The good news is, it’s not one of those “the e-book is damn near as expensive as the print version.” Price for Kindle will be $3.99.

Kieran Shea, Nik Korpon, and Steve Weddle hosted Baltimore’s first Noir at the Bar at Slainte on Thames Street last Sunday. Weather held down the crowd a bit, but the writers who were able to make it were worth a snowy slog: Rob Hart and Todd Robinson (both drove all the way from New York, then back that night so Todd could work a double on Monday), Merry Jones, Jon McGoran, Art Taylor, Dennis Tafoya, Jen Conley, and Jeff Alphin displayed the wide variety of what crime fiction and noir are capable of though grit and humor and a severed penis in a jar. The Godfather of N@B, Peter Rozovsky, made the trip from Philadelphia to lend his imprimatur. This was the first such slam The Beloved Spouse and I have been able to attend; it will not be the last.