Paperback Criers

Many people have been applauding the decreasing popularity of the eBook and the return of the paperbound book. Hipsters and Baby Boomers alike have been thrilled to read that Kindle reader sales have been dwindling, eReader library rentals are dropping at a rapid pace, and paperbound books are on the rise.

These very same people were the same ones that demanded on "going green" and bemoaned the brutal murder of thousands of trees to produce a Harry Potter blockbuster or Victoria's Secret catalogue. It didn't matter not a bit that eBooks are more economical money wise and space wise for both readers and writers.

The economy of space with an eBook is that you can store hundreds of books on your Kindle or iPad. If you had to stack hundreds of the same books in paperbound format you would have to rent out a separate apartment, one that didn't smell like stale pulp.

The economy of money with an eBook for the reader is that more and more vintage novels are available at rock bottom prices of $1.99 or $2.99, on average. You can't beat those prices with a stick! Thanks to the digital revolution you can buy short stories in digital format, sold separately like an old time 45 RPM single*. Dig it, Baby Boomers!

If these very same books were produced in paperbound format they would have to cost at least $9.99 a copy just to cover production costs, distribution and promotion, as well. Plus many publishers will release an old Gil Brewer or Vin Packer potboiler at a $1.99 price tag, but selling same novel in paper format brings a large risk in their investment costs. Smaller cult writers stand a better chance of being published in eBook format than they ever would in paper, for the simple burden of publishing economics.

The economy of money with an eBook for the writer is that they're much cheaper and cleaner to produce. If you design your own cover and format your own work in PDF form (not hard), it will only cost you somewhere between $100-300 to have the book released, distribution and all. If you took the same book and released a paperbound edition it would cost you at least $1,500 for production, editing and distribution. And! According to BookBaby you would only get one copy to keep. That's all you get just to see your book wrapped up in paper. Wowie zowie.

It should also be noted that the release of an eBook is a lot quicker, because once it's properly formatted to fit all eReader screens it can be released within days, whereas a paperbound book will take on the average a few months. Do you really want to wait that long for your masterpiece to come out? I don't.

I wonder how many hipsters and nostalgic Baby Boomers understand that going green is economically and socially better than schlepping a ton of unwanted paper around. I also wonder how many have had a hard time making the adjustment to reading an eBook. Some claimed the light bothered their eyes. I don't know, if people can make the transition from vinyl to CD and VHS tape to DVD then they should weather the changes that eBooks bring.

On a personal level, I hate seeing hundreds of books I can't get around to reading this week sitting on my bookcase staring me in the face, waiting to be picked up. They would look a lot happier simply sitting in my Kindle with a cool thumbnail cover illustration.

To be perfectly frank with you, I have no intention of converting my novels to paperback, and in addition plan on releasing the next few efforts in that plagued, beleaguered, and much threatened format: the kind, defenseless eBook. And don't forget to tap the right corner for the next page, the left corner for the previous page, and always remember to tap the About The Author page at the end to take a look at me.

* I recommend "I'm Dangerous Tonight" by Cornell Woolrich.

American Biblioteque

It's been years, nay, decades since I really bothered going to the library. Most of the ones in my neighborhood were stuffy and understocked with books and what they had was simply awful. I was pretty disgusted with the Ivar Avenue library in Hollywood, especially since they remodeled it to look like a maximum security prison, and the Gardner library by the old Pan Pacific Park of my childhood looked like an unmade bed, books and videos scattered in a heap all over the book shelves. It was depressing enough to swear off getting a library card forever.

It wasn't until seven years ago that I walked into the Santa Monica Library and it turned my head around about the book lending game. Modern but beautiful, it had a used book store inside as well as its own built in coffee house with lux patio. Even better it had a considerable collection of art books, instructional foreign language CDs (Farsi, Chinese and Russian, get it now), and a great YA selection. I was pretty blown away by the choices. And I haven't even gotten around to the impressive DVD section, large enough to rival any DVD store.

What also killed me about the library was the amazing CD selection they had there. What was the point of listening to Pandora or Spotify if I can rent out any Neil Young or Psychedelic Furs CD or the amazing "Mingus Dynasty" with Cholly all done up on the cover like Po Xiangyang. The amount of rentable music made me crazy, never mind the String Quartets or Baroque Trumpet Sonatas, you could get Public Image Ltd. or the entire David Bowie collection for nothing.

But, alas all good things must come to an end: as of last year, the Santa Monica Library imposed a $25 annual fee for all borrowers not residents of their fair city. Yes, proof of local ID was required. I needed to get my fix of Joe Lansdale and Robert Cormier classics that only (I thought ONLY) was available in Santa Monica so I paid the $25, but that may end next year.

I dropped by my old favorite library of teenage years past, the Beverly Hills Library, next door to the BH Fire Station, BHPD and City Hall, and it's even better than I remembered it. A CD and DVD selection to rival Santa Monica minus the smelly bums hogging up the computers and the men’s bathroom toilets. I even got a card with a pic of the BH Library circa 1964, reminiscent of when I used to go (1968). Good times!

I took out half a dozen Miles Davis classics, the Prestige sides with Milt Jackson on killer vibes and the demented Burt Bacharach autobiography (memoirs?). My head also spun at the sight of their impressive collection of graphic novels, big enough to impress Bill Lebowitz (RIP) and get me to rent out tons of sequential dementia. They also had a pretty good used book store and coffee house, too.

All I need to do now is get a card with the killer downtown Los Angeles Library and my trifecta will be complete!

*********************************

The reason most music sucks these days is because it's created by people who have fucking headphones on all the time: headphones on when they're walking down the street, working out at the gym, shopping at the supermarket, the headphones/earbuds/whatever are so far up their ears they can wipe their asses with them.

What are they listening to? Music, music, music. In doing this they are depriving themselves of some of the most important elements in the development of musical composition: the cadence of people's voices, the rhythm of machines, the reverb of an ocean wave, or the timbre of birds chirping and squawking.

If you think I've lost my mind, listen to this: the cadence of a human voice influenced Miles Davis' trumpet playing, the rhythm of machines has influenced bands like The Stooges and Black Sabbath, the timbre of bird's voices influenced Eric Dolphy, and the reverb of ocean waves influenced the sounds of Brian Wilson and surfing music. These examples of sounds are all instrumental to building a musical ear, more instructional than any record anyone could possibly listen to. If you really want to build your ear then you'll never do it listening to nothing but records all day and all night.

A Perfectly Safe Book Review That's Still Guaranteed To Manage To Offend Absolutely Everyone

Social networking, like cancer is here to stay and probably won't ever leave and will take our lives away from us in varying degrees. While I'm proud of my abstention of Facebook - big deal -I'm still linked to Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, You Tube, Instagram and probably a few more digital dungeons that have slipped my mind at the present time. One of the more unusual phenomena in the social networking stratosphere is the review site, i.e. Yelp for vendors - Yelp is The Devil, by the way; Goodreads and Shelfari for books, Rotten Tomatoes and iMDB for movies to name just a few.

Writing reviews for Yelp started out as a bit of fun in the beginning but all good things must come to an end, eventually. Even with over 200 followers I still had people screaming at me for reviews that were less than completely worshipful of their favorite burger stand: "ARE YOU TOTALLY RETARDED????? HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE IN 'N OUT??????? DUDE!!!! I CALL FOUL!!!"

Somehow it wasn't enough for them to love an overrated dump like In 'N Out (My Anus), I had to join the choir of colon abusers singing their praises but because I didn't I had to endure hateful comments and PMs (Personal Messages).

Things finally got out of hand when my wife and I got out of our car in Koreatown on a Saturday morning at 9 am, and a disgruntled Yelper down the block honked his car horn several times and gave me the finger. Just to make sure I got the message he got out of the car and screamed "FUCK YOU" at me several times. When he noticed my wife and I laughing at him for behaving like a retarded dragon biter he nervously ran back to his car and quickly sped off.

After leaving stupid Yelp and its idiotic drama I joined Goodreads, way better but things are starting to get psycho in Book Review Land, too. Although I have loads of followers and friends (you're all awesome) there are a few wing nuts that scream at my reviews for "revealing spoilers". A spoiler, for those who aren't familiar with the word, is a surprising twist in the story that usually alters the climax or denouement of the novel.

The spoilers that I have been accused of revealing were not major plot points but nevertheless inspired more screaming comments on the order of "DUDE!!! YOU JUST RUINED THE BOOK FOR ME!!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING????"
Another angry comment came from a midget from Bulgaria who said, "OBVIOUSLY YOU'RE A TROLL (not with over 225 followers I'm not) AND I WILL HAVE YOU KICKED OFF GOODREADS FOR GOOD!!!!"

By the way, most of these hysterical protests seem to come from the male camp. Women seem to spend more time actually reading books instead of whining about book reviews. Apparently life to these whistle blowers seems unbearable in the knowledge that someone somewhere doesn't like something they've enjoyed for years, and until they scream their insane heads off at you for not liking their favorite book, movie or record the world will never spin properly on its axis again.

Let's talk about this spoiler business, and I'm going to be harsh about it. If a film or a book is over 30 years old it's perfectly okay to mention the ending or any other part of it because everybody on the planet has probably already read or seen it, okay?

If you don't believe me, read numerous interviews with Alfred Hitchcock discussing the ending to Psycho or Orson Welles discussing "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane or Robert Aldrich explaining the reason he changed the ending to Kiss Me Deadly. Would these same Goodreads ass clowns run over to these legendary directors and scream "DUDE!!!! SPOILERS!!!" to their faces? I think not.

So, with that in mind I present to you a book review tailor made to satisfy even the most petulant of spoiler queens. The book I'll review today may or may not be a collection of short stories called "Welcome To The Monkey House" authored by (spoiler alert) Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This collection of stories is bound with a front and back cover made of card stock with an attractive illustration on the front. In between are many pages with stories published in them. I hope I haven't given anything away so far!

This book begins with a (spoiler alert) preface by the author which lasts three pages. It's a fairly mild preface but actually pretty dull. There, I said it. Good thing it was so short. Most of the stories were written in the Fifties and early Sixties and perfectly capture the blandness of the American middle class during the Cold War era.

Like all short story collections the quality of the tales vary wildly from largely satisfying to totally pointless, (SPOILER ALRT, DUDE!!!!) Long Walk To Forever had a lame ending, likewise More Stately Mansions. Lame endings.

I also found Vonnegut's science fiction writings to be dry and dull. He does shine, however, when he approaches the eccentric middle class in stories like The Foster Portfolio about a man with a big secret (DUDE!!!BRO!!!), Next Door and Go Back To Your Precious Wife And Son.

I also found Vonnegut's compassion and insight towards people outside of his ethnicity poignant, as in his heart breaking tale of a black German orphan in DP or his tale of a Holocaust survival couple in Adam.

But the crown jewel in this collection is an extremely funny story called The Hyannis Port Story which lampoons the crass commercialization of the Camelot-era Kennedy presidency, published just months before the President's untimely death in 1963. DUDE!!! SPOILERS!!!!

Yes, there will be thousands who won't agree with my review. Start lighting your torches and sharpen your pitchforks. You can burn me down in Koreatown.

"Every Good Boy Dies First" - the Electric Crime Novel is Out Now!!!!

"I can tell Electric Stories
Electric Stories that will surely blow your mind
People find that I can tell
Electric Stories very well"

-Electric Stories, The Four Seasons

"Every Good Boy Dies First", the bi-weekly serial run on my blog Out Demons Out has finally been published in compiled, full-length form for your reading enjoyment. The tale of a young musician's dream of playing in a band only to watch it degenerate into a nightmare of greed, power, and deception, just like any sleazy non-artistic corporation. It's the bitter pill no one wants to swallow: rock bands don't have more fun, and here are the reasons why.

"Every Good Boy Dies First" is the story of Griff (Sam Fuller's generic name for every hero featured in his films from Forty Guns to The Naked Kiss), Hollywood trumpet player who falls under the spell of both free jazz and punk rock and staking an original sound as well as a name for himself with his band Garbage Truck.

While Griff trudges around Hollywood setting up Garbage Truck shows his former music teacher, now homeless and destitute hovers around the old music haunts like a ghost. My novel basically sets the tone of story by presenting two different ends of the musical spectrum: a hip, promising young jazz player playing punk rock and creating new, exciting sounds; and the old guard, a failed big band jazzer, rotting on the streets of Hollywood after spending his life making traditional music. Did the ends justify the means?

The questions all through the book becomes: how far is Griff from becoming just like his teacher, Jeffrey Chandler, roaming from apartment building to apartment building like a vagabond, trying to keep hi home life together while maintaining his artistic muse? Will he eventually end up homeless like his sensei? Griff has to keep his head together while dealing with clueless radio DJs, parasitic fanzine writers and devious scenesters. All to a breakneck hardcore beat.

Garbage Truck play the hot clubs all over town but feel a degree of peer pressure to play a more accessible, alternative-friendly sound just to go with the flow. Because our story takes place during the grunge-fueled Nineties, the boys in the band plot to wrest Griff's ownership of the band and forego a less cacophonic punk for a more sludgy stoner metal sound. Griff's vision of exploring new sounds is viewed as a commercial threat to the more careerist rockers in the band.

Egging his band to foil Griff is an arrogant booking agent, played by Moish Wilson of Varmint Booking as well as shallow all-girl band Kitten Claws. While Griff feels the pressure to cave in to commercial vapidity - remember when Punk bands went New Wave in 1979? - he holds on strong to his creative muse, finally giving into a climax of extreme violence.

Because "Every Good Boy Dies First" is a punk rock noir novel first and foremost, there's a dead body in there somewhere, there always has to be, a sadistic nightclub bouncer with the IQ of a sack of rotting meat. When Griff discovers the stiff's carcass in a parking lot in the dead of night it's similar to Antonioni's Blow Up, a murder no one wants to believe, much less care about.

There are a couple of people who have groused about my novel being too depressing. I don't get this remark at all. I didn't set out to write a trite load of shit like Almost Famous or Rock 'N Roll High School. If the world of rock is so sweet and jam-packed with fun why do so many bands break up? Very few rock fiction novels ever delve into the struggle, bitterness and futility of playing music. "Every Good Boy Dies First" completely demolishes the false premise that every show's a party. If only they were!

The cover art was designed by Rebecca Seven, who's designed albums and tees for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, L7, Faith No More, and Frightwig, she was featured in the anthology of female lowbrow artists, "Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious".

"Every Good Boy Dies First" is first and foremost a story about artistic freedom and the battle to defend it even in a forum as self-deceptive as the alternative music scene. Dressed in noir clothes, you'll feel the throbbing feedback guitars humming through your brain and smell the beer and blood-stained walls closing in on you because Griff plays trumpet like Gabriel, summoning up doomsday with every blast. Read and believe!

Links to get "Every Good Boy Dies First":

Amazon Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/Every-Good-Dies-First-ebook/dp/B00EPQ074O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377373472&sr=1-1&keywords=every+good+boy+dies+first

Nook
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/every-good-boy-dies-first-andy-seven/1116757678?ean=9781483505794&itm=1&usri=9781483505794

Kobo
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/every-good-boy-dies-first

Sony Reader
https://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/andy-seven/every-good-boy-dies-first/_/R-400000000000001104091

Scribd
http://www.scribd.com/doc/162212935/Every-Good-Boy-Dies-First

iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/every-good-boy-dies-first/id691805561?mt=11

Sold at Punk Rock prices - $2.99!

Going Downtown With Carter Brown

There has never been a beast so strange as the paperback publishing world, a once inexplicable planet where writers could make a fortune without garnering much respect in literary circles. I'm not referring to modern potboiler stars like Stephanie Meyer or Robert Ludlum. I'm referring to someone like Harold Robbins, who pretty much in his time had a stranglehold on the bestseller charts with tomes like "The Carpetbaggers" and "The Dream Merchants".

His books have sold in the billions worldwide. When people talk about great crime writers the usual names crop up: Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Donald Westlake, Elmore Leonard. Few ever mention or even care about Carter Brown, who in his time (1962-1972) sold millions of paperbacks worldwide. Who is Carter Brown?

Carter Brown in actuality was an Englishman whose real name was Alan Geoffrey Yates. Originally a PR writer for Qunatas Airlines in Australia, Yates turned to writing pulp fiction westerns, sci-fi space operas, and even romance weepies novels under assumed names. Every Carter Brown crime novel took place in America, and it has been rumored that a ton of them were written before Yates even set foot in the States!

The three most popular recurring characters in Brown's novels are Police Lieutenant Al Wheeler, private eyes Rick Holman, and dumb bunny detective Mavis Seidlitz (with the 38-24-36 measurements). Whichever character Brown featured in his novels you were always guaranteed a lot of smoking, drinking, and sexing up. In other words, Carter Brown novels were cheap Swinging Sixties pulp fiction at their sleaziest. Just to amp up the sleazy sex factor, each brief paperback clocking in at usually 120 pages a piece all featured covers of skimpily clad goddesses by the great Robert McGinnis.

For those who dig the Peter Gunn, Johnny Staccato and 77 Sunset Strip TV shows, Carter Brown is more of the same. Hard lovin' swingin' and two-fisting private eye with killer dames who drop their drawers before they swing their fully loaded .357 Magnum at yr. skull. Smoke a Lucky Strike and crack open a Carter Brown novel, it ain't noir, it's better than noir, it's sexy trash.

While I haven't read enough Brown books to qualify as an expert on his work, I'd like to weigh in on some of my favorite books I've read by him:

The Corpse: Lt. Al Wheeler’s on the case of the mystery of the annoying, drugged-out hepcat that got iced in front of the bandstand at the hippest beatnik jazz coffee house. The only reason his murder’s a big whoop is because he’s the son of a powerful newspaper magnate. The Fifties jazz club vibe of the book will remind you of John Cassavetes’ terrific detective show, “Johnny Staccato”. Lots of babes, booze, billionaires and beatnik bongos abound. The Robert McGinnis cover doesn’t disappoint either.

W.H.O.R.E.: One of the more surreal detective novels ever written, police Lt. Al Wheeler runs afoul of a gang of psychotic killers in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck masks. The Mickey and Donald-mask wearers are strike breakers who plan on assassinating a Cesar Chavez-style protest leader who's making plans on marching down the Grapevine with his fellow fruit pickers. And that's just the first sixteen pages!

Somewhere in the mix, of course, are a team of deranged feminists called W.H.O.R.E. If it sounds crazy, just remember this was published in 1971 when exploitation films like "Sweet Sugar" and "The Mini-Skirt Mob" were at their apex. Unless Carter Brown's estate is controlled by an iron fist there's no reason why his wild novels aren't being reissued by Stark House or Hard Case Crime.

Tomorrow Is Murder: More Sixties sleaze from Carter Brown about a sexy psychic predicting a millionaire’s death on a Joe Pyne-style TV talk show. The PI this time is Mavis Seidlitz, a bodaciously stacked bimbo blonde in the Little Annie Fanny tradition. She’s on the case in groovy Venice circa 1960, busting up bongo beatnik coffeehouses and catfighting witches into Beverly Hills poolsides. Carter Brown never disappoints.

The White Bikini: Quick, entertaining sleaze about a Hollywood party girl found dead on the beach who may be the daughter of a high-powered movie studio executive. The trail to murder leads private eye Rick Holman to oversexed folk singers in coffeehouses of Venice, psychotic bodybuilders in Muscle Beach, and studio brats spinning roulette wheels in Las Vegas. Trashy good fun that embraces Sixties culture at its wildest.

Other Carter Brown book titles you may not have heard of: Who Killed Dr. Sex?, No Tears From The Widow, The Flagellator, The Ice Cold Nude, No Blonde Is An Island, Nymph To The Slaughter, The Bump And Grind Murders, Walk Softly Witch, and countless more!

Without belaboring the point that Carter Brown novels are sleazy but entertaining trash, there are no philosophical soliloquies that you get in a David Goodis classic or some deep existential journey into darkness like Jim Thompson. Like his contemporary Mickey Spillane, Carter Brown served up pure entertainment dressed up as a sexy crime novel with insanely generous servings of pop culture trash: surfing, beatniks, hippies, strippers, health food freaks, fitness and yoga clinics, pill - popping psychiatrists with nothing but sex on their minds, etc. Compared to the crimes committed on shows like "Breaking Bad" it just seems quaint in comparison.

Run, Little Mouse

If you’ve got a halfway decent attention span and can wait two weeks-plus to obtain your stuff, then the internet is your ideal shopping center. Everything’s cheaper and in better quality than the goods you’ll find in stores, because they haven’t been manhandled to death by annoying browsers. So without further ado, here’s a list of some of my favorite places to shop:

Leatherup.com : A great place to buy biker boots (see pictured), leather trousers, chaps, vests, gloves, and even hats. The prices are dirt cheap as leather goods go, and the folks at Leatherup send a 15% off coupon for your next order.

Tripadvisor.com : Tourists review hotels and cut through the hype so you get the real skinny on where the best hotels are. I like it when they post photographs of their favorite rooms and hotel features, like the swimming pools.

Goodreads.com : A mySpace-styled website where bookworms review their favorite books, and no book is too lowbrow for review. Pam Anderson bios are reviewed with the same fervor as a Shakespeare collection, cookbooks are cool, graphic novels, little kids books, teen vampire operas, etc. Started by Otis Chandler of the LA Times Chandlers, this website’s a winner all the way.

Rivithead.com : The best of the Hot Topic-styled websites where cool shoes and rocker clothes can be bought. The prices are not only the lowest I’ve seen, but goods are delivered in three working days at no extra charge (if you live in SoCal). I’ve bought many of my rocker shoes there.

Cooks.com : If you’re looking for a recipe to cook anything, you’ll find it here. This site’s pretty great, I’ve learned how to cook a lot of great dishes thanks to cooks.com. Members of the site contribute their own recipes, and the forums are pretty cool. The only recipe that didn’t work out was some bizarre compote I probably messed up, anyway. Corn starch???

bcdb.com : Big Cartoon Database, sort of the iMDB of cartoons. Every cartoon show ever made is listed, although some of the information is kinda sketchy, it still remains a good resource for finding out that cartoon show you have trouble remembering after all these years.

VitaMaker.com : Not to be confused with VitaPal.com, Supplements-To-Go.com or VitaDigest.com, these companies all sell hard-to-find vitamins and assorted supplements at extremely low prices. I buy several bottles of my favorite supplements at a shot and save a fortune. The price differences between a lot of these companies is pretty slim, so you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Abe.com : Before you get price gouged to death for a book by eBay, come here. They have rare books at excellent prices and are listed by the various bookstores that sell them. I’ve found quite a few rare pulp crime novels here that are out of print. This is a great site for those impossible to find books.

Creepy Classics.com : Every horror, science fiction, lucha libre, film noir, and Baby Boomer cartoon show ever released on DVD can be found here. When you run out of DVDs to buy for your trash culture friends go here and feast on the inexhaustible selection available.

Well, the list of stores you can run to on your little mouse is infinite: Newegg for computer stuff, Lush for sweet soaps, Diviniti for men’s and women’s jewelry and rings, Travelocity for travel, etc. Informational sites are even more out there, like my beloved Yelp, GaragePunk Hideout, Urban Dictionary, Edmunds (for car reviews), Find A Grave (directory of celebrity burial grounds), Home Theater Forum, eHow for instructions on EVERYTHING, Flickr, You Tube, DVD Help for advice on burning DVDs, and my favorite, the Downtown Skylines site. It’s funny reading everyone on the forum complaining about Los Angeles’ puny, underdeveloped skyline. So get on your little mouse and run, baby, run.