Talking To Myself In Public

At the height of my band’s popularity many fanzines wanted us in their latest issue but were too lazy to interview me. They always asked me to interview myself, which was a novelty the first time around, but repeated requests for me to interview myself became very dull soon thereafter. Not only did it expose a true lack of interest in what I was doing, but it always felt as if I was simply talking to myself.

So allow me to talk to myself a little bit more, but this time the subject is yours truly. Not the band I literally built from the ground up – no help, no partners – a band I created alone and dragged all the way up from the depths to The Roxy Theater and The Hollywood Palladium. Not bad. I’ve created and reinvented myself time and time again.

Since I’ve made an art form of talking to myself in public I’ve decided to mention a few details about me. Some people will believe what I’m about to say and others (fools) will think I’m merely telling tales.

Playing in other people's bands never got me much attention, and one of the great ironies was I got a record deal simply for looking cool. The head of Sympathy For The Record Industry saw me walking down Melrose Avenue, and offered me a record deal without having heard a single note of music from me, and didn’t really want to. Talk about your Lana Turner discoveries.

Four years later my group broke up, my choice, which made me a pariah on the scene. That was fine, because playing music never made me any money. In fact, at the height of my popularity I lived out of my car because I pumped what little money I had into my band. The same people who ostracized me for breaking my band up thought it was funny I was living on the streets while I was headlining some terrible Hollywood dump. Assholes.

But the next step, and there’s always a next step, was working for local government, and I always found myself in the Executive Office of the LA County Fire Department, Department of Children & Family Services, and finally the LA County Board of Supervisors (my last hurrah). During that time I worked for a varied list of city councilmen, mayors, law enforcement officials, and prominent judges. I won several citations and awards for my service to local government.

But municipal service can be as boring as playing sax behind tuneless punk singers, so I joined forces with my ex designing wardrobe for movies, television, theatre, metal bands and even video games, like Twisted Metal (some video games take live action green screen footage and incorporate it into the game, so we'd fabricate and style the costumes worn for the footage). We’d guzzle endless pots of coffee and stay up for several nights cutting fabric, sewing outfits, distressing and dyeing, whatever the job called for. I did most of the shopping and learned who the good fabric stores were and which ones to stay away from.

In between sewing jobs I began writing serials for my blog, Out Demons Out. The serials then transmogrified into novels. All my novels, except Hot Wire My Heart started out as serials in my blog. My novels, six so far with a seventh on the way, are all available on every eBook outlet – Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo Canada, and they can even be taken out like library books at hoopla.com.

But it all began to get real when I took on a weekend delivery job, when I drove around on a drizzly afternoon, listening to The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life”. The dispatcher told me to head on over to Stella MacCartney’s boutique, a lovely baroque building with vines of ivy crawling all over the entrance.

I came in for the pick-up and the salesgirl told me to take this to Olivia Harrison’s house. Holy shit. I’m going to George Harrison’s house. It was all too much, delivering to George’s widow from Paul’s daughter. All I’m going to say about George’s house is that the walls are VERY high – can you blame him? – and it’s very Spanish styled. When the housemaid came out to pick up Olivia’s dress she halted at the sight of me for a moment, smiled and then handed me a crisp twenty dollar bill. When I die that’s all I’m going to remember.

HOT WIRE MY HEART Punk Noir Potboiler OUT NOW!

Hot Wire My Heart is now available for your entertainment and continues my string of punk noir novels, which include Every Good Boy Dies First and Every Bitch For Himself. It’s a punk take on Sweet Smell of Success, a whirlwind ride through the 1978 San Francisco punk scene through the eyes of gossip columnist Dante Sterno. He dishes out all the dirty gossip on all the local punk heroes and heroines for Ripoff Magazine, a cheap local zine.

Dante’s pursuit for more and more dirt on popular rockers in the scene becomes more and more shameless and scurrilous as the book goes on, and it finally reaches a point where his dirty scoops catch up with him. To ensure his survival he hires the services of car thief and protection thug Big Jason Gulliver, back again from Every Bitch For Himself (which chronologically follows this novel).

Big Jason provides some much-needed protection but unfortunately raises the ire of a prominent politician, who in turn contracts rival car thieves and gunmen to liquidate Jason. In between the action there’s lots of sex, violence and hardcore punk. There’s even room for a roller derby match in between all the skull cracking.

The character of Big Jason was based on a real punker I knew, a tough, amoral thug – Irish, of course – a cross between Lawrence Tierney and Matt Dillon. He really did protect people, sometimes for money but mostly for the thrill of kicking assholes around. A man like that is instant gold for noir; a thug who’s capable of making any kind of trouble is as noir as it gets.

Hot Wire My Heart, named after a Crime song, was a chance for me to reminisce about the old days of San Francisco punk, a scene that many of us Southern California punks would trek up the coast periodically to enjoy. San Francisco punk was more art damaged than LA punk, beneficial because it resulted in less aping the London scene, which LA sometimes indulged a bit much.

Bands like The Avengers, The Offs, Crime, UXA and The Sleepers made art on their own terms. Since the average punk audience back then was so small there wasn’t a lot of money to be made, resulting in no need for compromise and creating the most original and exciting punk of that era. I hope Hot Wire My Heart recaptures some of the energy of those electrifying San Franciscan nights.

Hot Wire My Heart retails for only $3.99 and can be bought at these eBook retailers:

Amazon Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Wire-Heart-Andy-Seven-ebook/dp/B09CRVJHL1/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=hot+wire+my+heart&qid=1629249084&s=digital-text&sr=1-3

Apple Books:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/hot-wire-my-heart/id1581407105

Barnes & Noble Nook:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hot-wire-my-heart-andy-seven/1140023225?ean=9781098399412

Kobo (Canada):
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hot-wire-my-heart

Scribd:
https://www.scribd.com/book/520407943/Hot-Wire-My-Heart

BookBaby Bookstore:
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Hot-Wire-My-Heart&b=p_fr-ho-bl

RED COFFEE Suspense Novel OUT NOW!

Red Coffee is my latest novel, and it's about young model Lois Angelus, grabbing any modeling job she can, whether it's posing for sculptors, posing for high-end department stores, or even providing eye candy for a tenth-rate slapstick comedy short feature. Everything seems to be moving steadily for Lois until she’s witness to a murder of a prominent banker. That's when her troubles begin, and they never slow down in this hard-boiled horror tale.

It's the story of a woman caught in the crossfire of a class war in Thirties Los Angeles. My novel blends elements of urban horror and roman noir with a feminine viewpoint through it all. I originally serialized this novel on my blog about ten years ago, and now it can be enjoyed as a standalone novel.

The prototype for Lois is based on my favorite actresses of the post-silent and pre-code era like Ann Dvorak, Aline McMahon, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, and Leila Hyams, to name just a few. The way they combined feminine grace with a tough inner core inspired me to create a character in tribute to them.

I put this project on delay for all these years because it was such a radical departure from anything else I've written I didn't really know what to do with it, but now I feel confident enough to release it on its own merits.

Red Coffee is a hard-boiled amalgam of the pre-code cinema of William Wellman and the moody horror films of Val Lewton, creator of Cat People and The Seventh Victim. Prepare to enter a world of deadly scarecrows, murderous folksingers, academics tripping on LSD, slanderous séances, white supremacist terrorists, and birds, birds, birds!

Red Coffee is available as an eBook for only $3.99, and can be purchased through these eTailers:

Amazon Kindle: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0892PPSSC&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_ooPZEbD3QRBJT

iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/red-coffee/id1514799647

Barnes & Noble Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/red-coffee-andy-seven/1137067297;jsessionid=E86FAA41AB4A3B7B80B38689E1390E9D.prodny_store01-atgap09?ean=9781098315139&st=AFF&2sid=Goodreads,%20Inc_2227948_NA&sourceId=AFFGoodreads,%20Inc

Kobo (Canada): https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/red-coffee

My new novel can probably be found at other sites besides the ones mentioned above, so check it our wherever it is. I hope you enjoy it, and as usual, I guarantee outrage on every page!

Andy Seven Ltd. · Sometimes I (2020 Remix)

The Andy Seven 2020 Halftime Progress Report

There have been no idle hands at work during the pandemic, and I daresay this may be one of the most fertile periods of creativity I’ve ever had. I have a lot of new things to report, so much stuff I don’t even know where to begin, so let’s take it from the top:

1.

I put up an Author Page on Book Baby’s website for your review. It has links to all of my current books on sale, and also includes news about any upcoming releases. Here’s the link with a small screen capture, too:
https://store.bookbaby.com/bookshop/profile/index.aspx?profileURL=andyseven

2.

Check out a great poem I wrote called “Succubus” for Horror Sleaze Trash Quarterly, Spring 2020 Edition. It’s a sexy horror poem influenced by the films of Jean Rollin/Jess Franco. You can download a copy of it and read it here:
https://horrorsleazetrashcom.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/hstq-spring-2020_ebook-1.pdf

3.

All of my novels are now available for library-style lending from Hoopla.com. All you need is a library card and it’s absolutely free. Hoopla also has hundreds of CDs and DVDs you can take out, too. Here’s the link for Hoopla.com:
https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?page=1&q=andy+seven&scope=EBOOK&type=direct

4.

On a non-literary note I’ve posted a few obscure Trash Can School tracks and Cockfight remixes on my Soundcloud page, and once again, it’s absolutely free! If you have a Soundcloud account, please add Andy Seven Ltd. as a favorite artist. Here’s the link:
https://soundcloud.com/andysevenltd

5.

And last, but certainly not least, I have a new novel on the pipeline titled Red Coffee, due for an early June release date. My first book in four flaming years! If the title sounds familiar it’s because it was serialized in this blog many years ago and will finally see the light of day as a full-fledged work. Here’s a sneak peek at the cover:

In closing I wanted to mention that all excerpts and chapters from my novels have been taken down from this blog and will no longer be available for reading. If you want to enjoy them from this point on, you can either take the entire book out on Hoopla.com, or better yet, buy the whole thing on Amazon Kindle, iTunes, Book Baby, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo in Canada, or Oyster (if they’re still in business).

I have some new projects planned for later this year, i.e. another book in October 2020, more poetry in a wonderful comp titled Will To Flutter, and my first new music in years for sale on Bandcamp. The future looks bright, virus be damned.

I Sing The Bookcase Electric

If you follow my blog I wrote a post in September of 2015 called Paperback Criers (http://blackhairedboy.blogspot.com/2015/09/paperback-criers.html ) about people heralding the rise in popularity of paperbound books. I can be a sentimental old man with the best of them, but this time I'm going to sit the parade out. I like my electronic books, damn it.

One of the great things about owning a Kindle is the way I can carry 100 books around in one slim volume. I can download an unlimited amount of books and go back and forth with them as often as I want to without grabbing them from a shelf and plowing through endless pages. They're all sitting there in my tablet side by side ready to be opened up any time. How can you hate that? And just think, no trees were cut down in the production of these books.

No torn pages! No torn off cover! Nothing yellows or smells! What's to hate?

Another feature I really like is the way I can get samples of books downloaded on my device, so I can sample everything without having to buy it blind. You can read the sample any time you feel like it and not be hampered with standing around in some bookstore.

A quick list of my eBooks currently living in my Kindle:

1. Lord of Garbage - Kim Fowley (he promised a second volume of memoirs - um, yeah the best laid plans of mice and men....)

2. Concrete Island - J.G. Ballard (you think electronic books are cold and alienating? Good, download some J.G. Ballard, then)

3. The Woman Aroused - Bruno Fischer (one of the most twisted noirs ever written; HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

4. The Fox - D.H. Lawrence (the movie was better but still worth a read. I think it was 99 cents)

5. Redheads Die Quickly - Gil Brewer (some of the greatest noir short stories next to Lawrence Block's sleazy stuff)

6. The Flesh of the Orchid - James Hadley Chase (crime classic about an heiress who escapes from a lunatic asylum and tears men's eyes out for kicks...and that's just for starts!)

7. Eternal Troubadour: The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim - Justin Martell (a great biography on the Sixties phenomenon)

8. Every Good Boy Dies First, Iron Curtain Baby, etc. - Andy Seven (I have four books for sale and they're all fabulous punk crime novels)

SAMPLES OF BOOKS in my Kindle: Notorious Byrd Brothers (33 1/3 album series), The Mayor of MacDougal Street - Dave Van Ronk's memoirs. The Big Bite by noir demon Charles Williams and much more Gil Brewer sleaze like The Brat and Little Tramp. And I'm pretty stoked about that Ann Dvorak biography.

The prices to most of these tomes are actually lower than the average paperbound book since it costs nothing to download these babies. Ahem, my books retail at $2.99 and $3.99, depending on their volume. What are you waiting for?

My Kindle also has an unlimited music cloud library as well as tons of movies, too. All in one slim volume. talk about a home entertainment center in the palm of your hand! By the way, did I mention I have some books for sale?

The 10th Anniversary of My Obsessions

Ten years is a long time to be doing anything, and the fact that I've spent the last ten years of my life writing a (once) weekly blog feels incredible. I got a lot of weirdness off my chest, which encompassed everything from baking ideas to clothes making to favorite obscure film directors and anything else crazy that struck my fancy. Most importantly, I published serialized installments of five novels - one still unpublished, but that's another story. There were also countless short works which found their way on my latest compilation, Iron Curtain Baby, available in eBook form on Kindle, Nook and iTunes.

When I began writing my blog in 2007 I didn't belong to MySpace, Tumblr, Twitter or Facebook, so in the beginning this behemoth was the only means of Internet self-expression for me. In a way that was good, because there was little interference in the way of public opinion in terms of what was acceptable. Without a visible audience it was a lot easier to produce installments without fear of commanding or losing the crowd. It didn't matter, I was the guy in the tiny radio station out in the middle of the desert broadcasting my madness to whomever felt like listening. Isolation can be a blessing.

If anything's changed in the past ten years it's the popularity of my fiction pieces, sometimes a mixed blessing. With the rise in internet plagiarism full chapters from previous novels have had to be pulled down, as well as any upcoming works. I'm writing two novels simultaneously and can't post them as I have in the past because the possibility of plagiarism is highly likely. Too bad. We'll just have to wait for the finished products.

Writing a blog has always been more gratifying to me than posting my work on some social network site, largely because I've always hated the message board format. Sometimes you just want to express yourself without worrying about some uninformed loudmouth attacking your ideas. I get a little bit of that here, like the idiot who refused to believe that Alice Cooper catered to the gay community in the early stages of his career, or the crazy woman who had a one-woman Trixie Merkin crusade, but for the most part there's not a whole lot of cranks screaming at my writings.

For the first seven years of my blog I wrote anonymously and loving it, but all good things must come to an end. It's very strange when you go to work and people approach you and want to discuss your latest blog post, and you never even told anyone you had one. It's a secret celebrityhood that you can't really enjoy, because now your private thoughts have gone public, but that's the internet for you.

Basically, this may very well be the final year of my blog, because: 1) I feel all talked out, written about everything under the sun that interests me; 2) People don't read blogs anymore. My numbers are lower than they've ever been; 3) Everybody wants to talk about the new President and nothing else. I'm just not a political person; 4) I want to focus on my books and nothing more.

Without further ado, let's talk about my four current books, all of which are available as mentioned previously on Amazon Kindle, iTunes and Barnes & Noble Nook:

Every Good Boy Dies First: Punk rock noir novel about Griff, the leader of Garbage Truck during the grunge era who struggles to realize and protect his artistic vision, compromised by crooked musicians, gay bashing skinheads and a dead nightclub bouncer.

Every Bitch For Himself: Crime novel about a heist at a punk rock club called Rocket USA featuring amoral thug Big Jason Gulliver and his punk rock posse. With a few borrowed riffs from The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle, there's enough late Seventies Hollywood punk memorabilia to make your head spin.

Wranglers' Canyon/Crash Walker: Two novel set about a man named Crash Walker, a shiftless cowhand in the Old West, and then a third-rate television actor in the mid-20th Century with a western cowboy show wrangling psychos on the Sunset Strip. Sound confusing? Get the book and read it. You'll figure it out and you'll be glad you did.

Iron Curtain Baby: A collection of short fiction, mostly culled from this insane blog, featuring modern Yiddish folk tales, surreal noir fiction and scrawlings about the early days of the Hollywood Glam & Punk scene as experienced by yours truly.

So there you have it: the past, present and future as experienced by Andy Seven. There will be a few blog posts here and there this year, but the regularity will slow down even more, sorry. I'll make an effort to spit out a few syllables here and there for you, but novelizations await.

P.S. As you can see, there are a few selfies posted here. While some people think it's the creation of the devil, I'm pretty certain that Andy Warhol would have approved of them. They're so Andy.

IRON CURTAIN BABY Out Now!

Iron Curtain Baby is a collection of short stories by Andy Seven (Every Good Boy Dies First, Crash Walker) combining fictionalized memoirs of his adolescent years growing up in the early Seventies. The stories range from his memoirs of the glam rock era to growing up as a Jewish seminary student to the early days of the Hollywood punk scene. Interspersed are wild sketches of hardboiled crime stories set in the Thirties and Fifties.

Highlights include Apartment 217, a short memoir about the legendary Hollywood punk building Canterbury Arms; It Was A Pleasure Then, a story about kids hanging out on the Sunset Strip in the Golden Age of Glam; God’s Little Darkroom, a tale about born-again Orthodox Jews, The Later Prophets, a piece about bureaucratic Armageddon; and many tales of the dreary workaday world in stories like Bubblegum and Garbage, Butcher Boy, and The Rack Jobbers.

Included are sample chapters from novels published (Crash Walker, Every Bitch for Himself) as well as novels not yet published (Red Coffee, Hot Wire My Heart). Iron Curtain Baby is truly a sweeping collage of fantasies and experiences as only Andy Seven can tell them.

All of the stories in Iron Curtain Baby are presented in alphabetical order to dismiss any notions of topical preference, with the final mosaic of off-kilter subjects surprisingly culminating in the story titled “Where Do All The Wild Boys Go?” tying them all together. All in all, with Iron Curtain Baby, Andy Seven promises Outrage on Every Page!

Iron Curtain Baby is coming out on Friday, July 15 and will be available in eBook format on Amazon Kindle, iTunes and Book Baby. I'm currently offering free promo cards for the new book to anybody who wants some. All you have to do is PM me your mailing address and I'll send you a handful, no muss, no fuss. And it's absolutely free!

Amazon's taking advance orders right here:
https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Curtain-Baby-Andy…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

If you're an iPad queen like Daev Dave, here's the iTunes link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/iron-curtain-baby/id1129576825?mt=11

Outrage On Every Page!

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.

The Andy Seven Update

Now would be a good time to take a break from plugging men’s fragrances and free downloads on You Tube to let you know what's been going on lately.

I'll start by letting you know that my latest novel Every Bitch For Himself has a new, revised cover (seen above) as well as a rear cover that's pretty awesome to look at, too (pictured below). Both feature illustrations by the great Rebecca Seven.

Every Bitch For Himself now retails at $2.99, still a great deal compared to the overpriced paperbound books glutting the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Plus the book totally shreds, as Gore Vidal would say.

In addition to the Andy Seven page I created on Amazon.com I've also created a Cockfight page in honor of my band that played from 1993-1999. The page contains some cool photos of us as well as a few mp3 tracks for you to listen to.

Cockfight was a great band that played lo-fi punk with some brain shredding guitar sonics and performed at clubs like The Coconut Teaszer, The Abbey, The Garage, Club Lingerie, and Raji's, to name a few. You can find the page here: http://www.amazon.com/Cockfight/e/B001LI969G/ref=ac_dtp_sa_link.

I've also begun uploading full length films on You Tube which I hope you enjoy. I've kept the film selections pretty varied, running the gamut from modern rock films like The Year of My Japanese Cousin starring Selene Vigil of 7 Year Bitch to a 1941 Shemp Howard solo comedy Ghost Crazy to noir classics Naked Alibi and Violated. All movies are unavailable for sale on DVD so there's no bootlegging involved. You can find my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChunkyBoots/videos.

Wranglers' Canyon is almost complete and should be finished by April with a July release date. I promise a pretty big surprise with this edition - it will be a lot different than anything I've done before. Like my two previous novels it will be an eBook via BookBaby.

Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time designing clothes lately but I plan on remedying that soon. I have a few designs up my sleeve that I'll be working on this summer. Pics will be posted up as soon as they're all stitched up. All I'm going to say is: I hope you like leather.

The Afterword to The Foreword

Hi, everyone, just letting you know that I've created an author page for myself on Amazon.com. If you click on there you can see all my books that are available, as well as my Twitter feed (tweet, tweet) and maybe some extra stuff that I sometimes post here, some stuff not. It's a sort of virtual Andy Seven clubhouse. Yeah, it's my clubhouse and it's freaking me out! Click here for some action:
http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Seven/e/B00NCD4S2S/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0