It's Almost Here!

Bitter Water Blues returns to print in just one month. Monday, March 19 is BWB Day (according to me, anyway). To celebrate, Down & Out Books is offering a couple of deals:

Pre-order the e-book, and get it for just $3.99. The regular price is $7.99.

If you pre-order the paperback ($17.95), you get the e-book free.

This is the DEFINITIVE edition of Bitter Water Blues, with past errors corrected. Don't miss out on the change to get it at a special price.

Covered

Though I like the new one best, all three editions of Bitter Water Blues have benefited from having cool covers.

This is the cover of the Snubnose Press e-book, the first time Joey Kotex made it into print. Cover by the mighty Eric Beetner.

Then there was the 280 Steps paperback and e-book.

And, of course...

New Cover Reveal: BITTER WATER BLUES.

Here it is: the new cover for the reissue of Bitter Water Blues. My thanks to Eric Campbell and Lance Wright at Down and Out Books for designing such a cool and classic-feeling cover. You can almost smell the bourbon and blood.

Bitter Water Blues returns to print in paperback and e-book editions on March 19, 2018.

Hey. How've you been?

Three years since I added anything new to this blog. A lot happened in that seemingly short amount of time.

In January 2015, at a time when I was absolutely out of my head, Bitter Water Blues was published as an e-book by Snubnose Press. It spent more than 22 consecutive weeks on Amazon's "Top 100 Noir Books for Kindle" list, peaking at #13. Not bad. Snubnose was unable to release a paperback, so we parted ways amicably, and I hooked up with another publisher, who shall remain nameless (he's currently serving a lengthy prison sentence, and may he rot there).

My wife and I decided to split up after 25 years of marriage. We divorced last May, but remain close friends. She'll always been an important part of my life. I moved twice. I started putting my head back together. My kids got older. I now have one daughter in her sophomore year of college, and the other is in 8th grade. They both possess writing and artistic talent that makes me proud and envious at the same time. My youngest is also becoming a fine pianist and composer.

In October 2016, 280 Steps published a reprint of Bitter Water Blues in e-book and the first-ever paperback edition. And, in March 2017, 280 Steps went out of business and Bitter Water Blues went out of print, along with their entire catalog.

Now, thanks to the perspicacious bad-asses at Down and Out Books, Bitter Water Blues is coming back in a big way. The paperback and e-book reissue will be released on March 19, 2018. I'm beyond excited about this. Down and Out publishes some of the best crime fiction you'll find anywhere.

Check back here tomorrow (11/02/17) to see the new cover. It's fucking beautiful.

Rea and Writing

I haven't done much writing since my mother-in-law got sick. That's not whining on my part; I wouldn't trade being able to spend time with Rea during her final days for anything (except for having her back with us). Rea was one of my best supporters and she'd want me to get my ass back in the chair and start working again.


The new novel is waiting for me. Bitter Water Blues is still in need of a publisher. I owe an editor a short story for an anthology scheduled to be released in the fall. There are promised reviews and interviews. Time to get busy again.


So to keep you happy (or maybe just snickering) until I'm fully back up to speed, here's a shot of me reading "The Cove" at the Stone House in Freeport on January 14. Thanks to Penelope Schwartz Robinson for the photo...

What I've Been Doin' Lately

I just submitted a short story called "The Cove" to Lyman Feero for his forthcoming e-zine The Feral Pages. I don't know if my story will make the grade, but I'm interested to see the debut issue of this new cross-genre 'zine. "The Cove" is, of course, just the sort of heart-warming tale you've come to expect from me. Just messin'. Don't panic. It's another down-and-dirty Wesserunsett story.

Jed Ayres is posting a series of narratives about crime songs on the Hardboiled Wonderland blog. He's going to run them over the next few weeks. I wrote a piece about Robert Earl Keen's song "The Road Goes on Forever." When I told my wife about it, she said, "Big surprise there." So maybe I do play that tune a bit too often.

On the novel front, there's bad news and good. The bad news is that Bitter Water Blues hasn't found a publisher. The good news is that Bitter Water Blues hasn't found a publisher.

Huh?

That's right, I'm happy with rejection because it made me take a serious, critical look at the manuscript. Right now, I'm working on a complete rewrite, including the removal of one of the major characters and his entire storyline. Hey, I've told you people before that revision doesn't scare me.

I'm also working on turning some previously-trimmed sections of BWB into a short story. We'll see how that goes...

Stuff

Having a good Father's Day so far. I got some books that I'd wanted. This afternoon, we're grilling brats and burgers to go with Tonia's kick-ass potato salad. The kids are happy and having fun, despite the dreary weather. So, yeah...it's shaping up to be a nice, peaceful day.

I need to get some work done. Been having anxiety attacks about what passes for my writing career. I'm talking about bouts of panic that keep you awake until 3 a.m. because your heart races every few minutes and your mind can't shut down. All you want to do is turn off those negative thoughts and get some sleep, but they won't leave you alone. It isn't just Bitter Water Blues and the WIP that wound me up; there are other, more mundane problems, too.

So I'm working today. Writing, even if it's only revision, makes me happy and takes my mind off everything else. It's what I need right now.

Song for the day: "It Ain't Easy" by Shooter Jennings

My Agent Rocks

The January/February issue of Poets & Writers featured a round-table interview with four young literary agents. My agent, the amazing Renee Zuckerbrot, was one of the participants. They had a long discussion of things like the state of publishing today, publishing's future and what they look for in a client. If you've ever been mystified over what agents do and how they do it, you should read the interview. I'll tell you this: Bitter Water Blues is a better, stronger novel because of Renee's input.

Thanks to Kevin St. Jarre for the link.

Is it possible to revise 156 pages in a single nine hour period?

Yes it is.

Now I need a shower, a burger and a beer.

Not necessarily in that order.

Bitter Water Blues, the New Novel and Other Stuff

I've been too busy to blog lately, which is probably a good thing. So, to catch up...

I'm finishing up some revisions that my agent suggested for Bitter Water Blues. My wife and kids are in Disney World, so I have plenty of peace and quiet in which to work. Yesterday was tough. They left midmorning and I spent the rest of the day just sort of dubbin' around. Today I got more used to their absence and was able to focus on working. I told Renee she'd get the manuscript by the 20th, and it looks like I'll be able to live up to that.

I've also been working on novel number two, which--contrary to what I said a few months back--will not be a sequel to BWB. After five years of working on that book, I need a break from the characters.

The new novel is the first in a proposed series about ex-PI Gideon Cross. "Pandora," a short story introducing Giddy, will appear in an upcoming issue of Thrilling Detective. I won't say much about the novel right now, except that Giddy gets sucker-punched on the first page and things go downhill from there.

In non-Patrick news:

The latest issue of Mystery Scene has interviews with Tana French, Richard Stark and Marcus Sakey. There is also an interesting article by Art Taylor about crime novels from the civil rights era. And thanks to Kate Stine for yet another freebie issue. She's so cool.

Russel D. McLean interviews Tony Black and Reed Farrel Coleman talks about teaching a writers workshop in Crimespree #26.

I recently asked Chris F. Holm to write a paragraph or two about what went into his EQMM-published short story "The World Behind," which my crime-writing class is asigned to read next week. Chris went way above and beyond, sending me four pages of "the story behind the story." It's great stuff and it will be good for my students to learn about the writing process from someone other than me for a change. Some of them have been taking my classes for three semesters now, and I worry about repeating myself. Okay, this last bit was semi-Patrick news. Sue me.

He Returns with News

Been offline for a week or so, but I’ve come back with good news on the Bitter Water Blues front. I am now represented by Renée Zuckerbot of the Renée Zuckerbrot Literary Agency. Renée is working with me on some further revision of BWB before she starts shopping it around. Her ideas have helped me strengthen the manuscript, and I’m excited to have her as my agent.

A Tribute to James Patrick Kelly

Jim Kelly, my former mentor, was Guest of Honor at Readercon last month. Sandra McDonald and Erin Underwood put together a chapbook of short essays about Jim by his current and former students in the Stonecoast MFA program and some of the most prestigious speculative fiction workshops. They surprised Jim with the book during the convention. It was a privilege to take part in creating this gift for a guy who made me a better writer. Here is the essay I wrote for the tribute book:

It’s a hard admission to make, but I ain’t the sharpest crayon in the box. I applied to Stonecoast, not knowing what I’d take away from those two years—aside from an MFA. I had a BFA in creative writing. Some of my stories and poems had already seen publication in dinky little journals, and I wanted to move on to the next level. I’d started a novel, a sort of Erskine Caldwell-meets-Elmore Leonard kind of thing, but it was adrift after only about seventy pages. Maybe I could get help pounding the goddamned thing into shape at Stonecoast.

Yeah, I got some help. Even better, I got Jim Fucking Kelly. Jim is a one-man fiction program. If there’s anything he doesn’t know about story—and I doubt there is—then you won’t need it. Jim taught me how to round out my characters more fully. He taught me how to make plots work without planning out every little detail in advance. He showed me ways to up the tension. He read my packets and asked the big questions: “Why?” and “So then what?” and “How will you do that?” He helped me rein in my usual nihilistic impulses (it’s a good idea to have at least a couple of characters still alive at the end of the book…readers like that kind of thing). He rode my ass to get things done. More importantly, Jim taught me to trust my instincts.

MFA? Jim Kelly don’t need no steenking MFA. But Stonecoast ought to give him an honorary one anyway. He’s earned it, and then some.

If your writing doesn’t improve after spending a semester with Jim then, sporty, you just aren’t trying. I graduated from Stonecoast ten times the writer I’d been during my first residency, largely because I had James Patrick Kelly as a mentor.

Twice.

So I still ain’t the sharpest crayon in the box, but I am one lucky bastard.

Work, Work, Work

I wrote three pages of the sequel to Bitter Water Blues today. Not a great amount, but I’m happy with the way the words came together. The story picks up seven months after the events of the first book, and I sort of have somewhat of an idea where it might be going.

Also, I just got a gig copy-editing the first novel in a new mystery series by an established author. It’s freelance, but the pay’s decent and the publisher might throw some more work my way. Looks like we’ll be able to buy some groceries in August after all.

Working Titles And Working Toward A Title

I hate coming up with titles. Every now and then, I begin with a title (“Pandora,” for example) and the story more or less flows from it. Sometimes the title I picked sucks and an early reader will suggest a better one (“Mrs. Viles” became “In the Ditch” thanks to James Patrick Kelly). More often, the title occurs to me as I’m working (Bitter Water Blues).

Now that I’m writing the sequel to Bitter Water Blues, I feel like it should have at least a working title. Why? Beats the hell out of me. Sandra Ruttan blogged a little about this just the other day. My working title for the novel has been Mean Green. I liked it when I first came up with it months ago. However, since this new book has become my main focus, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with that title. It took me a few days to figure out why.

Let me slide some names past you: Evanovich, Grafton, Mosley, McDonald. I don’t want to get stuck writing books with what I call “theme titles.” Mosley’s "Easy Rawlins" series is brilliant, but what a drag it must be to always have to put a color in your title (except for Six Easy Pieces). I don’t read Evanovich, but what do her titles tell you about the books? Nothing. It’s just a label on a package. Know what I mean? Different sort of example, but you don’t get people going into bookstores and asking for Duma Key. Instead, they ask if you have “the new Stephen King.” It’s the same with “the new Janet Evanovich.” Or “the new Sue Grafton.”

It isn’t that I think my books will ever get so popular as to turn me into a brand-name. I just don’t want to be bound by theme titles. Bitter Water Blues. Mean Green. “Oh, he’s the new guy with the color titles.” Yeah, yeah, publishers want to reduce everything to marketable packages. But suppose Evanovich turned in her next Stephanie Plum and novel and said, “I’m sick of the numbers thing.” What will Grafton do once she finishes Z is for Zoophile? Retire?

Mysteries do have a tradition of titles that serve to unify a series.

Death of an IT Guy. Death of a Substitute Spanish Teacher.
Death in East Overshoe. Death in Hog Holler.
Uncle Bumpy and the Case of the Spurious Caviar. Uncle Bumpy and the Case of the Deadly Truffles.

Tradition. Okay, I get that. But the fact that something has become a tradition does not make it a good thing. I’m not even going to use Mean Green as a working title anymore because its presence forces me into a certain mind-frame (I must write toward this title). Writing is an organic process. At least, it is for me. Committing to a title before the novel is written forces it into a frame. Fuck that.

Yeah, I talk tough now, but then an editor will come along and change the title anyway.

So what do you think? Do you even care about book titles?

Finally!

Revision.
Re-revision.
Re-re-revision.
Re-re-re…well, you get the picture.

All that’s finally done. I just e-mailed Bitter Water Blues to an agent who requested the full manuscript. 83,000 words of nasty country noir. I spent the weekend doing rewrites and now Bitter Water Blues has a brand-new ending. I’m happy with it (though happy the ending is not).

Five years. That’s how long it took me to finish this novel. It’s my first and I wanted it to be just right. A well-known writer whom I respect told me to take my time. I sure as hell did that. It went through a lot of changes.

The adrenaline buzz is winding down and now my ass is starting to drag. My eyes are burning from staring at this damn monitor. I’m taking a couple of days off before getting back to work on the sequel, tentatively titled Mean Green. See, I’m warmed up now. No more second-guessing myself. The first draft of Mean Green should be ready before winter.

I don’t believe in luck, but wish me some anyway.

Like a Cut Cat

I like revision. Always have.

I realize that makes me a weirdo, but there you go. Too many writers view the process as a necessary evil. It’s kind of like a root canal in that regard. You know you have to go through with it, but you also know it’s going to hurt like hell. That’s the wrong attitude.

I’m at the tail end of the revision phase with Bitter Water Blues right now. The trick is to tweak sentences, find words that work better than some you used, trim the fat and make sure the continuity is smooth without letting the novel feel too polished and slick. Raw, but not too raw.

Kill your darlings.

There’s the hardest part. One scene in particular was a favorite of mine, but it did not fit the novel. Bitter Water Blues is told in close third-person, with three major and a couple of minor P.O.V. characters. The scene that ended up going featured the husband of one of the main characters, and it was his only P.O.V. scene in the entire manuscript. Also, the wife had already been changed so much as the book took shape that the scene no longer fit their relationship. As much as I loved the scene, I knew it was a drag on the novel. So I deleted it with no regrets.

The man called Tribe was kind enough to run a version of this scene (under the title “Cat Crimes”) on Flashing in the Gutters back in September 2006. I found the file this morning and opened it. Rereading the piece, I have to say I still like it but I know cutting it from BWB was the right decision. No harm in posting it here, though. Some of you will recognize this, but hey, it’s summer: time for reruns.

***

After fifteen minutes of careful scrubbing with damp paper towels, Jim Philbrick gave up trying to clean all the cat shit off his brand-new Kameleon 8-in-1 Universal Remote Control. It came off the housing easily, but the mushy ochre mess oozed into the tiny spaces around each button and there was no way in hell it was coming out. Jim slid open the door and chucked the remote out into the backyard. It hit the chain link fence around the basketball court but didn’t break. Jim threw the dirty paper towel, too, but it just fluttered onto the deck.

“Cocksuckingmotherfuckingnogoodgoddamnsonofabitchingcat.”

Jim stomped back inside. The doily was still on the coffee table. He’d set the remote’s signal to match his TV, VCR, DVD player and cable box and left it on the doily. Now the remote was lying out on the grass and the doily was caked with cat shit. At least the cat got something of Laurie’s this time. Forget the eighty-five bucks the remote cost him. The money didn’t matter so much. It was the goddamn principle of the thing.

He’d bought the remote on his way home from the office because he was tired of using four different devices. It took him half the morning to get the damned thing programmed right. When he’d finished, he’d set it down on the coffee table just long enough to get himself a sandwich and a glass of iced tea before settling down on the couch for serious channel-surfing. Just long enough for Jasmine to stroll in and squat on the new toy.

Laurie’s stack of Cat Fancy magazines sat on one side of the doily and a couple of her mystery novels were on the other. Laurie’s favorite things in life were cats and mysteries. Most of all, she loved cat mysteries. She had all of Rita Mae Brown’s books, “co-written” with a cat named Sneaky-Pie. She had all of Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… series, books with asinine titles like The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare or The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern. In hardcover.

Jim had an idea for a new book in the series: The Cat Who Took a Dump on the Brand-New Universal Remote that Cost Me $79.99 Plus Tax at the Radio Shack. It wouldn’t be a whodunit. Laurie only had one cat –and she’d settled for only one because Jim was allergic—a fat Persian named Jasmine.

Jasmine. Even the name pissed him off. Jim believed that all animals, for better or worse, had personalities. Like some people Jim knew, Jasmine was a sneaky, rotten little asshole. When Laurie was home, the cat walked around like it owned the place, giving Jim the look. She had a flat, arrogant face and her eyes showed contempt for every living thing except Jim’s wife. The cat would sit purring in Laurie’s lap and look across the room to Jim as if saying, “You got a problem?”

Times like now, when Laurie was at some committee luncheon or off banging her realtor boyfriend at one of his empty listings, Jasmine slunk from room to room, avoiding Jim and shitting on any of his possessions left lying about. Laurie refused to believe her precious Persian would do it, even when confronted with the reeking evidence. She always said, “It’s your own fault, Jim. You upset Jasmine so.”

His hatred of her gave Jasmine some kind of feline anxiety disorder and disturbed her bowels? Jim wanted to disturb her bowels with a baseball bat. He looked for the cat now, getting down on the floor to peek under the sofa, the chairs, end tables. Nothing. The boys kept their bedroom doors closed, so she wouldn’t be upstairs. He tore through his and Laurie’s room. There she was, hiding in the closet on a stack of spare blankets. Even when he had her cornered, Jasmine gave him that look, the I-can-shit-on-your-stuff look, the I-don’t-care-who-knows-I’m-fucking-around-on-you look.

Smiling at Jasmine, Jim reached for the strongbox on the top shelf. He’d come up with a new title for his book: The Cat Who Ate a Fucking Bullet.

©2004 by Patrick Shawn Bagley

A Quick Update

February was a hectic month, and March is shaping up to top it. I'm trying to finish Bitter Water Blues, as well as a short story for an anthology, by mid-month. This, along with part-time teaching while trying to find more work, family stuff and the day-to-day drudgery that comes with winter in Maine, makes it seem like spring is a hell of a long way off.

I've been reading less than usual, but have found time for The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, the latest issue of Asimov's Science Fiction and a re-read of Victor Gischler's Suicide Squeeze. Sometime next week, I should be able tear through Ken Bruen's Cross (thanks to my friend Ellen) and the new Crimespree.

Forthcoming work:
My poem "Daddy Fat" will be in the Winter/Spring issue of Off the Coast.

My short story "Bank Job" will appear in the Spring issue of Spinetingler Magazine. It's a revised version of a flash fiction piece that first appeared in Flashing in the Gutters a couple of years ago.

The debut issue of The Lineup: Poems on Crime will feature my poem "110 M.P.H. in a Stolen Pickup," along with fine work by writers like Daniel Hatadi, Sandra Seamans, Richie Narvaez and Ken Bruen. You can get more details on The Lineup blog.

Traditions

What follows is the final section of the 15-page preface to my MFA creative thesis (which consists of the first 125 pages of Bitter Water Blues). It's as close as I'm likely to get to an artist's statement.
___________________________________

V: Traditions

My fiction has its roots in the darker aspects of rural life. I came to Maine when I was 14 years old and lived with a working-class family that held few aspirations for the future beyond having food on the table and a roof overhead. Reading was something you only did when required by a teacher. Unless it was part of an assignment, writing of any kind was viewed with open contempt. My father labeled all writers, musicians and artists as "faggots." I was a stranger, a family member who had lived all of his life until then in a small city in upstate New York. I might as well have been from Mars.

I spent a lot of time locked in my room with books and records. When I did interact with other people, it was mostly as an observer. Since I did not fit in, I decided to sit back, to watch and listen. I learned the speech patterns and mannerisms of Mainers. I saw the inherited traits in faces, in ways of walking or standing. All the while, I dreamed of finishing high school and getting out…but by then the place and the people were under my skin and—after a few months in Hollywood—I came back to stay.

Rural life is far more complex than city dwellers might think. There are unwritten rules that we all learn. To break them is to be branded for life; in some cases, that stigma goes on for generations. People can become trapped by their environment here just as surely as in some urban ghetto.

When I was 18 years old, my girlfriend’s father loaned me a copy of Carolyn Chute’s The Beans of Egypt, Maine. It was a revelation. I had grown up reading the fantasies of Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Roger Zelazny and Fritz Leiber, as well as the horror novels of Stephen King. Literature, as it had been taught in school, held little interest for me. With few exceptions, the stories were all about upper-class Englishmen, while the poems were about Greek gods and long-dead kings. Such material was irrelevant to my life.

Chute’s writing was raw and intense, her characters alive. More to the point, I knew these characters. They were just like the real people among whom I lived and worked. I have read that novel many times over the last twenty years and, though the writing no longer impresses me as it once did, the characters still break my heart. In some ways, Hag is a bastard son of Reuben Bean.

As an undergrad working toward my BFA, I wrote stories about such hardscrabble characters. I was obsessed by their troubles and their small triumphs, by the strength that kept them going through tough times. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God and Blood Meridian, Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road and Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, all of which I read for the first time as a college freshman, were major influences on my developing stories.

I discovered crime fiction in 1993, when I read James Lee Burke’s Dixie City Jam. Though Burke’s hero, Dave Robicheaux was a detective, the story bore no resemblance to the polite drawing room mysteries my grandmother had loved. In those stories, the solving of the puzzle was everything, and all the characters were flat. Burke wrote down and dirty fiction that lived, breathed, kicked and screamed. His protagonist was a sort of knight errant who often came close to crossing the line into criminal behavior himself. I started writing crime fiction myself, at first imitating Burke’s style.

After Burke, I moved on to Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard, then Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain. More recent writers like George Pelecanos, Ken Bruen, Victor Gischler, Daniel Woodrell and Scott Wolven—especially Wolven—have also affected my work.

Crime fiction is the best way to explore the themes that matter to me: loss, poverty, abuse, and the consequences of violence and of keeping secrets. My characters steal to eat or pay the rent or support their meth habit. They drink, smoke, burp, fart and use foul language. They commit violent acts and attempt to cover them up. I do not glorify violence, though. I try to portray it realistically: brutal, ugly, degrading and messy, as when Hag makes his first kill. Many of my characters come to bad ends, sometimes dragging their loved ones down with them. This is what novelist J.D. Rhoades has called “redneck noir.” It is what I do, and I hope that Bitter Water Blues will someday be considered a classic example of this sub-genre.

Today’s Word Count

This morning I wrote 2,107 words of a short story called “Welcome to Val-U-Mart, Motherfucker.” It’s for an anthology, and is due soon. I want to make sure I get it finished in time to do some revisions.

I'll work on Bitter Water Blues after the kids are in bed tonight. I expect to get in another thousand there.

NOTE: Having just Googled "Val-U-Mart" and found it to be a real store, I now have to come up with a new name. No big deal.