This week, I review three books that left a profound impression on me – The Big Three – this past month. I devoured them and found them too nourishing not to share. Dig in.

To close it out, The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock.

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This week, I review three books that left a profound impression on me – The Big Three – this past month. I devoured them and found them too nourishing not to share. Dig in.

Today, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran.

Read the rest of the article »

This week, I review three books that left a profound impression on me – The Big Three – this past month. I devoured them and found them too nourishing not to share. Dig in.

First off, Fun & Games from Duane Swierzcynski.

Read the rest of the article »

The dark dudes over at Anything Horror ran a flash fiction challenge centered around Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. I took a stab at it. We spent some time with Norman as he decided “I Have To Get Rid of Mother“.

As we know, things didn’t turn out so swell for Norman, but I landed Third Place in the challenge. I’ll be getting a Stolen From The Bates Motel T-shirt from the hip outfit over at T-shirt Bordello.

If you’re a Psycho fan and not among the faint of heart – two things that don’t exactly winnow down the list – have a glance at my entry and enjoy the site some. Anything Horror does a bang up job when it comes to non-contest-related horror too.

And if the story leaves a mark, feel free to make your mark down in my Comment field here, too.

GROWING SCARS
(written for the Patti Abbott Flash Fiction Challenge)

There was a time when walking up on Bebe Pink’s right side—the side with her glass eye—would get you her fist in your gut or worse. I know she can’t see me but I can feel her watching all the same.

Today, I amble up and set down the case of Coors and the present wrapped in tissue paper. “Hey, Bebe. Big day today, huh?”

Today, she’s not watching me. She’s watching Bella. Her daughter is running around on the newly paved street, waving a sparkler that matches her pink plastic tiara.

“Bigger all the time,” Bebe tells me, and neither eye—not the hard, hazel one or the cheap black glass one—shifts from Bella’s orbit.

I sink onto the steps of the Projects building beside her, paint settling soft under me. Neither of us talks. Back in the day, Bebe always had her say. She told everybody who ran what corners, who was untouchable and who was getting an after-midnight visit.

Now, it’s like she’s got nothing left to say. This is a peaceful day among peaceful times. We smile and watch Bella, and breathe the Ninth Ward smells of juniper sleeping with gasoline under blankets of swelter.

But silence always gets to bothering me. “How you doing these days, Bebe Pink?”

“I get by,” she says, but she shifts a little as her wiry body, notched up from the early 00’s and 90s, argues the point.

“How’s your knee?”

“Knee’s fine.” The grapefruit of mashed tissue there has been with her since she was a girl.

“It don’t bother you none with this humidity?”

Bebe slides half a smile at me rather than look. Bella is talking to some bushes, the little princess as always, giving orders to the elves or goblins there.

“It don’t matter so much as that the motherfucker that busted it don’t bother me any more.” Bebe pats the ruined knee. “Lieutenant Mahoney was a mean, old buzzard in his day, but his day got done before he could make due on his promise to beat the baby from my belly.”

“Sure enough,” I tell her, even though I was young when Durham Mahoney caught a bullet in his beard from his partner.

“And before you ask,” Bebe traces the coffee-colored craters that show under her cut-off tank top, “these war wounds ain’t bothering me none either.”

I could have figured that myself. Bebe Pink never had a problem standing up straight, even with four AK rounds through her middle. “They never pain you, right, Bebe?”

“From time to time, I can’t eat like I used to could.” Bebe frowns. “But Crush got his too.”

“Right from your hand.”

“Right from my motherfucking chopper.” Bebe holds out her hand. “Hook a girl up with one of them beers, Ryan.”

I do and she drinks and she shows her teeth with the bitterness.

“How long you battle that lanky son of a bitch?”

“Well on four years.” Bebe pulls more beer. She twirls the can and I hear there’s not enough drink left to slosh. “And no matter how many times he threw lead in my direction, he never hit Bella.”

“Nobody hit Bella.” I crack one open. “It just ain’t done.”

Bella’s bouncing on and off a curb and Bebe’s concentrating hard, like her stare could put gravity on a leash. Bella stumbles and Bebe’s on her feet before the girl can fall.

When Bella rights herself, smoothing her dress and straightening that Winn-Dixie tiara, Bebe settles back down.

“There was that other fucker, too,” I say. “The one with the necklace of teeth.”

“We don’t say his name.”

“No we don’t,” I wash the subject away with the rest of my Coors before it can turn my tongue into a desert.

I decide to defuse it with something sweet. “Your daughter grown up good, Bebe. No doubt.”

“We don’t say his name because what he did, didn’t happen.”

I double over a bit. It’s the memory of her punching me when I came up on her right to drop off earnings from a week on the corner. I hadn’t even heard about what Clementine did to her and Bella then.

Bebe taps her glass eye. “The Lord reminds me to keep a better eye on her by taking one from me.”

“You only need one to take your blocks and rule them, Bebe,” I toast her. She smiles. But it’s because Bella saw her watching. Bella rises up to her nine-years’ height and bows.

“Mhm. I really don’t mind the scars,” Bebe opens her arms for her daughter to come running. “Other folk put notches on doorframes, but houses can get swept away here in New Orleans. We find other ways to mark our kids growing up.”

Young Junius is not your son’s gangsta story. Seth Harwood tells the story of crack’s impact on Cambridge’s destitute Rindge Towers with Shakespeare’s sophisticated sensibilities. The events might be straight out of a DMX song, but they’re woven together by thoughtful plotting the summons the spirit of Hamlet.

The appeal of Young Junius is more than the symphonic skill Harwood composes the plot—it’s that indecision and regret are the demons that drive the piece. This renders the story with a core of realism while resonating with the kind of complexity found in classic literature. Hamlet could well be a distant cousin, with its large cast of haunted characters, its hand wringing and its cataclysmic collision of a climax.

The title character, Junius Posey, is fired up over the murder of a family member—his brother, Temple—and is looking to make someone pay. But just like the famous prince of Denmark, this young buck of Cambridge is unsure both how and who will bleed to balance the scales for Temple’s killing. With his charming companion, Elf, at his side, Junius wanders into the political power plays of a housing project crack war and becomes a pawn on a chessboard populated by similarly struggling characters.

In the parlance of the big-label rap that its dialogue resonates with, Seth Harwood’s Young Junius is more about falsing than about fronting. Most of its personalities are trying to act bigger than they are while figuring out who to be in the process. Harwood’s strength is in balancing the soul-searching with the pulse-pounding. He lures the reader into a page-turner of a plot and then slows his roll to give you a glimpse at the inner life of the warriors. The effect keeps you lashed to a mast in this crack-fueled storm—as soon as we catch our breath by visiting the mind of one of the characters, we’re propelled around another twist that demands we keep reading to see what happens.

Young Junius needs those kinds of hooks to secure the reader’s experience. It’s a vast work with a sprawling world of characters, all with different aims and fast trajectories. Without the plot sprinting and jogging, it could easily mire into a rogue’s gallery of character study. It doesn’t, and that’s why this work is proof of Harwood’s excellence—that he could take such a massive subject as the Rindge Towers on his shoulders and still manage to make our hearts race.

It should come as no surprise that a story of bloody vengeance in the slums is not for the cozy crowd. Any reader would be hard pressed not to find a poetic value in the souls and tender stories that inform the character’s lives, but we are here to witness those lives end in carnage. Still, I recommend it to any lover of crime fiction. Young Junius delivers epic scope and personal insight between the same covers. Outrageous as the slings and arrows of Rindge Towers’ fortune may be, their tragedy is rendered so skillfully that they deserve your audience.

Frannie decided, despite having to now carry her groceries by foot, that she was loving life. She had her health and she had her girls after all—Abby, four, and little Jane, with her wet little baby fingers. Frannie walked the dirty cement and cramped claptrap buildings of St. Claude like it was a red carpet. The Bywater air was muddy but she breathed deep.

The sight of the homeless man hunkered by the breezeway between the derelict Shell station and the shuttered sewing shop made Frannie’s thoughts crystal. She was so lucky compared to what unlucky really meant.

The man lifted a pale face, a hand like stray wax.

“Help?” He asked.

His face was quilted with lesions. Vacant eyes. Crowned with blond grime. But this was a person. Of course she would help.

“Sure.” Frannie said, setting her bags down and sorting for change. The man unfurled; stood.

“Ava?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ava. Ava Gardner. It is you.”

Frannie giggled at the comparison, even though it tickled her skin in a bad way. “Never heard that one.”

“I need you.” The man said.

A moment later, that waxy hand steered Frannie’s head into the brick wall.

She came to, deep in the gut of the breezeway—lying on ground like a broken tomb, wrists bound behind her in wire hangers, the air now more mud than breath. The man crouched close, wearing her maroon jacket and brimmed hat.

He drew out a syringe. It was caked from use. His fingers quaked.

“This won’t hurt but for a bit, Ava.”

“I’m not Ava!”

“And I’m just a no-account river fellow.” He mounted Frannie like a fever.

“I’m a real person!”

“I want to be a real person too.” His tears already dripped from cankered lips. “I want to be you.”

“No, don’t you see you’re crazy?” Frannie began to wriggle loose the hangers holding her arms.

His eyes dripped six inches above hers. They oozed pleading. “I’ll be better when I’m you.”

The needle scraped her finger. Frannie twitched it away.

“Please, Christ, you’re sick. You have a disease.”

“I do, Ava.” He whined, scraped the needle up her arm. “I have AIDS. And worse.”

“Oh Christ.”

“I have to milk blood to keep from running out.”

“No. No, you do not.” Frannie tugged. Tugged again. The hangers peeled off skin as her thumb slid free.

“But I’ll take your life, Ava, and it’ll be better.”

“I have more than a life!” Frannie fought, tossing her head, locking his eyes to hers. “I have two girls. They’re my life. Please, they need me!””

Frannie wrenched an arm loose.

The man stomped her hand flat.

The needle laid its scabs on her jugular vein.

“It’s okay, Ava.” The man tilted his hand and Frannie’s housekeys splayed on the hammering of her heart where they dangled from his wrist. “I’ll take good care of them when they’re mine.”

The needle sank and the man twisted and the blood sprayed thin like milk.

Ron Earl Phillips is running an essay contest on his blog – the prize being the dynamite urban crime novel that just hit the stores, Young Junius by Seth Harwood. Young Junius has a rough go of it, and for the price of a 300 word essay describing why you deserve to read about it, you can enjoy every moment – courtesy of the visionaries at Tyrus Books.

My entry is below.

I deserve a copy of Young Junius because I am special, just like Young Junius is—at least Dr. Rubineck told me so, before what happened to him. Dr. Rubineck would know what special is, because he used to always tell me I could trust him. After what Dr. Rubineck did to me, I suspect he was probably a special person too.

Dr. Rubineck was put in charge of special people at my school, not because of how warm his hands were, but because he was a doctor. When I was first sent to him after I broke the globe over Mrs. Beaker’s head, Dr. Rubineck told me that he got into the business of helping special people because he could not stop himself from loving us. I wanted to fit in with someone who loved me, just like Young Junius does, right from the start of the book you should give me. I fit with Dr. Rubineck really good, or so I thought.

I thought a lot of bad things, and even had bad dreams, like Marlene in the book, except that they did not come true on their own—I had to make them come true. For instance, when I had the bad dream about DeShawn kicking me in the stomach, it did not come true until after I hit him in the face. That is why I ate those mice, too. Mr. Rubineck understood. He showed me he did when he made my bad dreams about him come true in those special sessions after school. Later, I made other, worse dreams about him come true.

Young Junius is really a story about a special person making special things come true, just like me, and that is why I deserve a copy. They have me locked up in a place where they make us all wear the same jumpsuit and eat the same thing, so we forget we are special. People need to read stories like Young Junius so they will never forget how special we all are—especially me

My review of the Akashic Books short story collection, OC Noir, edited by Gary Phillips, is up at Spinetingler Magazine:

Orange County Noir edited by Gary Phillips: Orange County with Extra Pulp

By Matthew C. Funk

Orange County is the sick dog living off of Los Angeles County’s scraps, and Akashic Books’ OC Noir delivers that depraved desperation. This hardboiled bite of Orange County’s sprawl keeps its genre plotting consistent thanks to the accomplished instincts of editor, Gary Phillips. OC Noir has to leap from diverse ZIP codes—the immigrant-driven squalor of Santa Ana to the beachside sparkle of Dana Point—but Phillips makes sure the stories share the same pounding pulse and venomous blood. OC Noir manages to be as true to the genre as it is to the character of its neighborhoods.

Needle Magazine is deep in the veins of Net Noir. It drains its pain. The story below is my homage to The Needle, a Magazine of Noir

PAIN ENDS
by Matthew C. Funk

“Starvation isn’t so bad,” says Izzy Button. Her nose lets cigarette smoke drain into a curtain for her face. “It doesn’t hurt nearly so bad as eating.”

“What’s so bad about eating?” I ask, picking a curve of fried sugar from my beignet. We lounge in Café Du Monde. This is where Izzy Button holds court for her Sunday morning hangovers. She is here because it is famous.

“It makes you fat,” Izzy shivers, thin as a dropping thermometer in her Vera Wang. “And everybody rightly hates the fat.”

Izzy Button says famous people have to belong in famous places.

“So?”

“So, it hurts to be hated.” Izzy waits for a little girl with a tambourine to pass by before flicking her cigarette butt on the curb. “Not that you would know, Ava, being Miss Perfect.”

I am Ava and that is why Izzy is wrong. I do hurt. I have all the hurt in the world.

It came to me when I was 12 and it came out of the walls with cellophane voices in mass-grave stereo and it spoke to the seams of my brain. I did not listen. It did not stop the voices from speaking their pain.

“I’m not so perfect.” I say but I do not say that the last time I felt perfect was four nights ago. Four nights ago, I did things to let the pain of the world sigh in relief, just for a little while. Just long enough to keep it from becoming too much for the world to keep turning.

“I guess not, considering you’re so full of shit that you make squeaks like that.”

I gave in and listened to the voices when I was 12. It still did no good. And after I was done trying to cut and paste the newspapers into a better shape, I did not feel better. After I painted the television pink, I did not feel better. I burned my bed but it would not make the voices into smoke. I felt the pain of the world and knew something had to be done.

“I don’t like to judge.” I say to Izzy Button.

I did not know what to do. The doctors said they did. They gave me pills to filter the voices into white noise.

“You’re a saint.” Izzy rummages in her purse with wax model hands. I have what she needs in my purse, though. I have the needle for her.

“I just do what I can.”

I stopped taking the pills when I got to college. I was in a new place and I needed to know what to do.

“Like her.” Izzy snaps her lighter alive before her Cadillac-sized sunglasses. Her hands are shaking. The flame shakes as she glares at a young woman swollen by chemotherapy. “Lucky bitch.”

“Why is she lucky?” I ask without affect. Not because I don’t feel pain for the woman. But because I feel every pain there is.

“Everyone feels sorry for her. Whether she’s pretty, whether she’s empty inside, nobody minds. They just feel sorry for her. Cunt.”

I feel every pain there is, and I know what I have to do. I have to bleed that pain off before it builds up so much that the goodness stops. Agony is my salvation.

“I wish I had cancer.” Izzy touches the flame to her cigarette. “Not for lack of trying.”

I listen without affect. Not because I don’t feel Izzy’s pain. But because I know what I have to do. I have the needle for her.

*      *      *

Later, when I have stolen her from the sorority house and carried her to the abandoned doll factory, I show her the needle.

The needle is longer than any cigarette and it is thin and bright like a frozen miracle.

“Please, Jesus, don’t hurt me.” Izzy says about the needle from where she is bound to the doll-manufacture bely.

Izzy is wrong. I am not Jesus. I am not here to take away the world’s sins. I keep it turning despite them.

I brush the tawdry pigtails from her face.

“Oh fuck, Ava, please, come on, why?”

I use a bolt of doll-dress cloth to bind her head in place over her brow. Izzy’s sobs turn into giggles. Her giggles froth against the smooth surface of my wooden mask—the mask of an Oni, an invisible spirit that does the work of the invisible world.

“And here I used to like one-sided conversations.” Izzy babbles.

And Izzy is so wrong: This is not a one-sided conversation. Her ache flows into me and it cracks me open inside. I am a broken baptismal. My flesh is open from core to crown and I am leaking. My latex gloves are the texture of Bible paper as I point the needle down at Izzy’s eye.

“Stop it!” Izzy explodes with rage.

This is not a one-sided conversation. All I do, I do to tell her that the pain will stop. Agony is the only mercy I know.

“Stop it!” Izzy tries to bang her head loose.

Agony is the only mercy there is.

“Stop, Ava; stop it!”

I aim the needle at the soft pink corner between eyelid and eye.

I am the only mercy there is. I make the pain go on so that goodness can go on, too. But there will be no more pain for Izzy Button.

I drive the needle down just like I saw the doctors do when I was 12.

“Oh God oh fuck oh what?” Izzy is speaking softer now that the needle is in her brain. Maybe she understands. I care for her too much for her pain to go on.

I begin to scramble the needle, wrenching its sharp point through thin fibers.

They go pop, pop, pop.

The genocides will go on and I hear them. The children will starve on Project streets, unheard by their mothers and fathers, and I hear them. The lonely people stare soundlessly and I hear them.

Izzy goes quiet. I keep the needle scratching. Then I stop.

Her pain is stopped.

I stroke her face with the latex gloves. It is smooth as porcelain. Izzy smiles up at me, a perfect doll.

Living to be cared for. Living without pain. Living until death will take her softly by the shoulder.

I have done good work. The world still screams through the seams within me. I put the needle away.

I have so much more work to do.

Photo credit to soldier68w of Flickr

General David Petraeus has added another bold act of brilliance to his already storied career – the counter-insurgency training and the secret wars of the Surge Strategy to name two – by endorsing repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell today.

Shifting from DADT is long overdue – this is not a situation like Integration, where prejudices can be segregated. Gays can and do serve in the military. They are just forced to do so with the indignity of living a lie.

The default attitude of DADT is not security but homophobia. It is far easier to the victim of homophobia ejected by its standard than it is the abuser. There is no reason for this not to change in our enlightened times, save for prejudice, and prejudice has never been a valid reason for the U.S.A.

My horror story about Cougars, cubs and other predators, “California Panthers,” is in print and on sale.

Amazing as it is to find a genuine Russian restaurant and deli in Orange County, it is even more amazing that one as high-quality and affordable as Russian Gourmet at 22722 Lambert Street has set down roots.

Prepare to be amazed.

Russian Gourmet opened two weeks ago and is already drawing a loyal lunch crowd. It is a tidy location in a modest mini-mall, well-stocked with distinctive fare from Belarus to Siberia. Rare candies are shelved alongside spices labeled in Cyrillic. But the main attraction for the casual visitor or Russian connoisseur are its prepared dishes.

The menu is extensive and a la carte. This translates to exceptional prices, with entrees averaging a County-low $2.50 a plate. The quality is easily beyond that. Their first lunch special—the staple of Russian tables, borsch—is an exquisite balance of natural broth and abundant chunks of beets and meat. Served in a Styrofoam bowl, it is subtly spiced and amply filling.

I also sampled a pirozschk and found it to have top-tier sausage that revealed layers of flavor. The kebab was lamb of the best cut; savory and rich in taste while still being lean of fat. With both of these items winning high marks, I am sure to return to explore the rest of their menu. Vegetarian choices are not in short supply either, with egg-based pirogis in a variety of options and a selection of salads.

Russian Gourmet is an experience not to be missed—an affordable adventure into Eastern European cuisine for the dabbler and a vindication of trans-Volga delights for those accomplished in this rare and toothsome fare.

Pictures from the New Orleans neighborhood of my upcoming serial killer-savior novel, Ava.

A lot of debate has been going on about Afghanistan. With the Taliban digging in, the Pakistanis pushing hard and new questions about troop increases, everyone’s wondering what to do with the war we swept under the carpet.

My advice is what it always has been: Learn from the greatest – Alexander the Great.

Alexander would bastardize a modern saying, “Go big or go home.” The way to win in Afghanistan, following in his bloody sandal prints, is to Go Big, Then Go Home.

Afghanistan will never embrace “enlightenment” by Western values. They will embrace our cash. But touch their burkhas, child prostitutes and opium without properly buying them all off, and look out. The best we can hope for is getting a pack of honor-killing, clannish mercenaries on our side.

That has not changed since Alexander’s time. Neither has the threat Afghanistan poses. Turn your back on those bandits at your peril.

So the thing to do now, is to link hands with Pakistan in hitting them as hard as you can. Don’t cut corners – take a page from the famed “Surge” and give the combat commanders at least somewhere near the amount of shooters they want. Then give the Talibs, foreign fighters and local gunslingers a chance to cut terms.

It’s the only way to safe face and keep the coin flowing. Anything less, and you risk Kabul becoming gory sequel to Saigon. But for the sake of American fighting power and Afghani civilians everywhere, make sure you plan on going home after you go big.