So…here’s something…I guess.

My new book is here.

The Cancer Chronicles brings together every single cancerous blog post that ever there was into a single book.

It’s all here: the whining, the crying, the teeth-gnashing.  The anger, the depression, the inability to eat for days at a time.

But wait, there’s more: the shots and throwing up, the stumbling through the streets, the sleeping 31 hours out of every 24.

But wait, there’s still more: the coffin salesman, the treatment room where everyone wore too much make-up, the five nude nurses!

My biological father’s death.

And, as a value-added bonus: a piece I wrote after and about my heart attack originally published in Cemetery Dance.

Wow, that’s a helluva an advertisement, isn’t it?  Depression, anger, rage, cancer, AND heart attacks, and all for only $14.95.

Seriously, there is some humor in it…I think it’s funny anyway…so it won’t send you screaming into your kitchen looking for a cleaver with which to cleave me.

Somewhere on this website, there is a buy button.  Press that button (hehehehe…eight or ten times preferably) and the book will be on its way to you.

Actually, it’s a beautiful book.  Chad Brokaw, of Brokaw Imagination, designed a cover that has exactly the kind of shocking, slightly-too-raw feel I dig.  My wife, LuAnn Salz, did the interior design and I’m lucky they were in on it.  They kept it from looking like something published in a basement on a mimeograph machine.

For those of you who’ve been asking for this, thanks for pushing me to get off my lazy butt and get it done.  I hope it is what you expect.

And – obviously – I hope you buy lots and lots of copies for all your friends.  Maybe you know someone who’s fighting cancer right now and maybe this will make them laugh hard enough to spit chemo outta their nose.

That’d be cool.

Stay tuned because throughout the year, I’ll have a pile of signings and readings scheduled.  Hopefully, we can get some cancer patients there and make them laugh hard enough to do that whole chemo/nose thing.

Okay, so a couple weeks ago, I made fun of a security guard at the Indianapolis Speedway. I wrote about how he was unable to think outside the box (read: letting Jim Born and I bend the rules a tiny bit) and how his single tooth was a monster that scared me and maybe chased me in a dream or two.

Well…now I have proof:

Yeah, he took that picture. It was a digital, point-and-shoot.

It was automatic focus.

How in the hell….

That’s all I have to say.

Just back – okay, a week ago – from Bouchercon and it was fabulous.

Bouchercon, the largest mystery/crime convention in the world, is always a great time. It’s a chance to catch up with old friends, some of whom I only get to see once a year. But also, there are always new people to meet.

This year was no exception. I renewed my friendship with Neil Smith and Sean Doolittle, with Craig and Judy Johnson, Alison Gaylin and Karn Olson, the Jordons, with William Kent Krueger, with Jared Case and Dan ‘Tim’ Wagoner, with Sergeant Michael Black and Lt. Dave Case and Investigator Jim O. Born, with Keiren Shea, John Purcell, Sandy Loper-Herzog (who’s day gig is dealing with juveniles in the kind of job I simply could never do…my hat’s off to her in a huge way). I’m sure I’m forgetting someone and they’ll beat my ass next year but when you get old, the memory is the first thing…okay, second thing…to go.

But this convention, more than any other I’d been to, was to make a decision; to hit the re-set button or not. I took a lot of time and listened to some very wise counsel. These people, who were all supportive and who wanted to see a broader horizon, all confirmed what my gut had been saying for a few months. I could not have slept as well as night without them so to all of them, thanks.

Okay, now the fun stuff. This weekend was also about security guards. I’m not sure why it happened that way, but sometimes the planets line up and there ain’t dick you can do about it.

Friday afternoon, Jim Born and I decided to make a run to the Indianapolis Speedway. Jim’s more into races than I am, but hey, American Institution and all that, right? So we head out and we are just about the biggest cop geeks on the planet. All the way there, it was sort of like the scene in Lethal Weapon with Gibson and Rene Russo (ooooo she’s so purty) compare scars.

Jim: I had a case once where….

Trey: Yeah? That’s nothing, I once had….

Jim: Minor league, pal. Listen to this….

Trey: Hah, my dead grandmother could’a done better, but I once had….

So we get to the track and there’s a giant sign that says “NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE” or the like. So naturally Jim and I take a step past that sign to get a better picture. The security guard absolutely jumps, all frothy and frenzied, from his patrol vehicle (read: personal truck used on the job) and comes to us.

“We’re just wondering if we could get a good picture?”

“No.”

“Yeah, but – ”

“No.”

But we manage to convince him to take a picture of us. While we doing that, Jim leans over and says, “How come I hear the ‘Deliverance’ music?”

See, the guy only had one tooth.

He might have been a great guy, but he had a vibe, baby, and I wasn’t completely sure we weren’t going to disappear, get turned into Soylent Green (I know, mixing my movies up, what can I say) and get served as crackers at the convention dinner.

Ultimately, somehow – I’m sure due to our incredible wits and survival skills and physical prowess – we managed to survive. We got back to the hotel, Jim promised me copies of the pictures (which he still hasn’t provided) and we promptly drank.

Next day, I’m out doing some photography. I find a factory, the kind of fetching, grimy, dirt-covered, ‘built America’ kind of factory that I’d never seen where I grew up. I snapped some pix, lined up a few ‘arty’ shots, and then discovered what would make a beautiful commentary on the state of American manufacturing today. But the shot was fucked by a slow-moving train.

No problem, I’ll wait. I’ve got some time. So I waited and waited and at least a good thirty minutes later was still waiting. Long and slow, this train.

Now, while I’m waiting, I pace back and forth on the sidewalk.

And I talk to myself.

I told you, I had some decisions to make and in that time and place was the perfect opportunity to debate myself about what I was contemplating.

But the convention center right behind me was none too comfortable with a man talking to himself, pacing the same twenty feet, and carrying a camera.

A security guard comes out, stands defensively on the other side of the chain link fence, and says, “Wha’choo doing?”

I held up the camera, figuring that was answer enough.

“Wha’choo doing?”

“Taking pictures.”

He stared at me and my coat. I was wearing a winter coat that said ‘Sheriff’s Office.’ Not my duty coat, but a cool jacket the sheriff gave everyone a few years ago for Christmas. After a few truly uncomfortable seconds, he frowns.

“You da poh-poh?”

“Yeah.”

A few more REALLY uncomfortable seconds pass. Then he shrugs.

“A’ight. I don’t care.”

And leaves.

No funny upshot to that story. It was just odd.

I thought about going for the trifecta later with a security guard who was watching over the Catholic flock at some sort of one day Catholic fest in the same hotel. I thought it might be cool to get molested by one of God’s own security guards but ultimately I thought better of it.

It would have been bad indeed if I had had to call the Sheriff’s Office for bail money.

Tom Piccirilli, whose books you should be reading voraciously, sent me this link. It is the greatest thing ever and you should check it out. As Tom said, “At 100K, it’s a steal.”

SELLING MY RIGHTS to my finished MANUSCRIPT “PROMISES” – eBay (item 110388914313 end time Jun-10-09 13:18:31 PDT)

Damnit, I hate computer stuff. The above is a link but I don’t know how to copy links so cut and paste or whatever and go check this thing out. Be sure you read the chapter she has posted, it’s brilliant. Brilliant, I say!

UPDATE – Here is the link to the ebay auction: 
SELLING MY RIGHTS to my finished MANUSCRIPT “PROMISES”

And it’s getting even uglier for books.  The last two days, for those of you don’t obsessively watch the trades like I do, have seen reorgs, layoffs at the biggest publishers, backpedaling by HMH on the whether or not they’re buying books (and regardless of what they say, they’re pretty much not).

Today’s news is a salary freeze at Penguin of anyone making more than $50,000 a year.  But in a situation where people, including senior editors, are losing jobs, it’s hard for me to feel anything for employees simply not getting a raise.  The Penguin CEO said he hopes that will be enough to get Penguin through the next couple of years.

Let me pause for a moment and mention how petty all this must seem to the man or woman putting radios in new Fords who’re watching their CEO drive to Washington in a hybrid (and for my money, symbolism doesn’t work quite as well when someone has to point it out to you…it’s like a forced apology) to beg for money so you can keep your job and buy shoes for the kids.

I realize whining about books and lack of books is petty.  I realize this particular Bushian-driven recession is entirely too deep to cry about the arts, but the arts are what I do, they are what affect me so their slow death by strangulation is what I see.

But it is the way of the near term.  If basic security is in question, luxuries are doomed.  Keeping a job is a basic security.  And as basic as books are, they are definitely a luxury right now.

So if you’re buying Christmas for someone, think about books.  Think about Tom Picirrilli’s new one, or Sean Doolittle or Ed Gorman’s.  Or Craig Johnson’s newest Walt Longmire tale which is fabulous.  Johnson has really stretched and taken some literary chances that pay-off brilliantly.

So buy some books.  Please?

You’re paranoid, they said.

You’re gloomy about the entire industry because you got boned by an editor, they said.

But mostly, you’re wrong.  So said a couple of my writer friends who were put off by my pronouncement on the state of the book industry a few days ago.

What I wrote was, “…over the next couple years, I fervently believe there will be no vibrant market.  There will be, in fact, damned few books deals going ’round.  It’s been ugly for a while, it’s getting uglier, and there will be lots and lots of great writers whose voices you won’t hear for a few years when it comes to novels published by a major house.”

Trey, don’t be such a wet noodle.

Uh-huh.

Here’s a bit of an email I got yesterday, it’s from the PW (Publisher’s Weekly) Daily Alert.

“It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.”

There is other verbiage, that’s it’s “not a permanent change,” that the right projects could still be greenlighted, etc., etc.  But what else do you need to know?  One of the largest book publishers in the world is no longer buying books.

Yeah, that Trey is so gloomy.

I mean, okay, yeah, I am, but that’s not the point in this particular case.

One of HMH’s head muckety mucks, in the press release, said, “In this case, it’s a symbol of doing things smarter; it’s not an indicator of the end of literature.  We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline.”

First of all, they didn’t turn off the spigot.  The spigot is the user end of the pipe, where water pours into a cup and where the books pour into the hands of the readers.  What HMH did is close the valve at the water plant, where all the water is collected and sifted and filtered and made palatable and put into the pipeline.  So when he says there is a robust pipeline, how long does he think that will last when the very thing it is filled with – literature – is no longer being put into the pipeline?

But believe it or not, there is one tiny, little, micrscopic bit in the release that actually got to me maybe more than the lack of acquisitions.  This guy who doesn’t know one end of a pipe from another said that HRH’s decision “is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business.”

Therefore, by his definition, conducting good business for a book publisher is to not buy any books.  Huh?  Seems to me, then, that the obvious and logical inverse is that the bad business model for a book publisher is to buy books to publish.

And this is one of the people charged with care and feeding of the industry.  There are two things I’ve done my entire life, two things that are absolutely essential to how I view and how I define myself.  One is music and the other is writing.  And this mope is in charge of the writing side of things.

Man, oh, man, does that blow industrial chunk.

And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the last sentence in the PW story.  “But perhaps an editor at the house put it best; in an e-mail, the editor mentioned the policy and added, ‘Who knows what’s next.'”

Great…it might get worse than not buying books.  I don’t even want to think about what that actually means.

So I write a post that’s about 414,983 words long bemoaning the ups and downs of Bouchercon.  A writer friend of mine sends me a note saying, “Jesus.  Bouchercon.  It’s like golf: emotional torture for hours on end, then you meet David Simon.  It takes a sick person to keep at it.”

That’s…like…414,957 fewer words than I used and it gets to the point much faster.

Damn you, SD, you and your talent!  Damn you damn you damn you!

I love Baltimore.

I love its dirt and grime, its tourists with big old baggy shorts and cameras hanging from around their necks. I love the horrible drivers who get hired as cab drivers. I love the smell of rotten fish down at the Inner Harbor. I love the Edgar Allan Poe grave site.

I especially love that Baltimore was the setting for two of my three or four favorite TV shows of all time, “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and “The Wire,” both created and written and produced and whatnot by David Simon.

Spent the weekend at Bouchercon, the annual mystery convention, wherein we gather all kinds of writers and editors and agents and publishers and fans and sycophants and various whoevers, and have a ball.

I always find myself, when surrounded by writers I admire, getting inspired. They make me think about things more deeply and work the craft more seriously and read more assiduously. In short, seeing these people and catching up with their projects makes me better.

There’s a great line in Metallica’s “Some Kind Of Monster,” documentary where the band has just offered Robert Trujillo the bass spot. Hetfield looks at Trujillo and says, “You make me play better.”

The writers of Bouchercon make me play better.

But they also make me crazy. See, I’m predisposed to jealously. Hate to admit it, but there it is. When someone gets a great deal or gets included in a Year’s Best anthology or wins a prize or whatever, I get jealous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them. No, really. I want to see my friends and acquaintances do well. I want to see them get rich and get awarded and get good.

I just don’t want to be left behind.

The same jealousy happened to me when I wrote and published lots of horror, too. Went to those conventions and had all the same petty and ugly bullshit. I had hoped it would all lessen as I got older but I was wrong, it’s still there. And understanding they’re there has done nothing for my control of them.

First of all, even before we got there, things were rocking. On the plane, LuAnn and I had to sit separately. She ends up sitting next to Dennis Lehane and I didn’t realize it until half way through the flight. Lehane wrote “Mystic River,” and “Gone, Baby, Gone,” both of which became great movies. He is an incredible writer and one of those I consider waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy up the food chain from my perch. We ended up talking with him while waiting on bags at Balto airport and it was sweet.

So Thursday night, I hung out with friends and caught up and it was wonderful. Lori Armstrong’s new book just came out and it looks to be great. Sean Doolittle’s next book is scheduled for February and it’ll be fabulous, I’m sure. Karen Olson and Alison Gaylin have new books just out or on the way out and they’re rocking and rolling. Libby Fischer Hellman’s new one – ‘Easy Innocence’ – is just out and doing well. Michael Black and David Case, both Chicago PD members and writers, are doing well.

Everyone was doing great and sitting around just chillin’ out and it was fabulous.

Friday, same story. Some panels, wandering around Inner Harbor and taking a tour of the U.S.S. Constellation and the U.S.S. Tursk submarine and those were extremely cool. Then Friday night we went to Lee Child’s annual bash (he picks up the tab on an open bar for two solid hours and any attendees of the convention can drink…his way of saying thanks to some of the people who’ve put millions of dollars in his pocket…it’s a cool gesture).

And it was at the bash that the first great moment happened. I went to see F. Paul Wilson (author of ‘The Keep’ that became the movie…as well as tons of other great books), who I hadn’t seen in a few years. We’re talking, catching up, and some drunk guy bumped into me.

Turns out it was freaking Thomas Monteleone. “Trey,” he slurs. “Great to meet you!”

I almost shit a brick. This guy is one of the foremost writers in horror, one of the top editors, too. Back in the day, I had tried and tried and tried to sell something to him and just never cracked him. The fact that he was there at all, and that he remembered my work, blew me away. We had a fabulous conversation about all things writing.

Saturday was good, though things slowed down. And then I went to a shitty dinner at a shitty bar that played shitty music and had shitty-shitty food. Other than that, it was great. Ended up at the hotel bar on a panicked mission to find and schmooze an editor who has a book of mine. I’d been looking for her for the weekend and just hadn’t found her yet. Now the hours were ticking away and I was getting panicked.

No doubt the panic played into the bipolarness.

Remember, too, the building jealousy over the contracts and great reviews and all the rest. It wasn’t on display, but it was there…it always is.

So then I get introduced to two – FUCKING TWO – writers I’ve never heard of. Nor have I ever seen a byline with their name. Why? ‘Cause they’ve never written anything. Except the novels they just sold.

To the publisher I desperately want to be with.

Huh? Been working my ass off for 14 years and have no deal and these guys woke up one morning, wrote novels, and got contracts in the space of…like…37 minutes? Fuck that shit.

Oooohhhh, did I become Grampy McCrankypants. Jealous bipolar in full drama queen mode. I mean, I didn’t throw anything or yell at anyone or anything demonstrative like that. But I did have my glary face going and my monosyllabic grunt answers and flaring nostrils. And yeah, that’s all pretty hard to miss. I’m pretty obvious when I’m annoyed at something.

So, knowing I was channeling John McCain’s Grampy McCrankypants, I blew that popstand and went to bed. I figure if you’re looking for an editor to suck up to, best not have an attitude about her house offering hacks contracts but not you. See…ain’t so stupid.

Then Sunday, I was pretty much back to normal. In fact, Dennis Lehane saw me and asked after me by name…and then introduced me to? That’s right…David Simon. Couldn’t believe it. This man who wrote the book ‘Homicide,’ and then worked on the TV show, this man who showed the world it’s not just about car chases and shootouts.

And we end up having a long conversation because he’s been to Midland to cover stories. My hometown. We ate at some of the same places, we covered some of the same stories – me as a college journalist, him as a real one for the Baltimore ‘Sun.’ It was amazing. The man’s also been to Wink, Texas, home of Roy Orbison.

Then it was over and I said goodbye to some dear friends: John Purcell and Sandy Loper Herzog and Jared Case and the Jordans. And some new ones: Jim Born and Keiran Shea and it couldn’t have been a nicer weekend.

So out of the entire weekend, my bipolar/jealous/petty/ugly time, happened over about four hours. That’s a pretty good ratio of bad hours to good hours.  And as horrible as all this sounds, I’m actually getting better about it.  In a few more years, say around the end of President Obama’s second term, I’ll be all better.

Now that it’s all over and my bipolar has passed, I get to go work on a new short story, wherein I’ll play two different people; a situation that’s less bipolar than multiple personality disorder.

“I grew [my hair] out because I’m married and I’m successful and I don’t have to impress anyone anymore.”
A writer on his newly long hair.

“The .357 is like a kiss…the .45 is like getting ass-fucked.”
A writer on the difference in recoil between two of the guns we were shooting.

“What Louisiana beer do you have?”
“Well, we have St. Paulie Girl.”
An exchange between a writer and a waitress at a Cajun restaurant.

“You didn’t get invited because you have a pussy, now shut up and go away.”
A writer on why a female writer he was talking to didn’t get invited to what the commenting writer thought was a male-only writing convention.

Okay, truth in advertising. I didn’t actually shoot up Mayhem In The Midlands, but we did do some serious shooting.

At an indoor range, rather than the indoor writers’ convention…though there were at least three moments when, if I’d been strapped, I’d have shot the crap out of a particular writer…not three writers during three moments, but the same writer over and over and over again.

Mayhem is a delightful little convention in Omaha I’ve been attending the last few years. Sean Doolittle, one of the two or three most underrated writers in America today, lives there and I head over to hang with him for a few days.

Sean is, in fact, the shooting buddy. There are always some other people along, but it’s got a core of me and Sean, blasting away for an hour or so, burning through ammo and targets like we’re made of freakin’ money. And in and around the shooting sessions, we have conversations about things like point of view narrative and the big reveal versus the little reveal and realistic violence versus stylized violence. So yeah, we’re writer geeks, but we’re writer geeks with guns.

I usually participate in a couple of discussion panels and I did this year. Some are always good and some always blow industrial chunk, and mine this year were about evenly split between good and total bullshit. The crap panel was supposed to be – we were told – on short stories. Instead, the moderator decided it was better to offer the attendees ‘entertainment’ rather than answer their questions on the topic. Who gives a crap what my favorite short story of my own is? And I would bet most people couldn’t give two hoots what my favorite food is.

Honestly, I don’t go much for the panels. I’ve been going to conventions long enough that mostly I’ve seen all of them and all their recycled cousins too many times to count. So I go for the comeraderie (is that even spelled right? What’choo want, I’m’a writer…spelling is for the editors). What that actually means is drinking too much, eating too much, bitching too much, gossiping entirely too much, but doing it with other writers so it can be written off on my taxes.

And, in this moment of truth between just you and I, I can admit that I love being there for the trainwrecks. Hehehehe…that’s sometimes better than everything else. Though the trainwrecks were minor this year, they did include watching a writer introduce himself to a writer he’d never met before by throwing himself to the floor when invited to have a seat, then stroking his newly longish hair and saying, “I grew it out because I’m married and I’m successful, I don’t have to impress anyone anymore.”

Bite my ass, moron.

The other of note was watching a writer who claimed to have once been a hugely successful trial attorney go completely blank when another writer and I (him a former NYPD copper) talked about ‘making a case.’ The former attorney had no clue what that meant.

Uh…what?

I met some interesting new people, including JT Ellison, author of “All The Pretty Girls,” and Twist Phelan. Saw some regular compatriots, too: Libby Fischer Hellmann and Sue (who in my memory never has a last name) and Lance Who Knows Lori (and who, again, never seems to have an actual last name).

But the over-arcing highlight was Craig Johnson. I’ve been a fan of his Walt Longmire series for a while (set in rural Wyoming with the county sheriff) and being able to spend some time with him and his wife was nothing short of a gas. Craig is, like me, a fan of writing (it sounds goofy, I know, but there are lots of writers who aren’t actually fans of good writing…they’re fans of good contracts and lots of press coverage, but not the actual writing), and to have a lunchtime conversation with him (also Sean, Anthony Neil Smith, Judy Johnson, and Twist Phelan) about good writing was possibly the most relaxing hour of the entire weekend.

For me, conventions are usually 50/50 – that is, 50% inspirational and 50% toxic. I love how talking to writers and reading pieces of current projects and buying newly published projects so completely inspires me to reach higher and harder on my own work, but they are also toxic in that I hate seeing how absolute fucking idiots who have no clue about good writing and who, in fact, couldn’t write their way out of a bad episode of ‘Blossom,’ or who have not a single human social skill end up with big, fat contracts which they then tell me all about while blowing stale beer breath in my face.

Mmmmm…delicious.

Those people are the ones, in fact, I usually shoot while at the range. I don’t see a silhouette, I see –

hehehehe, no names today.

So that was Mayhem for this year. And like either Ah-nold or Herpes, I’ll be back.

My favorite food, by the by, is hot links from Johnny’s Barbeque in Midland, Texas.