Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Steven Torres, your fiver's in the post

Mes Amis

This year at B'Con, I met a man carrying a big bit of cardboard with a blown up book cover on one side. I asked him what it was. "Its my book," he explained. "This is a promotional thing. I don't how I'm going to get it in my bag for going back home"*

The man in question was Steven Torres, author of the Precinct Puerto Rico novels and recently a fellow AHMM contributor. Nice bloke, too.

Steven has a website concerning his work and a blog. Recently he contacted me about doing an interview for his website. I'm answering his questions right now. This puts me among some esteemed company incluing Sarah Weinman and also the upcoming interview with Steve Hockensmith (who was with me on the short story panel at B'Con and is also a top bloke). What I didn't expect was for Steven to say such nice things on his blog (as well as try to get into the Scots idiom) about the AHMM short stories. He hits pretty much to the heart of the Sam Bryson character and, I'm pleased to say, notes that they are out of character for what many people claim to be a "cosy" zine, begging the question, are people characterising AHMM based on the fact that it doesn't always have what they like? I can't see how they can be an inclusive zine and please all the people all of the time. There's room for all kinds of stories in the world.

Of course it goes without saying I think we need a paying noir market, but I wish people would stop making out like AHMM and EQMM are the bad guys in that. Hopefully Murdaland might provide something like that which seems to be missing.

So cheers, Steven, for giving me a chance to spout off on your site. And more than anything, its always nice to know that people enjoy the stories. After all, that's what important, right folks?

Au revoir

Russel

*It goes without saying that these are paraphrases.**

**And that I had to put in footnotes for you know who.

3 comments:

Dave White said...

It's seriously like I friggin' footnotes radar... I only seem to check in when people put up footnotes and then I just get fucking angry.

Russel said...

Dave

My next post is gonna have subtitles just for you, too...

Okay, one day I will tire of such fripperies as these.

Maybe it is worth conducting an experiment to see if you have some kind of psychic affinity to footnotes...

Steven said...

It was great reading the stories. Hoping for more (and that novel, of course).

Also great to be a "Bloke". That's something I've never been called before.

As for the big sign. I am seriously considering getting someone to wear a sandwich board for me at the next B'con. I'd be happy to pay someone down on their luck pretty good money to do this, but I'm afraid the liberal sensibilities of my fellow writers might create a backlash. I dinnae like backlashes, you ken?

Okay. I'll stop now before someone gets hurt.