Happy New Year 2010
I’m excited about 2010. I like to say the words “twenty ten”, it rolls off the tongue in a way that “twenty nine” never did. I’m ready for the Year of the Tiger to start in February and I’m really excited that BAKED is coming out in August.
BAKED took me a long time to write, there were lots of stops and starts, false leads, blind alleys, mistakes and fuckups, but ultimately I think the book turned out pretty good. I hope you like it.
I was in Amsterdam in November for the 22nd Annual Cannabis Cup and was blown away by what a beautiful city it is. The Cup was totally groovy and highly informative and I’ve written about the experience for the Los Angeles Times.
After Amsterdam I took a roadtrip across the great American Southwest with my trusty research assistant. We drove through Arizona and New Mexico only to get
poleaxed by a freak ice storm that stranded us for a few days in what must be the most Jesus-happy city in the world, Abilene Texas. Eventually we made it to Austin in time for New Year’s Eve.
But all that is so 2009. 2010 is the here, the now, what’s hip and happening. I’m making my resolutions, setting my goals and making plans. I don’t think I’m done with Amsterdam and the Cannabis business. There’s just something about Underground botanists and outlaw farmers that I like. Perhaps it’s that connection to the earth and sun – the land – that’s calling me. It won’t be a novel, I think someone needs to tell the real story about these people, but don’t worry, I’ve got more fiction in the works. That’s what I do.
I want to recommend some books coming out in 2010. Tony Dushane’s I WAS A TEENAGE JESUS JERK. I blurbed it and said: “Darkly funny and authentically kinky, Tony DuShane’s first novel is a surprisingly sweet coming-of-age story told through the eyes of a horny, Jehovah-battered, Watchtower-wielding door-to-door proselytizer. I may never answer my doorbell again.”
And Paul Tremblay’s NO SLEEP TILL WONDERLAND which I blurbed thusly: “Paul Tremblay somehow manages to channel Franz Kafka, write like Raymond Chandler, and whip up a completely original, utterly whack-a-doodle reinvention of the detective novel. This book rocks.”
Also Gar Anthony Haywood’s CEMETARY ROAD, which Publishers Weekly gave a starred review and wrote: “Reverberations from a crime committed in their youth follow three grown men with the tenacity and inevitability of Greek tragedy in Haywood’s beautifully crafted novel of unintended consequences…
That should keep you busy until August.