Sights and sounds of crime fiction

Sarah Weinman. Photo by Peter Rozovsky

Erik Arneson has uploaded three podcasts (Parts 1, 2, and 3) of the Noir at the Bar readings for which I was MC at Noircon 2014. Readers include Duane Swierczynski, Sarah Weinman, Jonathan Woods, Jon McGoran, and Arneson himself, who weighs in with a killer cat story.

Erik Arneson. Photo
by Peter Rozovsky

I introduced the authors and shot pictures of them as they read.

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Photo by Peter Rozovsky

Over at the Off the Cuff Web site, meanwhile, Dietrich Kalteis and Martin J. Frankson get crowded, bringing in authors Samantha J. Wright and Sam Wiebe for a discussion of short stories and debut novels.  Once again, Dietrich illustrates the post with one of my shadowy shots, this one a late-afternoon view outside an exhibition hall at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach.
© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Detectives Beyond Borders around the world, in the news, and on the Web

I am pleased to have been quoted at length in the Irish Examiner's review of Akashic Books' upcoming Belfast Noir volume of  crime stories. The piece appears under the entirely appropriate headline "`Belfast Noir': Move over Scandinavia, the Irish are the real thrillers ...," and it calls me "an international authority on crime-writing, whose blog ‘Detectives Beyond Borders’ has for many years been the last word on all things noir." Grateful thanks to my Irish peeps, and don't go accusing them of committing blarney. 

Stuart Neville, author
and member of my
Belfast Noir panel.
Photos by your formerly
humble blogkeeper.

I'll discuss Belfast Noir next week at Bouchercon in Long Beach. The panel is called "Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland," and it happens at 11:30 a.m., Friday, Nov. 14. I'm not saying I'll buy a pint of Guinness for everyone who shows up, but there's only one way for you to find out.

Paul Charles, also part 
of the Belfast Noir panel
 at Bouchercon.

Over at Dietrich Kalteis' Off the Cuff, which has published a number of my noir photos, I put down my camera to join Dietrich and co-host Martin Frankson for a chat about crime-fiction conferences. Dietrich and Martin talk a bit about how how authors might approach conventions from a business point of view. I talk fun, including a link to the story of the wandering bridesmaids of Bouchercon 2009.

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I took the two author photos at Noircon 2014, the most fun one can have without leaving Philadelphia. Here are two more photos, from the event's concluding program at Port Richmond Books, just before the pierogi-fueled piss-up.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Bright Women Wear Dark Hats, and other Noircon images

A good noir convention should always wind up at a vast and labyrinthine book shop. Philadelphia filled the bill with Noircon 2014 and Port Richmond Books. Photos by your humble blogkeeper, Peter Rozovsky, except where physically impossible.

Christa Faust

Anita Thompson, Suzanne Solomon

Andrew Nette, Ed Pettit

Jed Ayres and I re-enact an ancient
Noir at the Bar ritual

Scott Adlerberg

William Lashner

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Noircon 2014: The pierogi-fueled piss-up

A foggy night outside the Philadelphia 
Mausoleum  of Contemporary Art, 
site of the second evening  of
Noircon programming. Unless otherwise
indicated, photos by Peter
 Rozovsky, your humble blogkeeper.

I'm drifting slowly into happy post-Noircon slumber on a giant pieróg-shaped cloud of good fellowship and beer.

The fourth edition of the world's greatest little noir convention wrapped up on Sunday with a shopping trip and a final presentation at Port Richmond books, followed by a right good mid-afternoon piss-up at a local bar in the heavily Polish neighborhood.

Noircon's programming has always been eccentric and stimulating. We have heard from strippers, sexologists, sculptors, and, this year, the author/investigator who is positive his father was the Black Dahlia killer.

But, as is usual with the intimate gathering of inquisitive, intelligent crime and noir readers, writers, editors, publishers, agents, and fans, some of my favorite moments happened outside the convention programming, and not all of them at the bar.

So, for instance ...

Fuminori Nakamura

1. I had the great pleasure of hearing Eddie Muller hold forth on his work with the Film Noir Foundation. I know no one else as devoted to, or so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about, any worthwhile subject as Eddie is about film noir, and by God, he channels his passion into action, with his work at the FNF.  OK, the Muller discussion happened at the bar.



Stuart Neville

2. So did the next highlight, actually, at the very same bar, when the sights and sounds of a wedding party of overripe frat boys and superannuated cheerleaders had several of us recalling this incident from Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis. But we were no ordinary gang of nostalgic barflies, and by the time we'd got done speculating about what those Indianapolis bridesmaids were doing with that pizza, we'd imagined them into a gang of bloodsuckers migrating slowly south for the winter. I'm thinking of calling the screenplay Vampire Bridesmaids With a Pizza.



Me and Andrew "Pulp
Curry" Nette.

3. I spent some time with the ultra-knowledgeable Andrew Nette, who had come all the way from Melbourne, Australia, to visit Noircon and see the East Coast. Andrew was pleasant company, and he suggested what will likely turn out to be a vital reference for one of my Bouchercon 2014 panels.

4. 

   Suzanne Solomon

   I realized I've been in Philadelphia long enough to have become a bit of a local expert, playing guide throughout the four-plus days to a cast of characters that included friends old, new, and in between.

Your humble blogkeeper, Scott Adlerberg, Duane Swierczynski, Ed "Philly Poe Guy" Pettit, Jeff Wong, and Mike White at Donna's  Bar. Photo courtesy of Andrew Nette.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014 

Noircon, Day I

Christa Faust, Frank De Blase

So I'm sitting in the hotel bar Thursday night with Christa Faust, Frank De Blase, and the ex-LAPD detective who says his father killed Elizabeth Short, and I'm thinking, "This Noircon thing is kind of fun."

Earlier, I'd attended a panel that offered Flannery O'Connor's biographer, Jean W. Cash; and Patricia Highsmith's biographer, Joan Schenkar; in a conversation moderated by Jim Thompson's biographer, Robert Polito.  Were Highsmith and O'Connor radically different in temperament? Were they so far apart that they began to approach each other from the opposite direction? If you begin to suspect that NoirCon is not like other crime fiction conventions, you just may be right.

Later, after a fine, light convention-provided lunch, events included a kind of reading slam called "Three Minutes of Terror," in which twenty or so writers read from their work for no more than three minutes each, with the threat of ringing buzzers, flashing lights, and a chain-saw attack for anyone who exceeded the time limit. Among the well-received selections was a modified-for-oral-presentation version of this story, by your humble blogkeeper, the first time I had ever read fiction in public.

And now, before I head to track down more of my peeps, collapse in happy exhaustion, or both, here are a few good things people have said at the con, context to come later:

"The dog lived. I knew that was a bad sign."

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"Half man, half sponge."

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"He was so wicked, he had to go live in Switzerland."

© Peter Rozovsky 2014 

Half-moon over Noircon

Half-moon over Noircon

NoirCon 2014 is up and running, and I am up and staggering, at an unaccustomed morning hour.

This small but perfectly formed noir festival here in Philadelphia really has attracted folks from around the world. Last night at the Mausoleum of Contemporary Art, I met fellow attendees Andrew Nette, from Australia, and Paul Charles, from Northern Ireland via London. Paul will be one my Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon in two weeks.

Wallace Stroby

Christa Faust, Wallace Stroby

And now,  few Noircon photos to rest your eyes while I festivalize. See you soon.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Noir at the Bar @Noircon

Sarah Weinman

A few photos I snapped at Wednesday evening's Noir at the Bar, MC'd by the guy who started Noir at the Bar (me), and featuring a roster of twelve readers that included four from the original Noir at the Bar gang, from back in 2008.

Jon McGoran

The evening was part of NoirCon 2014, that other great crime fiction happening that started in Philadelphia. (I think of the two as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention of crime fiction.)

Jonathan Woods

More to come!

Oh, and %^%$! Jed Ayres and ^&*$#! Scott Phillips.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Welcome, Noirconians!: A photographic guide to Philadelphia

With crowds pouring into town for Noircon 2014, here's a photographic tour of Philadelphia (you know: dark underbelly, the things visitors never see, and all that crap), courtesy of Peter Rozovsky, you humble blogkeeper.

Noircon: It's like the Phillies winning the World Series, but without anyone flipping cars over in the street.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Noircons then and now

People tell me I'm too negative:
Your humble blogkeeper talks
about noir songs at the Philadelphia 
Mausoleum  of Contemporary Art
at Noircon 2012. Photo
courtesy  of Cullen Gallagher

With Noircon 2014 coming to Philly this week, here are some wise, entertaining, and interesting things that people said at previous Noircons. This year's version kicks off Wednesday night, with me MC'ing a Noir at the Bar back in the city where I created Noir at the Bar in 2008.

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 “This is my first Noircon. What attracted me is that I was asked to be the Guest of Honor, and no one could resist that.”

— Otto Penzler, 2012

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"Bitch-slapping the synapses of your brain," upon which another fellow attendee, knowing what I do for a living, asked, "Does bitch slapping take a hyphen?"

— Overheard at the hotel bar, 2010 (I should have replied: "Bitch-slapping takes a hyphen — and likes it." )

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"Chubby Cambodian hotties." 

— Christa Faust, 2008

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Fellow Noircon attendee: "Are you a dog person or a cat person?"

Me: "Neither. I'm a vegetarian." 

— Exchange at hotel bar Saturday night, Noircon 2012

  © Peter Rozovsky 2012, 2-14

NoirCon 2014 is almost here // Noir at the Bar comes back home

I'll be part of another con before Bouchercon, the fourth incarnation of the event that introduced me to the joys of the con, Philadelphia's own Noircon.

This year's event happens Oct. 30-Nov. 2, and it has a more international flavor than the versions in 2008, 2010, and 2012, including several authors who will be part of my Bouchercon panels two weeks later in Long Beach. Stuart Neville will be here. So will Paul Charles, who will join Stuart, Adrian McKinty, and Gerard Brennan on my Bouchercon "Belfast Noir" panel.  Sarah Weinman and Charles Kelly will be here, sharpening their oratorical skills for their appearances on my "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras" panel in Long Beach.

The gang from Soho Press is coming to Noircon to receive awards. The delegation will include author Fuminori Nakamura and Paul Oliver, whose current reissues of Ted "Get Carter" Lewis' novels are an event of high importance to noir readers. Trust me: You want to read these books.

I'll be doing my part by MC'ing a NoirCon edition of Noir at the Bar as N@theB returns to the city where I staged the very first ones in 2008.    The list of readers includes several of the original Noir at the Bar authors and moderators, so here's a special thank you to Duane Swierczynski, Jon McGoran (who set this event up), Dennis Tafoya, and Sarah Weinman. Welcome back.

NoirCon 2008 was my first convention, my first chance to meet authors and others in the profession. It's where I met Ken Bruen and Christa Faust and Scott Phillips and Sarah Weinman and Reed Farrel Coleman and Ed Pettit and Charles Ardai and Megan Abbott and more, and not just met them, but hung out with them and talked with them. The experience was so much fun that I signed up for that year's Bouchercon almost immediately, and the rest is history. 

NoirCon: Because Not Everything Great That Started in Philadelphia Was Run By Guys Who Have Their Faces on Money.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014