Welcome to Oakland
by Eric Miles Williamson

The sheer energy and passion and intensity, the linguistic virtuosity of Eric Miles Williamson’s latest novel, Welcome to Oakland, will leave readers breathless. The vigor and uncensored redneck honesty of T-Bird Murphy’s blue-collar voice will at turns delight, offend, amuse and enrage readers as T-Bird gives us what we’re not supposed to hear: the groans, gritos and war-whoops of men when they’re not behaving like gentlemen, when they’re out of sight and earshot, when they’re wrapped around their drinks at Dick’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge or your local workingman’s watering hole.

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Unintended Consequences
by Larry Fondation

Unintended Consequences is the 4th installment in Fondation’s “L.A. Stories” series. This new collection reveals with precision the way life can tangle good intentions and trip up even the most sure-footed pedestrians. These are compact city fables delivering an anti-moral, a humbling reminder to judge not. The book includes over 40 illustration by artist Kate Ruth.

“Fondation’s fiction is so far past noir that it’s almost surreal. What’s horrifying is that it’s not surreal; it’s real. Fondation is the author of three books of fiction…and each of these books is a small masterpiece…”—Transfuge (France)

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'Party Girl', a story from Dustin LaValley's collection, Lowlife Underdogs, is currently being filmed by director Jayson Densman.

Read Kek-W's take on working with X-1 Productions here.

Check out more stills and keep up with the movie on its myspace page: www.myspace.com/eggfilm

D. Harlan Wilson has been a talkative guy lately. Check out these interviews for more info about what he's up to:

- Midnight in Hell
- Jodi Lee Bleeds
- Fiction Factor

D.D. Murphry, Secret Policeman
by Alan M. Clark & Elizabeth Massie

D.D. Murphry has a way with words—or is it that words have their way with him? Work the clues alongside this unlikely sleuth to reveal an underground cabal of letters, a conspiracy of meaning, right below the surface of the everyday world.

Murphry is both hero and villain, an unforgettable personality who will have you cringing while you laugh and rooting for his every misguided plan. This is a clever tale told with a dexterity that allows for a gritty, noir feel, insight into the frailty of the human mind and the ability to see the absurdity in it all.

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FINALE is actually the third book in a loose trilogy, can you explain a bit about the first two books.

Each novel deals with identity in a different way. Fizz concerns itself with Ray Pulaski, whose identify can seemingly be converted into anything at will...except only Ray believes in his various identities. He eventually finds a way to "unravel" his various personas, in the manner of a Russian nesting doll, but how this occurs makes a point I can't explain without surrendering the ending before readers get there. Fishnet, on the other hand, deals with the identities people bring to a marriage and how those identities change and do not change in the course of a marriage. For instance, the self a person brings to a marriage never entirely goes away. It's lurking. Fishnet is very much about the meeting of these various identities. I should mention that the three books comprise a thematic trilogy, and while certain characters momentarily cross paths, it's unnecessary to read the books in any order.

The book has a very distinct format, describe it and explain why you chose to organize the book this way.

The main character follows the line of his love life backwards, so that we first see him married, and then move to his previous girlfriends. Thus, we proceed from Chapter Eight to the last chapter, simply entitled "ZERO." Between each chapter is an "earthquake" section rated in the manner of the Richter scale. Each such section increases in magnitude, so that these "earthquakes" rise as the chapter numbers descend, ending in an "earthquake" of 8.0. The blank verse of the earthquake chapters serves to summarize the previous action in a kind of cut-up, Burroughsian fashion; they suggest the main character's inner instability. All of this is meant to convey the "lost in space" existence of the main character, who is in some ways almost a parody of the typical noir protagonist, except that Finale's hero faces a quite unique dilemma he never suspects as he tries to solve the more obvious mystery.

Do you write much poetry? Do you often incorporate poems in your fiction?

My poetry writing is a fairly infrequent thing. Sometimes I incorporate what could better be called lyrics to nonexistent songs into my fiction. This is the first time poetry has appeared in a novel; it just seemed right as I thought about the structure.

How does the road trip theme tie in with the format?

Set in California, space seemed important to the novel, both in terms of the idea of an unpredictable faultline -- the place that might at any moment swallow the main character -- and in terms of his having to actually chart his past. It's almost as though he physically travels through the geography of his own memories and imagination. Finally, the character is referred to as "The Wanderer", as in the old song, though he wanders in more ways that one. He is wandering away from and towards himself at the same time...until it's too late.

You mentioned the song "The Wanderer", does music inspire your fiction? How do you decide which topics to write about?

That happened accidentally, in the case of Finale. My mother had said she thought of me whenever she heard that song. I suppose I took it as a bit of a compliment. Then someone pointed out the lyrics to me, and it seemed a whole lot less like a compliment! But I'd better add that, no, the novel is not especially autobiographical, except in the sense that all novels are autobiographical.

Your works are thematically very rich. Does that happen organically or do make conscious decisions to work themes in.

Normally it happens organically. I begin writing from some thread and keep going. As I continue writing, the theme develops and then maybe evolves a little as I become conscious of it. In the case of Finale, I already had two "F" titles and a third seemed inevitable. The general theme of the first two was clear, so I knew I would elaborate upon the same theme. So, in that case, the decision was much more conscious than usual. At the same time, there was still an organic quality to its development, as it was originally intended to be much more of a straightforward crime novel and then took me on its own ride. I would say that with a very few exceptions, my fiction, short or long, takes me somewhere I hadn't realized I was going. In that way, I'm almost like a reader myself. Sometimes the difference all but evaporates.

All of John Thomas' girlfriends are unique individuals, did you draw traits from people you've known?

Every character shares a trait with someone I know, but these are also composite characters. I couldn't point to anyone and say, "That's X," or "That's Y." Because some of the portraits are less than flattering, I avoided anything too direct. On the other hand, let's just say that I did exact a bit of writers' revenge along the way.

What would like readers to take away from this book?

Finale, and the two other novels, are meant to leave readers with a sense of identity's tenuousness. One book may end more positively than the other, but the impression I wish to leave is that identity hovers within us, never quite solid and sometimes impermanent. In other words, never be too sure you're who you've told yourself you are.