Got How?

October 2014

Thanks for signing up for all the latest news from the world of author, artist and dude Axel Howerton.

October is shaping up as a busy month, per usual. Not only is the annual Coffin Hop online author/arts event picking up steam, but I am appearing at Alberta Author Day at Pandora’s Boox & Tea in Olds, AB, as well as organizing the very first Noir at the Bar event for Calgary.

Noir at the Bar was started by Pete Rozovsky in Philadelphia back in June of 2008 with special guest Duane Swierczynski. Erstwhile crime fans and most excellent authors Scott Phillips (The Ice Harvest) and Jedidiah Ayres (Peckerwood) soon launched their own event in St. Louis, which subsequently took the Crime Fiction world by storm. They launched not one, but two anthologies of mad noir fiction, and brought the idea into the open, with events popping up across the US and all the way to London and Paris. Recently I heard that similar happenings were taking place in Ottawa and Toronto and decided, “Hey. F*** those guys. Anything T.O. can do, we can do equally well or marginally better”. So I floated the idea out to a few friendly writer-types here in YYC. With the help of the inimitable Jayne Barnard, former VP Prairies for the Crime Writers of Canada, we nailed down a venue and are now off to the races.

So if you live in and around Calgary, try to swing by Dickens Pub (1000 – 9 Ave SW) on October 14, round about 7:30PM. Booze, bullets and broads! Dark and delirious fiction, door prizes and a hell of a lot of fun.

As far as new titles go, I am currently working on three short stories and two novellas, mostly crime-ish. I’m also working on the Coffin Hop Press “Weird West” Anthology scheduled for February, which may feature such brilliant sonsabitches as Scott Phillips (the other Scott Phillips – Pete, Drinker of Blood), C. Courtney Joyner (Shotgun), Escoe Allen, C.W. LaSart, Grady Cole, and a magnificent tale of Prairie Psychosis from Rick Overwater (creator of the excellent comic Futility), among others.

I am vaguely hopeful that I may have a new Manlove & Kickerdick trick out for Coffin Hop, but only time will tell.

Til’ then, stay cool and write hot.

-Axel