Julia Madeleine's Blog

The Girl In The Refrigerator...

Oh my blog, I've completely neglected you! I'm so happy to see you're still alive. Barely. Between a year wasting away in San Diego-ville...err, something like that, and opening Atomic Cherry Tattoo, I have simply ignored you. It's true. I admit it.

So here is something to feed your famished, aching soul... it's the first (real short) chapter of one of my very favourite unpublished manuscripts currently circling the marketplace looking for a home... It's dark stuff. Purged from a 4am nightmare...

A Tattoo And A Review Featuring, Shotgun Honey Reloaded

The fine folks at Shotgun Honey have done it again. They  just put out another awesome collection of crime stories with Shotgun Honey Reloaded Both Barrels Vol 2. It's a collection of twenty-five kick ass short stories from some amazing crime writers, and that's no bull. I'll tell you what is bull though, the tattoo being done while Shotgun Honey was used as a means of distraction from the pain. Pain? Yes, pain because tattoos hurt goddammit, as they should. 
Shane Driver, a wri...

Keith Zafren On The Secrets Of Being A Great Dad...

As a crime fiction lover, you might expect that's all I think about or talk about when it comes to books. While I do write mostly murder and mayhem (except for my poetry), my reading palate is quite diverse. When my beautiful daughter Samantha, now an amazing tattoo artist at twenty, was a little tyke I read a few parenting books because kids don't come with instructions. Generally the way we learn to parent our own kids evolves from the way we were raised ourselves, which can be seriously fl...

What’s In That Kool-Aid You’re Drinking? A Little Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima?

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So I Broke Up With My TV . . .

It was time. We'd been off and on again for months. Things weren't getting any better. It was the same old crap every morning and every night. I was getting tired of it. It was all such a big time suck anyway. Time that I needed to spend writing. So I did it. I broke up with my TV, kicked it to the curb, parked its ass on the pavement. Adios amigo, so long, it's been a slice, but we're through. 
When I came back from San Diego in June and moved into my condo I decided a television was not...

A Tattoo And A Review, Featuring: Shotgun Honey's Both Barrels

My daughter Sam (affectionately referred to as the kid), came down to California for a visit last week and booked herself an appointment to get her head tattooed. Yeap, that's right, that's what I said...her head. Tattooed.

Gemma, tattoo artist extraordinaire from Full Circle Tattoos in San Diego, created the killer design for her cranial modification and spent the next hour and half inking it on the side of her skull.

While chilling in the chair, Sam enjoyed distracting herself with some kick...

The Rapist by Les Edgerton

The Rapist is a disturbing look into the twisted mind of a narcissistic psychopath on death row. A vulgar odyssey reminiscent of Nabokov’s Lolita, although far more depraved, Les Edgerton has crafted a dark and brilliant story that leaves you as equally unsettled as it does in complete awe.

Not only does Les write some killer crime novels like, The Bitch, which was named the Best Thriller of 2011 by Preditors & Editors, and was nominated for Best Thriller of 2011 by Spinetingler...

All The Wild Children by Josh Stallings - Review

There's something about writing one's memoir in all its good, bad, and ugly truth that must make you feel somewhat like standing naked in the middle of Times Square. And while I myself may or may not have ever been naked in Times Square, I'm not telling because unlike Josh Stallings, I don't have the guts that would permit me to open up my diary to the world...if I had a diary.

But I must applaud him and everyone else who shares their soul with the world this way. Mine is always thinly disguis...

A Tattoo And A Review Featuring Noir Nation 2

Sam, our apprentice at Malefic Tattoos (also my daughter) recently got her Chris Cornell portrait worked on by Fabien. While getting tattooed, Sam enjoyed some stories from Noir Nation: International Journal of Crime Fiction 2 on the iPad, which incidentally is Noir Nation's tattoo issue. It contains not only some great crime fiction but an interesting essay by Tom Vater on the history of tattooing in Thailand, as well as some photos of tattoos.

One of Sam's favourite stories was Thomas Pluck...

A Tattoo And A Review Featuring, Author Heath Lowrance

Another session on my dragon half sleeve today at Malefic Tattoos, with my daughter Sam, our apprentice, and Fabien both working on it together.

I chilled with Heath Lowrance's new novel on my iPad, City Of Heritics, just released this month by Snubnose Press.

I've been waiting on this book from Heath for a while now, and as I suspected it's been worth the wait. I'm only a few chapters in, but it's damn good, hard to put down, and kept me up late the night before.

The story is about an aging g...