Les Edgerton's Blog, page 9
August 23, 2018
COL'S CRIMINAL LIBRARY: LES EDGERTON - THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KID...
COL'S CRIMINAL LIBRARY: LES EDGERTON - THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KID...: Synopsis/blurb...... A mix of Cajun gumbo, a couple tablespoons of kinky sex and a dash of unusual New Orleans settings and you wind up...
August 2, 2018
PREORDERING AVAILABLE FOR ADRENALINE JUNKIE
Hi folks,
Just learned that my memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE, is available for preordering (paperback edition) on Amazon.
CLICK HERESome early blurbs:
Having survived an American Gothic horror story of a childhood, unrepentant former thief, dope dealer, hedonist, Navy hellraiser, and porn actor Les Edgerton—now a writer and teacher—tells a tale of many tales: If Scheherazade were an old pirate who got away with the gold, this would be his opus.
Earl Javorsky, Author, Down to No Good and others.
"Where to start with Les Edgerton's memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE ...? I once said, if there's a book in everyone, then there's a library in Les - now I may need to revise that estimation, upwards. No one can accuse Les of being a 'crime tourist'. He's lived the life, done the bird, and now he's written the book. ADRENALINE JUNKIE should be on any prospective (or established) crime writer's list. An entertaining, darkly-rendered tale of one man's adventures in the very belly of the beast."-Tony Black, author of HER COLD EYES
"In a way, Edgerton already wrote ADRENALIN JUNKIE in his crime novels. With the veneer of fiction removed, his always entertaining, often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and unapologetic stories hit even harder. Without any doubt, Edgerton is one of the great storytellers of fiction - and now non-fiction."
Benjamin Sobieck, author of the Writer's Digest Guide to Firearms and Knives and the Maynard Soloman crime humor series
Les Edgerton's Adrenaline Junkie is the compelling, beautifully written story of an extraordinary man who has lived on both sides of the tracks, seen through the bullshit and the hypocrisies, and come out saner and stronger for it. From the opening jail house scene to the end, this is a ride of heartache and passion, of tempest and brilliance, like a cross between Genet and Steinbeck, like a chorus celebrating the underdog, the downtrodden, the criminal, and the inspired, a chorus that only keeps getting louder and rising in melody, as Edgerton achieves a sort of sainthood among sinners, an apotheosis of rebellion and force, much like Harcamone at Fontrevault, or a hero in a Johnny Cash song, a huge, Promethean work of major significance and scale.
Richard Godwin.
Author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City,
Meaningful Conversations, and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
'How often is a memoir genuinely astounding? A reformed outlaw takes us through his harsh rural childhood, working harder before he was twelve than most of us ever will. There follows armed robbery, pimping, drug dealing, rape in prison, narrowly avoiding a hellcat's castration attempt, suicide foiled by the rope breaking, a walk on part for Charles Manson and his creepy serial killer mate - who got short shrift from our host. And so much more... So many startling sentences:' She was going to be his last fuck before the operation and I was going to be his first after he became a woman.' 'It was then Charles Manson started to contact me...' There's a satisfying twist late on after he becomes a family man so this fascinating book has just the right ending.'
'Essential reading. Makes Bukowski seem like Donny Osmond.'
Mark Ramsden, Author, The Dark Magus and the Sacred Whore, The Dungeon Master's Apprentice, Dread - The Art of Serial Killing, Radical Desire: Kink and Magical Sex, War School
Les is a real, honest-to-God writer in a world full of wannabes. So it goes without saying, his memoir Adrenaline Junkie is better than most novels you’ll read in your life - largely because his real life is more interesting than most novels. Buy it. Read it. If you don’t like it that’s your fault, you stick in the mud.
Damien Seaman, Author, The Killing of Emma Gross
Adrenaline Junkie is like no memoir I have read. Filled with stories of knifings, armed robberies, brutal prison fights, and Charles Manson (yes, that Charles Manson!), Edgerton proves that life can be stranger (and certainly more violent) than fiction. But Edgerton isn’t just a guy with a tough story to tell. He’s a poet who startles you with sentences both stark and darkly beautiful. An astonishing accomplishment.Jon Bassoff, Author, Corrosion and others
“I’ve known Les Edgerton for going on 25 years. I immediately took to him in writing school, not because he was funny as shit and talented, but because he was the real thing. But it wasn’t until reading his memoir that I realized the extent to which he lived the things he wrote about. Adrenaline Junkie is at once heartbreaking, as it is funny, and just plain sick. I worked up a sweat reading it. It’s sort of like a witnessing a plane crash. You don’t really want to look at the carnage, but you can’t help but stare. A masterful work that will be lauded by both writers and the general reading public alike.”Vincent Zandri, New York Times and USA Today bestselling Thriller Award winner of Moonlight Weeps and The Remains.
Adrenaline Junkie by Les Edgerton will be required reading for crime writers one day, a bible for future authors to study rebellion and the human spirit, that smart-ass spark inside us all that doesn’t like taking orders from parents, teachers, and even the law. Author of The Rapist and The Bitch, two of the most profound noir novels published this decade, an ex-criminal and former prison inmate, Edgerton knows what makes all of us tick, and how, with not much of a shove, any one of us could end up behind bars. One of the most fascinating autobiographies you will ever read: From professional thief and pimp to award-winning author and teacher. --Jack Getze, Author of the Award-Winning Austin Carr Mysteries
Just learned that my memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE, is available for preordering (paperback edition) on Amazon.
CLICK HERESome early blurbs:Having survived an American Gothic horror story of a childhood, unrepentant former thief, dope dealer, hedonist, Navy hellraiser, and porn actor Les Edgerton—now a writer and teacher—tells a tale of many tales: If Scheherazade were an old pirate who got away with the gold, this would be his opus.
Earl Javorsky, Author, Down to No Good and others.
"Where to start with Les Edgerton's memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE ...? I once said, if there's a book in everyone, then there's a library in Les - now I may need to revise that estimation, upwards. No one can accuse Les of being a 'crime tourist'. He's lived the life, done the bird, and now he's written the book. ADRENALINE JUNKIE should be on any prospective (or established) crime writer's list. An entertaining, darkly-rendered tale of one man's adventures in the very belly of the beast."-Tony Black, author of HER COLD EYES
"In a way, Edgerton already wrote ADRENALIN JUNKIE in his crime novels. With the veneer of fiction removed, his always entertaining, often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and unapologetic stories hit even harder. Without any doubt, Edgerton is one of the great storytellers of fiction - and now non-fiction."
Benjamin Sobieck, author of the Writer's Digest Guide to Firearms and Knives and the Maynard Soloman crime humor series
Les Edgerton's Adrenaline Junkie is the compelling, beautifully written story of an extraordinary man who has lived on both sides of the tracks, seen through the bullshit and the hypocrisies, and come out saner and stronger for it. From the opening jail house scene to the end, this is a ride of heartache and passion, of tempest and brilliance, like a cross between Genet and Steinbeck, like a chorus celebrating the underdog, the downtrodden, the criminal, and the inspired, a chorus that only keeps getting louder and rising in melody, as Edgerton achieves a sort of sainthood among sinners, an apotheosis of rebellion and force, much like Harcamone at Fontrevault, or a hero in a Johnny Cash song, a huge, Promethean work of major significance and scale.
Richard Godwin.
Author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City,
Meaningful Conversations, and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
'How often is a memoir genuinely astounding? A reformed outlaw takes us through his harsh rural childhood, working harder before he was twelve than most of us ever will. There follows armed robbery, pimping, drug dealing, rape in prison, narrowly avoiding a hellcat's castration attempt, suicide foiled by the rope breaking, a walk on part for Charles Manson and his creepy serial killer mate - who got short shrift from our host. And so much more... So many startling sentences:' She was going to be his last fuck before the operation and I was going to be his first after he became a woman.' 'It was then Charles Manson started to contact me...' There's a satisfying twist late on after he becomes a family man so this fascinating book has just the right ending.'
'Essential reading. Makes Bukowski seem like Donny Osmond.'
Mark Ramsden, Author, The Dark Magus and the Sacred Whore, The Dungeon Master's Apprentice, Dread - The Art of Serial Killing, Radical Desire: Kink and Magical Sex, War School
Les is a real, honest-to-God writer in a world full of wannabes. So it goes without saying, his memoir Adrenaline Junkie is better than most novels you’ll read in your life - largely because his real life is more interesting than most novels. Buy it. Read it. If you don’t like it that’s your fault, you stick in the mud.
Damien Seaman, Author, The Killing of Emma Gross
Adrenaline Junkie is like no memoir I have read. Filled with stories of knifings, armed robberies, brutal prison fights, and Charles Manson (yes, that Charles Manson!), Edgerton proves that life can be stranger (and certainly more violent) than fiction. But Edgerton isn’t just a guy with a tough story to tell. He’s a poet who startles you with sentences both stark and darkly beautiful. An astonishing accomplishment.Jon Bassoff, Author, Corrosion and others
“I’ve known Les Edgerton for going on 25 years. I immediately took to him in writing school, not because he was funny as shit and talented, but because he was the real thing. But it wasn’t until reading his memoir that I realized the extent to which he lived the things he wrote about. Adrenaline Junkie is at once heartbreaking, as it is funny, and just plain sick. I worked up a sweat reading it. It’s sort of like a witnessing a plane crash. You don’t really want to look at the carnage, but you can’t help but stare. A masterful work that will be lauded by both writers and the general reading public alike.”Vincent Zandri, New York Times and USA Today bestselling Thriller Award winner of Moonlight Weeps and The Remains.
Adrenaline Junkie by Les Edgerton will be required reading for crime writers one day, a bible for future authors to study rebellion and the human spirit, that smart-ass spark inside us all that doesn’t like taking orders from parents, teachers, and even the law. Author of The Rapist and The Bitch, two of the most profound noir novels published this decade, an ex-criminal and former prison inmate, Edgerton knows what makes all of us tick, and how, with not much of a shove, any one of us could end up behind bars. One of the most fascinating autobiographies you will ever read: From professional thief and pimp to award-winning author and teacher. --Jack Getze, Author of the Award-Winning Austin Carr Mysteries
July 27, 2018
CHEF GORDON RAMSEY'S WRITING CLASSES
(This is a rerun, but thought it might be helpful to anyone who hadn't read it originally.)
Hi folks,
What? You didn’t realize Chef Gordon Ramsey taught writing? The fact is, he’s one of the best writing teachers in the world.
He disguises it by claiming to reach cooking, but if you understand the code he’s using in his presentations on his show, KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, it’s all about writing.
Actually, it’s about any art form. The rules are pretty much the same, whether it’s in cooking, painting, writing, sculpting or music or anything else in the art world.
Let’s take a look at his shows and see how that works, okay?
First, what’s almost always the chief reason the restaurant he’s called in to help out is failing? While there are a variety of problems, without fail the primary one is that the food the restaurant is serving sucks. Let’s look at that one first and see how it relates to writing.
When he walks into a failing restaurant, the very first thing he does is order a meal. The food he wants to look at and taste is the same as the writing teacher looking at the student’s manuscript. To paraphrase a famous Presidential slogan: “It’s the food, stupid.” Or, in our case as writers: “It’s the writing, stupid.”
The quality of the food is the single biggest obstacle to success for any restaurant. The quality of the writing is the single biggest obstacle to success for any author.
See where we’re going? See how the comparison starts to make sense?
He begins with the food because the truth is, if the food’s good, just about everything else can be wrong and the restaurant still has a chance of succeeding. Conversely, if everything else is perfect—the service, the décor, the location, et al—but the food sucks—all the restaurant owner is going to have is a place that has a great waitstaff, an amazing décor, a prime location… and stands largely empty with those talented waiters and waitresses standing around picking their noses….
It’s the same with writing. The manuscript can be perfectly presented with proper formatting and delivered to the right gatekeepers—agents/publishers—but if the writing sucks, it won’t matter. Two bites into the mss “meal” and if it doesn’t taste good, it’s headed for the circular file, just like the food Ramsey sends back on that initial tasting is headed for the same circular file. What us literary types refer to as being “shitcanned.”
What are the responses of the restaurant owners and chefs when Ramsey tells them their food sucks? It’s predictable. Most are in denial. Most are in way-huge denial. Almost to a person, they feel their food is amazing. They’re convinced that the reasons they’re not rich yet is something else other than the food. The usual response before he delivers his judgment on their menu is that he’ll come in, deliver a few “secrets” that will get them on their way to becoming a four-star establishment. Does this remind you of anything? A new writer in your class or writer’s group, perhaps? Who, before the critique begins is clearly there to glean a few “inside” writing or publishing tips so they can be on their way to the bestseller lists or at least to be signed by an agent or sell their novel?
Look at the responses he gets when he tells them he wouldn’t serve their food to a dog. Many (most?) get angry. It never dawned on them that they couldn’t cook well. In their minds, it was always something else that prevented them from achieving a sold-out restaurant every night. How dare Gordon criticize their work! See any correlation to a writer receiving criticism from a teacher or agent or editor or the writer’s group?
The writer who is also righteously irate, thinks about all those people who told him his writing was “better than Joyce Carol Oates.” Folks like his family, his friends, the friendly faces in his writing group, his English teacher, his workmates. How could they all be wrong and this pretender (teacher/agent/editor) have such a different opinion? Maybe it’s because… this teacher isn’t connected to them emotionally and only judges the product? And has higher standards? A better knowledge of what good writing consists of? And a version of Hemingway’s “built-in bullshit detector?” Maybe…
There’s a supercilious teaching “method” some schools and venues want their writing teachers to adhere to, called by some the “sandwich” method. Start with a piece of praise bread, slip in a bit of criticism, and then finish it off with another piece of praise bread. Does this strike anyone else as perhaps a great example of mollycoddling? Of treating writers less than adults? Schools do this for two reasons. One, they want return customers (students). People who are told bluntly that their work is bad often don’t return. Especially when there are plenty of places who will tell them they’re great. Two, they’ve bought into this New Agey crap where teachers aren’t supposed to let their little charges know that among them are winners and losers. (Kind of like real life…) It’s the mindset that awards “participation trophies” and bullshit like that. Like the school recently in the news that cancelled their annual Honor Days because the ones who didn’t achieve that level would “feel bad.” Well… so frickin’ what… When do you suppose that kids are going to learn that some people are smarter than others, some have gifts others don’t share, some just work harder, and there are even some folks who are smarter, more gifted and also work harder? That just seems more of an USSR attitude than an American one, but I may feel that way just because I’m not up on my Karl Marx reading… And don’t plan to be…
That “sandwich” method of teaching. Two pieces of praise, one piece of criticism. That kind of implies that everybody has two great things they’re doing in writing and only one bad. My experience is that often it’s the reverse ratio and I’ve had more than one beginning writer in class who did nine bad things and only one good one. The “good one” was showing up on time and that was about it. If that’s the case, then I guess the teacher should make up things to praise them about. Wouldn’t that devalue honest praise? I mean, if a person is terrible at writing dialog and you’re out of praiseworthy pieces of bread, should I tell him the only one writing better dialog these days is Elmore Leonard?
Can you imagine Gordon walking into a restaurant and telling them, “Well, the third waitress on the left is doing a great job. The food is atrocious. The bartender served me a perfect Gibson.” Don’t think so. My guess is that Gordon wasn’t lucky enough to have gone to a contemporary American public school… Poor guy. He probably went to a school that was still in the real world. That’s kind of tragic… Wonder how he worked through all those negative things he must have had said to him…
There’s a reason writers don’t have a writer’s union. Well, not one that many people belong to, anyway. It’s because most of us know you succeed by merit and hard work. An organization that’s predicated on the concept of “more money for less work and fewer hours at the expense of others” just isn’t suited for our temperaments as a rule.
Okay. I’m off my soapbox now…
Another correlation Ramsey has with good writing instruction is that he doesn’t differentiate between kinds or even levels of restaurants. He puts as much work into correcting a neighborhood bar and grill in a Midwestern town as he does a pricey French restaurant in NYC. He doesn’t try to make the neighborhood restaurant into the French restaurant or vice versa. No such thing as “literary” restaurants and “genre” restaurants. The only commonality in his mind is that they be the best they can be within their parameters. He knows what constitutes great pub food just as he knows what great Japanese or Italian cuisines requires. Whether it’s a hamburger he’s creating or a soufflé, it’s all about the quality of the individual dish. He thinks like Nabokov who said he didn’t acknowledge any genres other than “good writing and bad writing.”
He also insists the menu be contemporary. That dated dishes, even when prepared well, aren’t going to draw diners. The same thing exists in literature. The writer who insists on creating stories considered archaic or out of fashion, even if written well (within the standards of that day) aren’t going to draw many readers. A writer who absolutely loves the “Dear Reader” style of Victorian literature may write a similar book, but it just isn’t going to sell, any more than an epistolary novel ala Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela” is going to be crowding anyone off the shelves at B&N. Time and again, Gordon encounters these dinosaurs who are trapped in the past and spends days trying to dissuade them of the value of their effort.
Watch his shows and see how often he tells his charges to keep it simple, use fresh ingredients and don’t overcomplicate the recipes. Sounds kind of like Hemingway and Carver, doesn’t it? Or any number of brilliant writers. The first precept I give writers is that one of the biggest keys to becoming a good writer is to pay attention to two things: Make it clear and make it interesting. Kind of what Gordon says about good cooking…
There are no synonyms for the following words in either cooking or in writing:
1. Bad2. Stupid3.Crap4. Dull
They state plainly what they mean. There are words that mean the opposite and if a writer works hard enough and pays attention, they can change those descriptions of their writing to:
1. Good2. Intelligent3. Entertaining4. Brilliant
… but to change those words to the positive ones takes hard work, not unearned, empty words of praise. Just about every writer starts out with the former words as being accurately descriptive of their writing. That’s no sin. What’s a sin is believing when people tell you it’s the latter that describe the work when it doesn’t. When your writing is consistently praised, I’d turn on the b.s. detector and trust it’s in working order.
Watch Gordon Ramsey when he turns around a failing restaurant and imagine he’s instructing you as a writer. The lessons he imparts are exactly the same.
Hope this helps your own writing! BTW, we have a new session of our online writing class beginning on Aug. 5 that has a couple of openings. Our class uses the same principles as Mr. Ramsey does in his... If interested, give me a yell at butchedgerton@comcast.net and I'll be happy to answer any and all questions.
Blue skies,Les
Me and several of our classmates in Scottsdale, AZJuly 23, 2018
COVER REVEALED FOR ADRENALINE JUNKIE
Hi folks,
Eric Campbell my publisher at Down & Out Books, just sent me this photo of the ARC copies of my memoir, Adrenaline Junkie. These get mailed out to reviewers and places like the NY Times, Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly and a bunch of others. It will be released for sale in November.
Hope you like it!
Here are some early blurbs with more to come:
‘Les Edgerton’s expertly told memoir is in turns tragic, thrilling, funny and heart-breaking. Adrenalin Junkie is a powerful blend of coming-of-age story, family drama and low-life crime thriller.’ – Paul D. Brazill, author of Last Year’s Man, A Case Of Noir, and Kill Me Quick!
Having survived an American Gothic horror story of a childhood, unrepentant former thief, dope dealer, hedonist, Navy hellraiser, and porn actor Les Edgerton—now a writer and teacher—tells a tale of many tales: If Scheherazade were an old pirate who got away with the gold, this would be his opus.
Earl Javorsky, Author, Down to No Good and others.
"Where to start with Les Edgerton's memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE ...? I once said, if there's a book in everyone, then there's a library in Les - now I may need to revise that estimation, upwards. No one can accuse Les of being a 'crime tourist'. He's lived the life, done the bird, and now he's written the book. ADRENALINE JUNKIE should be on any prospective (or established) crime writer's list. An entertaining, darkly-rendered tale of one man's adventures in the very belly of the beast."-Tony Black, author of HER COLD EYES
"In a way, Edgerton already wrote ADRENALIN JUNKIE in his crime novels. With the veneer of fiction removed, his always entertaining, often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and unapologetic stories hit even harder. Without any doubt, Edgerton is one of the great storytellers of fiction - and now non-fiction."
Benjamin Sobieck, author of the Writer's Digest Guide to Firearms and Knives and the Maynard Soloman crime humor series
Les Edgerton's Adrenaline Junkie is the compelling, beautifully written story of an extraordinary man who has lived on both sides of the tracks, seen through the bullshit and the hypocrisies, and come out saner and stronger for it. From the opening jail house scene to the end, this is a ride of heartache and passion, of tempest and brilliance, like a cross between Genet and Steinbeck, like a chorus celebrating the underdog, the downtrodden, the criminal, and the inspired, a chorus that only keeps getting louder and rising in melody, as Edgerton achieves a sort of sainthood among sinners, an apotheosis of rebellion and force, much like Harcamone at Fontrevault, or a hero in a Johnny Cash song, a huge, Promethean work of major significance and scale.
Richard Godwin.
Author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City,
Meaningful Conversations, and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
'How often is a memoir genuinely astounding? A reformed outlaw takes us through his harsh rural childhood, working harder before he was twelve than most of us ever will. There follows armed robbery, pimping, drug dealing, rape in prison, narrowly avoiding a hellcat's castration attempt, suicide foiled by the rope breaking, a walk on part for Charles Manson and his creepy serial killer mate - who got short shrift from our host. And so much more... So many startling sentences:' She was going to be his last fuck before the operation and I was going to be his first after he became a woman.' 'It was then Charles Manson started to contact me...' There's a satisfying twist late on after he becomes a family man so this fascinating book has just the right ending.'
'Essential reading. Makes Bukowski seem like Donny Osmond.'
Mark Ramsden, Author, The Dark Magus and the Sacred Whore, The Dungeon Master's Apprentice, Dread - The Art of Serial Killing, Radical Desire: Kink and Magical Sex, War School
Les is a real, honest-to-God writer in a world full of wannabes. So it goes without saying, his memoir Adrenaline Junkie is better than most novels you’ll read in your life - largely because his real life is more interesting than most novels. Buy it. Read it. If you don’t like it that’s your fault, you stick in the mud.
Damien Seaman, Author and Interviewer
Adrenaline Junkie is like no memoir I have read. Filled with stories of knifings, armed robberies, brutal prison fights, and Charles Manson (yes, that Charles Manson!), Edgerton proves that life can be stranger (and certainly more violent) than fiction. But Edgerton isn’t just a guy with a tough story to tell. He’s a poet who startles you with sentences both stark and darkly beautiful. An astonishing accomplishment.Jon Bassoff, Author, Corrosion and others
Blue skies,
Les
Eric Campbell my publisher at Down & Out Books, just sent me this photo of the ARC copies of my memoir, Adrenaline Junkie. These get mailed out to reviewers and places like the NY Times, Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly and a bunch of others. It will be released for sale in November.
Hope you like it!
Here are some early blurbs with more to come:
‘Les Edgerton’s expertly told memoir is in turns tragic, thrilling, funny and heart-breaking. Adrenalin Junkie is a powerful blend of coming-of-age story, family drama and low-life crime thriller.’ – Paul D. Brazill, author of Last Year’s Man, A Case Of Noir, and Kill Me Quick!
Having survived an American Gothic horror story of a childhood, unrepentant former thief, dope dealer, hedonist, Navy hellraiser, and porn actor Les Edgerton—now a writer and teacher—tells a tale of many tales: If Scheherazade were an old pirate who got away with the gold, this would be his opus.
Earl Javorsky, Author, Down to No Good and others.
"Where to start with Les Edgerton's memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE ...? I once said, if there's a book in everyone, then there's a library in Les - now I may need to revise that estimation, upwards. No one can accuse Les of being a 'crime tourist'. He's lived the life, done the bird, and now he's written the book. ADRENALINE JUNKIE should be on any prospective (or established) crime writer's list. An entertaining, darkly-rendered tale of one man's adventures in the very belly of the beast."-Tony Black, author of HER COLD EYES
"In a way, Edgerton already wrote ADRENALIN JUNKIE in his crime novels. With the veneer of fiction removed, his always entertaining, often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and unapologetic stories hit even harder. Without any doubt, Edgerton is one of the great storytellers of fiction - and now non-fiction."
Benjamin Sobieck, author of the Writer's Digest Guide to Firearms and Knives and the Maynard Soloman crime humor series
Les Edgerton's Adrenaline Junkie is the compelling, beautifully written story of an extraordinary man who has lived on both sides of the tracks, seen through the bullshit and the hypocrisies, and come out saner and stronger for it. From the opening jail house scene to the end, this is a ride of heartache and passion, of tempest and brilliance, like a cross between Genet and Steinbeck, like a chorus celebrating the underdog, the downtrodden, the criminal, and the inspired, a chorus that only keeps getting louder and rising in melody, as Edgerton achieves a sort of sainthood among sinners, an apotheosis of rebellion and force, much like Harcamone at Fontrevault, or a hero in a Johnny Cash song, a huge, Promethean work of major significance and scale.
Richard Godwin.
Author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City,
Meaningful Conversations, and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
'How often is a memoir genuinely astounding? A reformed outlaw takes us through his harsh rural childhood, working harder before he was twelve than most of us ever will. There follows armed robbery, pimping, drug dealing, rape in prison, narrowly avoiding a hellcat's castration attempt, suicide foiled by the rope breaking, a walk on part for Charles Manson and his creepy serial killer mate - who got short shrift from our host. And so much more... So many startling sentences:' She was going to be his last fuck before the operation and I was going to be his first after he became a woman.' 'It was then Charles Manson started to contact me...' There's a satisfying twist late on after he becomes a family man so this fascinating book has just the right ending.'
'Essential reading. Makes Bukowski seem like Donny Osmond.'
Mark Ramsden, Author, The Dark Magus and the Sacred Whore, The Dungeon Master's Apprentice, Dread - The Art of Serial Killing, Radical Desire: Kink and Magical Sex, War School
Les is a real, honest-to-God writer in a world full of wannabes. So it goes without saying, his memoir Adrenaline Junkie is better than most novels you’ll read in your life - largely because his real life is more interesting than most novels. Buy it. Read it. If you don’t like it that’s your fault, you stick in the mud.
Damien Seaman, Author and Interviewer
Adrenaline Junkie is like no memoir I have read. Filled with stories of knifings, armed robberies, brutal prison fights, and Charles Manson (yes, that Charles Manson!), Edgerton proves that life can be stranger (and certainly more violent) than fiction. But Edgerton isn’t just a guy with a tough story to tell. He’s a poet who startles you with sentences both stark and darkly beautiful. An astonishing accomplishment.Jon Bassoff, Author, Corrosion and others
Blue skies,
Les
July 18, 2018
NEW CLASS SESSION TO BEGIN - TAKING NEW STUDENTS
Hi folks,
Well, we’re just finishing up our final week on the current session of my online novel-writing class, “Les Edgerton’s Bootcamp for Writers,” and find ourselves a couple of openings. Our next session will begin on Aug 5 and consists of a ten-week session, with the probability of taking a week off sometime during the term to recharge batteries.
This is a call for new class members. Not sure how many openings we’ll have as we offer vacancies first to our auditors.
The basics are the course costs $400 and it’s limited to ten people. The $400 is nonrefundable, as if a person quits during the session it would be impossible to fill that vacancy. As this is my primary source of income, it would be detrimental for myself and my family. It’s very rare that anyone opts out once begun, however. In over five years, there have only been three.
We’ve had a remarkable history of success. Nearly three dozen writers over the past ten years who has become a part of our class or whom I’ve coached privately has gone on to being legitimately published and/or secured a good literary agent. In fact, that is our only goal—to become legitimately published.
I try to warn people who are thinking of joining us, how tough the class is, but I know from past experience that even so forewarned, at least some are going to be in for a shock when they see that we really don’t hold hands, pat people on the back for minimum efforts, or overlook writing that doesn’t work. I’m not cruel (at least I don’t think so) nor are any of the oldtimers in class, but most new folks haven’t been exposed to a class like ours. The truth is, most writers who haven’t had a class like ours have been praised in other classes or most likely, have been in classes that use the “sandwich” method of teaching. You know—that deal where the teach applies a bit of praise, then a bit of criticism, and then a bit of praise. Well, that ain’t our shtick. Not even close. The comments we all provide on everyone’s work fit one definition only.
They’re honest.
This isn’t to be mean or to act like we’re the only folks around who know what good writing is. Except… we do. I’m not aware of any other class out there with the kind of track record ours enjoys. Virtually every writer who stays the course with us ends up with a top agent and/or a book deal. That doesn’t happen in a single ten-week session. About the earliest anyone has earned an agent or book deal in our class has been about a year. And, that’s reasonable.The thing is, our writers don’t expect things to be easy.
I figured I’d let some of the class members give you their take on our class. They don’t hold back and they all have tough skins. They will all tell you the same thing. It isn’t a class for sissies or for those who need their hands held or lots of pats on the back. Becoming published is hard, hard work and isn’t an undertaking for sissies. To get there, our students know they have to put on their Big Boy and Big Girl pants and expect to work harder than they ever have in their lives—and to never, ever “settle” their standards of excellence.
From a student several years ago:Hi ________. Since Les opened the floor for comments from the "class veterans" I'm chipping in with my two cents. I have a file cabinet filled with stuff I sent Les and then needed asbestos gloves to take the paper off the printer. When I started this journey, I'd never taken an English class past high school. (I was pre-med in college) I figured I love to read, so how hard can it be? Okay, quit laughing at me. Clearly, when I wrote my first version of my first novel, I had no idea about story structure, POV, any of that. I figured I'm pretty articulate and therefore I can write?Les quickly set me straight. All of this is to point out that we've all been on the receiving end of Les' brutal honesty. I will find some of the comments he made on my work and post them but phrases like "throwing up in my mouth now" and "bury this so deep in the yard no one ever finds it" are seared into my brain and I don't have to look to find those!!! The point is, I took other classes before I met Les and the teachers were kind and gentle and never told me I sucked. If it weren't for Les, I'd still be churning out awful drivel that makes people want to throw up instead of trying not to throw up while I wait to see if my agent is able to sell my book. I would never have gotten an agent without Les. So hang in there. Listen to everything he says and if it doesn't make sense, ask away.
From another student:The novel that I am currently trying to sell has been a work in progress for several years. The first time Les saw it he sent it back and told me to re-write the WHOLE thing!!! My character was a wimp. She sat back and let things happen to her. I argued a little, rewrote a little and then moved on to another book. After a year, I went back and reread it and saw the truth. It was awful. So I took a deep breath and started over. Page one. First sentence. Re-wrote the entire thing. It took a full year and then I revised it again. It's definitely a process. But once you get the inciting incident and the outline steps down pat, it's a whole lot easier. Trust me!!! And you'll never graduate completely. A few months ago, Les and I went head-to-head on one single passage. I was trying to be lazy and take the easy way out. He called me on it and I resubmitted three or four weeks in a row, revisions on the same passage. I was sure my classmates were so sick of it they were going to stick needles in their eyes rather than read it again! But in the end, the passage rocked!! So hang in there!!!! It'll get better. (Note: This novel sold and the writer is currently working on her fifth novel.)
Class members come from all over the globe. We’ve had students from the UK, Ireland, Taiwan, Spain, all parts of the U.S., Canada, Australia, Luxembourg and many other places. We work with writers in virtually every genre on the bookshelves.
The way class works is that the class is divided into two equal groups. We used to have just one group, but it got to be too much for many students. In the past, everybody in the class was required to read everybody else’s work each week and provide in-depth comments on everyone’s work. That meant they had to read nine other class members’ work and deliver intelligent commentary on each one. We’ve since evolved to a more manageable number where now each class member reads and delivers comments on just four other classmates’ work. I provide comments on everybody’s work and that’s why the class is limited to only ten. With ten writers, I can give each person the quality of time and analysis each deserves.
Each week begins on Sunday evening, when people can begin submitting their weekly pages from Sunday until Thursday. If it’s a new writer to the class, they are allowed to submit their first five pages of their novel, plus an outline which consists of five statements and a total of 15-20 words. Oldtimers in class call this “inciting incident hell.” If the outline isn’t working and their beginning doesn’t represent the inciting incident as provided in their outline, they are required to keep submitting each week until it does. Our feeling is if they haven’t thought through their novels sufficiently and provided a publishable novel structure (evidenced by the outline), then they most likely don’t have a novel ready to be written and to simply plunge ahead will almost invariably lead to an unfinished novel. We don’t want that.
Once they’ve been okayed for the beginning, from thereafter they can submit up to eight pages per week, along with the others in class.
Time zones don’t matter. Everybody’s work, including everyone’s comments and my own comments on each person’s work each week is posted on the class site and folks can go to it any time of the day or night. Class members can begin sending back their comments on each others’ in their group from Sunday through the following Sunday, when it begins again. Although, in practicality, most members send in their work each week on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It’s like being in an “on-ground” class in that everything said or done in class is seen by everybody.
We do have a chat function and people use it all the time, even though they’re in different time zones. One of the best things about this class is that we have lots of oldtimers who know from their own experience what works in a novel and what doesn’t and more importantly… whyit works or doesn’t work. It’s like having a group of seven or eight other professionals helping you with your own novel. Probably at any given time in class, there will be four or five who already have had a novel or several published as a result of being in class, so it’s a really rarified group. And, if you think that you couldn’t operate in a situation like this because you’re a beginner, that simply isn’t the case here at all. Nearly every single person in each class began just the way you did, as a rank beginner. And, they remember and they have complete empathy for your situation, if you’re a beginning writer.
It’s not a situation of simply saying, “This doesn’t work.” Myself and others in class will surely say that, but we then let you know why it didn’t work and give you solid suggestions on how to make it work. We collectively have a nurturing nature and all of us want the newcomer to succeed just about as badly as that writer wants to.
If you are still interested but still feel intimidated, I think if you simply look at how the class works, you’ll quickly see how you’ll fit in comfortably. Since we’ve got a couple of weeks left in class, for anyone who would like to see up close and personal how we work as a class, I’d be delighted to give you auditor status for our last week. Besides class members, we also have an auditor function which works the same as it does in a “regular” college class. You’re admitted to class and can view every single thing we’re doing and the entire class session is archived and easy to access. Normally, the cost of auditing the class is $50, but for our last week, for those interested in simply getting a look at how we work, just email me at butchedgerton@comcast.net and let me know and I’ll have our class administrator, Holly, get you on board asap.
I know there are no doubt a lot of questions you may have. Please feel free to contact me at any time and ask me anything you’d like.
From past experience, when we’ve had openings like this, they go quickly, so if you are interested, please get in touch, okay?
For those interested in such things, here are a few of my own qualifications to teach writing.
MFA in Writing from Vermont CollegeTaught writing for the UCLA Writer’s ProgramTaught writing via Skype for the New York Writer’s WorkshopWriter-in-Residence for three years for the University of ToledoWriter-in-Residence for one year for Trine UniversityTaught writing classes for St. Francis UniversityTaught writing classes for Phoenix CollegeTaught writing for Writer’s Digest Online ClassesTaught writing classes for Vermont CollegePublished 20 books, including craft books on writing, novels, sports books, YA novel, historical nonfiction book, humor nonfiction, black comedy novel, noir, thrillers, literary and existential fiction.Dozens of short stories published in such publications as The South Carolina Review, High Plains Literary Review, Aethlon, Flatmancrooked, Murdaland, Best American Mystery Stories and many others.A lot of living… much of it as an outlaw…
Blue skies,Les
Some of our classmates meet up in Denver
June 22, 2018
BRIT MARK RAMSDEN INTERVIEWS ME
Hi folks,
Brit writer and jazz musician, Mark Ramsden, interviews me on his blog about my forthcoming memoir, Adrenaline Junkie. Click here to see it.
Blue skies,
Les
Brit writer and jazz musician, Mark Ramsden, interviews me on his blog about my forthcoming memoir, Adrenaline Junkie. Click here to see it.
Blue skies,
Les
May 13, 2018
GREAT REVIEW FOR MONDAY'S MEAL!
Hi folks,
I just received an email from a European writer I much admire, JJ Toner, and he wanted me to see the review he’d just written for Monday’s Meal for Amazon. Take a look.
Monday’s Meal review:
Click hereExtraordinary!An extraordinary collection of stories by a master storyteller, each one a gem. What I particularly love about this wonderful book is the way each story is presented in a different narrative voice, each voice totally convincing and fully developed. For the most part, the narrators are observers, some closer to the action than others. It’s a marvellous storytelling technique. We have a child, a couple of prisoners, an accomplice to a crazy crime, a desperate starving mother, the client of a dancer, and one airhead young woman, to mention just a few. The stories in this collection reminded me strongly of the work of Flannery O’Connor – the same insights into life’s little tragedies, the same precision of presentation. I like to think that O’Connor’s work could be described as a string quartet. Edgerton’s is a brass band. A New Orleans jazz band, playing at full volume! Grab a copy. 5 Stars.
JJ Toner, Author, The Gingerbread Spy and others
This is easily one of the best reviews I’ve ever gotten. It means a lot when anyone gets what you’re trying to do with your writing and when that person is a fellow writer, it means even more. Fellow writers are just a tough room!Thank you from the bottom of my heart, JJ!
Blue skies, Les
Click Here
May 11, 2018
JUST SOLD ITALIAN LANGUAGE RIGHTS TO THE RAPIST AND THE BITCH THANKS TO MAURO FALCIANI
Hi folks,
I often have beginning writers ask me how to go about getting published. I give them all the usual advice which I won’t repeat here as it’s mostly yesterday’s news, but I just sold several of my novels because of a little-known method.
All you have to do is get a respected bookseller to proclaim your talents to publishers. That’s exactly what just happened to this happy camper.
My Italian amigo, Mauro Falciani, owner of the Mucho Mojo Club in Italy has been a fan of my work for several years. He owns one of the coolest independent bookstores in Europe. At one time, it was located inside a nightclub.
MUCHO MOJO CLUB
For several months, he’s been singing my praises to Italian publisher Odoya Edizioni, who recently purchased the bankrupted publisher that published Harry Crews, Neil Smith, Carl Hiassen, Victor Gischler, Derek Raymond, James Lee Burke and many others, and last week Mauro emailed me to inform me that the publisher wanted him to find 3-4 strong authors to publish each year and that I was the first name he gave him. He said the publisher wanted to speak with my agent as soon as possible.
I contacted my agent, Svetlana Pironko, who knew the publisher and they quickly made a deal for the Italian rights to The Rapist, to be followed shortly with a deal for The Bitch, and they’ll be looking at other work of mine.
Now, Mauro wants me to come to Italy around Christmas to appear at his store and he’s talking to the folks at Odoya to see if they might sponsor such a trip.
So there it is—a little-known way to get books published! Of course, booksellers like Mauro aren’t on every corner but they are out there! And, publishers respect their advice.
Thanks, Mauro! You rock, mate!
Here’s the email Mauro sent after I told him the deal had gone through…
I’m very happy and fierce , my friend!!!You have done so much for the MUCHO MOJO CLUB and so it was natural for meto do the same for you! If you want, it will be great from you to write down a facebook post and tell thewhole thing from the beginning. Writers have to know that this crazy thing called mojoworks. Write all and mention me, my bookshop, the MUCHO MOJO CLUB!!!I talked with the publisher, if you’re good we will make you come to Italy, all paidin time for Christmas when I will have Joe Clifford, published right now in Italian!!!What you think?Mauro
Well, I think I’d be absolutely delighted, Mauro!
Blue skies,Les
April 23, 2018
MONDAY'S MEAL IS OUT!
Hi folks,
My first collection of short stories, Monday's Meal, was released in ebook format today from the good folks at Down and Out Press. It was originally published as a paperback by the University of North Texas Press and was nominated for the Violet Crown Book Award. This is the writing I'm the proudest of. It received rave reviews by such as the NT Times,Texas Monthly, Publisher's Weekly, the School Library Journal, and by such august literary organizations as Studies in Short Fiction. Some of the brightest literary writers gave it their thumbs-up.
Amazon link
Two of the stories were written when I was 12 and 13. At 12 I wrote, "Hard Times" and a year later, I lay on my couch and wrote "Broken Seashells." Most of the other stories were written before I was 21. Currently, at the behest of my agent, Svetlana Pironko, who urged me to expand "Hard Times" into a novel (which I'm doing) and who told me the story has "haunted her" since she read it and said that if I wrote it well, it could rival NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.
The story, "I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger" which appeared in the South Carolina Review, was later expanded into my novel titled THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING and also the screenplay of the same title which placed as a Finalist in both the Writer's Guild and the Best of Austin competitions.
And THE MOCKINGBIRD CAFE and another story not in this collection, IN THE ZONE, were both published by the august litmag, High Plains Literary Review, whose editor, Dr. Robert O. Greer, told me several years later that he assumed I was a black writer (Dr. Greer is a black man) and was very surprised to discover I was white. That was quite a complement!
I'm very proud that these stories represent a myriad of voices, including a black man, a woman, a deranged prison inmate and many other personas. I think if you didn't see a single name on this collection, you'd just assume it was a collection of a number of writers. I really don't see many contemporary writers capable of doing this and that gives me a lot of pride.
I hope that this book will be exposed to an entirely new generation and that they find it compelling.
If you do read it and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. That's the single best thing anyone can do to help out a writer.
Here's what others had to say about MM:
Reviews
For MONDAY’S MEAL
The sad wives, passive or violent husbands, parolees, alcoholics and other failures in Leslie H. Edgerton's short-story collection are pretty miserable people. And yet misery does have its uses. Raymond Carver elevated the mournful complaints of the disenfranchised in his work, and Edgerton makes an admirable attempt to do the same. He brings to this task an unerring ear for dialogue and a sure-handed sense of place (particularly New Orleans, where many of the stories are set). Edgerton has affection for even his most despicable characters—"boring" Robert, who pours scalding water over his sleeping wife in "The Last Fan"; Jake, the musician responsible for his own daughter's death in "The Jazz Player"; and Tommy in 'I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger," whose plan to get hold of some money involves severing the arm of a rich socialite—but he never takes the reader past the brink of horrible fascination into a deeper understanding. In the best story, "My Idea of a Nice Thing," a woman named Raye tells us why she drinks: "My job. I'm a hairdresser. See, you take on all of these other people's personalities and troubles and things, 10 or 12 of 'em a day, and when the end of the day comes, you don't know who you are anymore. It takes three drinks just to sort yourself out again." Here Edgerton grants both the reader and Raye the grace of irony, and without his authorial intrusion, we find ourselves caring about her predicament.—Denise Gess. The New York Times Book Review, November 16, 1997
* * *Leslie H. Edgerton's new collection fully meets John Updike's explanation of why we read short stories: "Each is a glimpse into another country: an occasion for surprise, an excuse for wisdom, and an argument for charity." The country of Edgerton's stories, in geographic terms, is New Orleans and the Texas Gulf Coast. In human terms, Edgerton's territory is peopled by nightclub musicians, cafe owners, teenage delinquents, inmates and ex-cons, the poor and uneducated, the heartless and violent, and a snooty former debutante.
Monday's Meal is a busy collection of twenty-one stories. A handful of these include recurring characters, enhancing the sense throughout the book that Edgerton is writing about a community rather than simply a series of individuals. The character with whom we become best acquainted is Evan, a.k.a. Pete: "Now Pete's not my real name, it's my middle name. Peter, actually. But when your first name's Evan, and you hang out where I do, you want to use something else." Evan/Pete hangs out in the seedier precincts of New Orleans. In "I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger" and "Ten Cents a Dance," he gets involved in, respectively, a botched kidnapping and the pursuit of an uninterested prostitute. His ex-wife, the blueblood narrator of "Princess," finds it horrific how he now "hangs out with low-lifes, even street people. God!" Evan/Pete, though, is a street-wise, philosophizing, get-by-as-best-you-can kind of guy who moves through a part of New Orleans never viewed from the tour bus.
Evan/Pete is an amusing character, yet not all of Edgerton's down-and -outers are. "The Jazz Player" portrays an angry young man desperate to release "that intense, throbbing, terrible, last blast of pent-up fury and frustration and guilt and anguish and loss and death." In "The Mockingbird Cafe," one of the strongest stories here for its concision, a black prison escapee endures a white cop's tormenting of him and then sullenly walks away. In "Rubber Band," a kid just released from the reformatory, made cynical and weary of the world, anticipates his own snapping point. While Edgerton can sketch a city hardship scene comparable to Joseph Mitchell's--and several of the stories have the casualness of familiar essays about them--Edgerton establishes the kind of convincing, and wrenching, interiority with his characters achieved by only the most adept fiction writers.
Edgerton does not write exclusively about people living on society's fringe. Sometimes his characters--as in "The Last Fan," about a dullard husband's violent turn, or "Voodoo Love," about a yuppie couple's falling out--are simply headed in that direction. To his credit, Edgerton aims for range in his characters. While suspicion of identity interlopers across ethnic and gender lines is often justified, the smart writer adopts various personae in order to strive for empathy and understanding, rather than appropriation. "My Idea of a Right Thing" exemplifies this purpose in its striking account of a woman's struggle with alcoholism and the (often) predominantly male world of Alcoholics Anonymous. Less dramatic, though no less vivid, "Telemarketing" is the story of a woman dealing with an emotionally distant husband and a pair of needy neighbors as she runs the cafe she owns and longs to have a child.
Even Edgerton's most harrowing stories, such as "Hard Times," about the deadly abandonment of a woman and her children, read effortlessly. The prose throughout is vibrant and precise. At times, the author's sharp ear for colloquial mannerisms tends to turn his speakers into Runyonesque caricatures, as when the high-brow belle in "Princess" exclaims indignantly, "Why, I'd just die!" On the other hand, such dialect adds as much local color as references to the Camellia Cafe or beignets. A case in point: after protesting how he was "bum-rapped on that litigious," the narrator of "Dream Flyer" gripes about the "effrippery" of his jailers for putting him in the same cell with an "orignal-diginal" like the Dream Flyer, who's scheduled to be "exterminated for something he didn't do." In fiction as in life, I suppose, better too much of a good thing than not enough.
Once again, the University of North Texas Press deserves high praise for its commitment to publishing superb contemporary fiction. Leslie H. Edgerton is a writer one should continue to seek out in the literary magazines and on the new-releases shelf.
Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1997, by Peter Donahue, Sam Houston State UniversityCOPYRIGHT 1997 Studies in Short FictionCOPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
*
Reading Les Edgerton’s stories is like listening to those old World War II broadcasts from the London blitz, with the reporter crouching under a restaurant table, microphone in hand, while the bombs drop on the city and the ceiling caves in. Edgerton reports on the world and the news is not good. There’s a kind of wacky wisdom in these bulletins from the underside of life; the stories are full of people you hope never move in next door, for whom ordinary life is an impossible dream. This is good fiction; Edgerton writes lean and nasty prose. Dr. Francois Camoin, Director, Graduate School of English, University of Utah and author of Benbow and Paradise, Like Love, But Not Exactly, Deadly Virtues, The End of the World Is Los Angeles and Why Men Are Afraid of Women.
* Les Edgerton is much more than a fiction writer or a story teller. When you read his work, your ears prick up, your eyes go wide, and your spine tingles. You get the sense that Edgerton has been there, lived the lives of his characters, fought their fights, cried their tears, placed their bets, drank their Wild Turkey, smoked their cigarettes. He writes with a stunning accuracy, a convincing authority and a stark reality. At the same time, he strikes a balance between beauty, sensitivity and humor. Edgerton isn’t concerned with keeping your interest. He wants to reach into your heart, tear it out, hold it for you while it’s still beating! His New Orleans and South Texas settings are as rough, romantic and quintessentially American as the writer himself. His themes are Ray Carver meets Charles Bukowski. Edgerton is not just another stunning narrative talent, he is an important narrative authority--a master of his or any other generation. Vincent Zandri, Author of As Catch Can, Permanence, and Godchild.
* Monday’s Mealis filled to bursting with writing you can taste. Whether dining on bisque and blackened redfish at an upscale cafe, or eating rank mule meat in a pine board cabin, the characters in Edgerton’s world bite down hard and grind up one another with their back teeth. Their authenticity is palpable as soft-shelled clams; these are sad, mean, fully human characters who long for connection almost as fiercely as they fear it. Monday’s Meal is a most satisfyingly vivid and visceral feast. Melody Henion Stevenson, Author of The Life Stone of Singing Bird
* Edgerton’s best stories are uncompromising in their casual amorality. They stare you down over the barrel of a gun, rip you up whether or not the trigger gets squeezed. Diane Lefer, Creative writing teacher at UCLA and on the MFA in Writing Faculty at Vermont College. Author of The Circles I Move In and has received fellowships from the NEA as well as five PEN Syndicated Fiction prizes. *
From his New Orleans’ setting, Les Edgerton creates a vivid and compelling world. We feel the rhythm of his language and live in the skins of his characters. Altogether, a memorable experience. Gladys Swan, Faculty member, Missouri University and on the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College. Author of A Visit To Stranger, Do You Believe in Cabeza de Vaca? and other novels and collections.
* Les Edgerton updates Everyman for the turn of this century. Their resumes filled with failed relationships, hapless schemes and desultory crimes, his characters inhabit some of the hardest ground south of the Mason-Dixon, a place where the tragic often turns a corner only to collide with the comic, and where the closest thing to hope is a shrug. Carol Anshaw, Author of Aquamarine and Seven Moves.A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, winner of the Carl Sandburg Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award, and a recipient of a NEA Fellowship.
* Humor, tragedy, all part of 'Monday's Meal'By Darragh DoironGot a few days to spend in New Orleans? Or some other part of Texas, like Freeport? "Monday's Meal" is Leslie H. Edgerton's collection of short stories that take readers to cafes, lonely apartments and to Big Easy dance halls, bars and restaurants. The burly, bald man in the Saints jacket pictured on the book's back is a hair dresser. Edgerton also teaches creative writing online for the UCLA Extension Writers Program. Some of his characters are hair dressers, or dog groomers, too. It was my pleasure to relax with his character studies. In "Blue Skies" a man think about how his mentally challenged daughter will always take her bite from the middle of her sandwich, not from the corner like adults do. "My Idea of a Nice Thing" stops in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and "Hard Times" captures the despair of a family starving in their cabin. In "A Shortness of Breath" a old herb woman reveals why all the men in a family seem to die at age 47—they really die when they use up all the breaths they've been allotted. There's humor and tragedy in this University of North Texas Press release ($14.95, 817-565-2142). I love how his characters' actions point out the difference between New Orleans natives and tourists. Port Arthur News, August 2, 1998
* From Library Journal
This collection of short fiction by the author of The Death of Tarpons (LJ 3/15/96) contains considerable variety of tone, voice, and subject matter, but the majority of the stories fall into two distinct groups. A large number of stories focus on troubled and deeply self-absorbed men who seem surprised to find themselves in failed romantic relationships. These men stoically endure the collapse of relationships they have helped destroy, and Edgerton handles the psychological complexities of both his male and his female protagonists very effectively. A number of other stories focus on marginal Pulp Fiction types who are haunted by personal demons and are drawn to violence. In stories that range in tone from the comic and farcical to the darkly tragic and grim, Edgerton draws memorable portraits of these dangerous and unpredictable characters. Many of the stories in this collection are set in and around New Orleans, and Edgerton describes this milieu well. Recommended. Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
*
YA—This collection of 21 unsettling stories will appeal to readers looking for nontraditional contemporary plots with characters living on the fringes of society. These strange tales often revolve around macabre happenings, such as dismemberment, murder, kidnapping, cannibalism, or death. Many are set in the French Quarter of New Orleans with its jazz musicians, numerous bars, night walkers, and even voodoo. Several selections will haunt readers for some time as events often take a morbid twist; others will leave them wondering about the endings. YAs who enjoy reading Stephen King or watching The Twilight Zone will eat up these unique, often gruesome, at times humorous, short stories.—Dottie Kraft. School Library Journal, January, 1998
* Jane Bouterse's WRITERS AT WORK (KTXK Radio)The Book: MONDAY'S MEAL Stories by Leslie H. Edgerton(Excerpts)Monday, in the older South, was traditionally washday, and a week's worth of dirty laundry meant a day of hard labor. Large families still had to be fed, so Monday's meals were often "one pot" concoctions with a little bit of everything, including surprise ingredients. But simmered all together Monday's meal was frequently the best meal of the week. Thus Texas born Leslie Edgerton entitled his first collection of short stories MONDAY'S MEAL. Edgerton's stories are a concoction, including surprise ingredients. They happen in all kinds of places: New Orleans, Indiana, the small towns of Texas, the streets of the Big Easy, the poverty stricken South. The people who populate the stories include both the predictable and the unusual. For example, not this description of the protagonist in his story "The Bad Part of Town:" "He was so mean that wherever he was standing became the bad part of town." Other characters include dance hall girls, recovering alcoholics making tough choices, jazz players, Arnold and Amelia Critchen, victims of hard times, a spoiled Princess, or an old man gathering seashells and remembering. The cast is large and varied and demanding because a reader cannot leave them without having shared a bit of his own humanity and discovered a little of that all important inner self. ...Edgerton's characters win a few and lose a few. '''The Street of Dreams. I guess we've all been there. Historian Bonaro Overstreet in an essay "Little Story, What Now?" explores the possibilities for the survival of the short story, a nineteenth century infant. She decides that, despite its youth, the short story will survive well into the twenty-first century because of its resilience, its ability to distill the experience of its time, whether inside or outside its characters and to give that experience back to readers so they see themselves more clearly. Edgerton achieves that potential in his mixture of stories, a rare concoction; clearly a meal which lives up to its name.—"Writers at Work" is heard on KTXK Stereo 91.5 FM, the Broadcast voice of Texarkana College, Mondays at 6:00 PM; Wednesdays at 12:25 PM, and Fridays at 8:00 AM.
*
Similar subjects and skills (reference to preceding review of Katherine L. Hester's book, "Eggs for Young America") mark the work of Leslie H. Edgerton, who peoples the tales of Monday's Meal with alcoholics, inmates, and an abandoned family that survives on mule stew. The Freeport native, who lives today in Fort Wayne, Indiana rates extra credit for his hook 'em openings ("He was so mean that wherever he was standing became the bad part of town") and punch finales ("Color my ass gone").—Anne Dingus. Texas Monthly, 22 October, 1997.
*
There's no question that Leslie Edgerton loves to write... he does it so well! Edgerton deals with people often called 'losers' in a wonderfully poignant way and his affection for his characters gives strength to this collection of stories, one of which has received the Pushcart nomination. Join our support of this fine writer which Arts Indiana Magazine calls "one of Indiana's best writers."—Border's Bookstore Newsletter, September 27, 1997.
From GOODREADS:
Paul Brazill gave 5 of 5 stars to:Monday's Meal by Leslie EdgertonMonday's Meal: Storiesby Leslie Edgertonread in June, 2011
LES EDGERTON
Who makes the best beer in the world? Maybe the Czech or Belgians. Definitely not the Danes. Or the Americans.
But when it comes to short stories, well, the Americans rule the roost, they really do. Flannery O’ Connor, Raymond Carver, Stephen King, Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Kyle Minor. Loads and loads more.
And you can add Les Edgerton to that list.
Monday’s Meal by Leslie H Edgerton was published in 1997 and contains twenty-one tales of dirt realism. Sharp slices of American life. They’re set in New Orleans and Texas. Sometimes in bars or behind bars. They’re about café owners, hairdressers, nightclub musicians, prisoners, ex-cons, drifters and drinkers.
Monday’s Meal opens and closes ‘Blue Skies’ and ‘Monday’s Meal, tales of strained relationships.’ But the real meat is sandwiched between them. And Monday's Meal is particularly meaty.
Some favourites: ‘The Mockingbird Café’ is the story of a man in a low-rent bar trying to mind his own business; ‘Hard Times’ is bleak and scary and brilliantly written; ‘The Last Fan’ is a tragic look at a shattered marriage; ‘My Idea Of A Nice Thing’ is a touching and sad story of an alcoholic’s crumbling life;’Telemarketing,’ is the story of a young couple just trying to get by; ‘I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger,’ is a Runyonesque crime story.
And there’s plenty more to enjoy in Monday’s Meal. Edgerton has a strong and sure grasp of the lives of people who are standing on the edge of a precipice.
And Les Edgerton will soon have a new short story collection published by the hip new kids on the block, Snubnose Press, which can’t be bad!
Paul Brazill, Author, A Case Of Noir, Guns Of Brixton, Too Many Crooks, The Last Laugh, and Kill Me Quick!
*Thanks for reading this. Hope you enjoy the read as much as I enjoyed writing these stories!
Blue skies,Les
My first collection of short stories, Monday's Meal, was released in ebook format today from the good folks at Down and Out Press. It was originally published as a paperback by the University of North Texas Press and was nominated for the Violet Crown Book Award. This is the writing I'm the proudest of. It received rave reviews by such as the NT Times,Texas Monthly, Publisher's Weekly, the School Library Journal, and by such august literary organizations as Studies in Short Fiction. Some of the brightest literary writers gave it their thumbs-up.
Amazon linkTwo of the stories were written when I was 12 and 13. At 12 I wrote, "Hard Times" and a year later, I lay on my couch and wrote "Broken Seashells." Most of the other stories were written before I was 21. Currently, at the behest of my agent, Svetlana Pironko, who urged me to expand "Hard Times" into a novel (which I'm doing) and who told me the story has "haunted her" since she read it and said that if I wrote it well, it could rival NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.
The story, "I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger" which appeared in the South Carolina Review, was later expanded into my novel titled THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING and also the screenplay of the same title which placed as a Finalist in both the Writer's Guild and the Best of Austin competitions.
And THE MOCKINGBIRD CAFE and another story not in this collection, IN THE ZONE, were both published by the august litmag, High Plains Literary Review, whose editor, Dr. Robert O. Greer, told me several years later that he assumed I was a black writer (Dr. Greer is a black man) and was very surprised to discover I was white. That was quite a complement!
I'm very proud that these stories represent a myriad of voices, including a black man, a woman, a deranged prison inmate and many other personas. I think if you didn't see a single name on this collection, you'd just assume it was a collection of a number of writers. I really don't see many contemporary writers capable of doing this and that gives me a lot of pride.
I hope that this book will be exposed to an entirely new generation and that they find it compelling.
If you do read it and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. That's the single best thing anyone can do to help out a writer.
Here's what others had to say about MM:
Reviews
For MONDAY’S MEAL
The sad wives, passive or violent husbands, parolees, alcoholics and other failures in Leslie H. Edgerton's short-story collection are pretty miserable people. And yet misery does have its uses. Raymond Carver elevated the mournful complaints of the disenfranchised in his work, and Edgerton makes an admirable attempt to do the same. He brings to this task an unerring ear for dialogue and a sure-handed sense of place (particularly New Orleans, where many of the stories are set). Edgerton has affection for even his most despicable characters—"boring" Robert, who pours scalding water over his sleeping wife in "The Last Fan"; Jake, the musician responsible for his own daughter's death in "The Jazz Player"; and Tommy in 'I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger," whose plan to get hold of some money involves severing the arm of a rich socialite—but he never takes the reader past the brink of horrible fascination into a deeper understanding. In the best story, "My Idea of a Nice Thing," a woman named Raye tells us why she drinks: "My job. I'm a hairdresser. See, you take on all of these other people's personalities and troubles and things, 10 or 12 of 'em a day, and when the end of the day comes, you don't know who you are anymore. It takes three drinks just to sort yourself out again." Here Edgerton grants both the reader and Raye the grace of irony, and without his authorial intrusion, we find ourselves caring about her predicament.—Denise Gess. The New York Times Book Review, November 16, 1997
* * *Leslie H. Edgerton's new collection fully meets John Updike's explanation of why we read short stories: "Each is a glimpse into another country: an occasion for surprise, an excuse for wisdom, and an argument for charity." The country of Edgerton's stories, in geographic terms, is New Orleans and the Texas Gulf Coast. In human terms, Edgerton's territory is peopled by nightclub musicians, cafe owners, teenage delinquents, inmates and ex-cons, the poor and uneducated, the heartless and violent, and a snooty former debutante.
Monday's Meal is a busy collection of twenty-one stories. A handful of these include recurring characters, enhancing the sense throughout the book that Edgerton is writing about a community rather than simply a series of individuals. The character with whom we become best acquainted is Evan, a.k.a. Pete: "Now Pete's not my real name, it's my middle name. Peter, actually. But when your first name's Evan, and you hang out where I do, you want to use something else." Evan/Pete hangs out in the seedier precincts of New Orleans. In "I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger" and "Ten Cents a Dance," he gets involved in, respectively, a botched kidnapping and the pursuit of an uninterested prostitute. His ex-wife, the blueblood narrator of "Princess," finds it horrific how he now "hangs out with low-lifes, even street people. God!" Evan/Pete, though, is a street-wise, philosophizing, get-by-as-best-you-can kind of guy who moves through a part of New Orleans never viewed from the tour bus.
Evan/Pete is an amusing character, yet not all of Edgerton's down-and -outers are. "The Jazz Player" portrays an angry young man desperate to release "that intense, throbbing, terrible, last blast of pent-up fury and frustration and guilt and anguish and loss and death." In "The Mockingbird Cafe," one of the strongest stories here for its concision, a black prison escapee endures a white cop's tormenting of him and then sullenly walks away. In "Rubber Band," a kid just released from the reformatory, made cynical and weary of the world, anticipates his own snapping point. While Edgerton can sketch a city hardship scene comparable to Joseph Mitchell's--and several of the stories have the casualness of familiar essays about them--Edgerton establishes the kind of convincing, and wrenching, interiority with his characters achieved by only the most adept fiction writers.
Edgerton does not write exclusively about people living on society's fringe. Sometimes his characters--as in "The Last Fan," about a dullard husband's violent turn, or "Voodoo Love," about a yuppie couple's falling out--are simply headed in that direction. To his credit, Edgerton aims for range in his characters. While suspicion of identity interlopers across ethnic and gender lines is often justified, the smart writer adopts various personae in order to strive for empathy and understanding, rather than appropriation. "My Idea of a Right Thing" exemplifies this purpose in its striking account of a woman's struggle with alcoholism and the (often) predominantly male world of Alcoholics Anonymous. Less dramatic, though no less vivid, "Telemarketing" is the story of a woman dealing with an emotionally distant husband and a pair of needy neighbors as she runs the cafe she owns and longs to have a child.
Even Edgerton's most harrowing stories, such as "Hard Times," about the deadly abandonment of a woman and her children, read effortlessly. The prose throughout is vibrant and precise. At times, the author's sharp ear for colloquial mannerisms tends to turn his speakers into Runyonesque caricatures, as when the high-brow belle in "Princess" exclaims indignantly, "Why, I'd just die!" On the other hand, such dialect adds as much local color as references to the Camellia Cafe or beignets. A case in point: after protesting how he was "bum-rapped on that litigious," the narrator of "Dream Flyer" gripes about the "effrippery" of his jailers for putting him in the same cell with an "orignal-diginal" like the Dream Flyer, who's scheduled to be "exterminated for something he didn't do." In fiction as in life, I suppose, better too much of a good thing than not enough.
Once again, the University of North Texas Press deserves high praise for its commitment to publishing superb contemporary fiction. Leslie H. Edgerton is a writer one should continue to seek out in the literary magazines and on the new-releases shelf.
Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1997, by Peter Donahue, Sam Houston State UniversityCOPYRIGHT 1997 Studies in Short FictionCOPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
*
Reading Les Edgerton’s stories is like listening to those old World War II broadcasts from the London blitz, with the reporter crouching under a restaurant table, microphone in hand, while the bombs drop on the city and the ceiling caves in. Edgerton reports on the world and the news is not good. There’s a kind of wacky wisdom in these bulletins from the underside of life; the stories are full of people you hope never move in next door, for whom ordinary life is an impossible dream. This is good fiction; Edgerton writes lean and nasty prose. Dr. Francois Camoin, Director, Graduate School of English, University of Utah and author of Benbow and Paradise, Like Love, But Not Exactly, Deadly Virtues, The End of the World Is Los Angeles and Why Men Are Afraid of Women.
* Les Edgerton is much more than a fiction writer or a story teller. When you read his work, your ears prick up, your eyes go wide, and your spine tingles. You get the sense that Edgerton has been there, lived the lives of his characters, fought their fights, cried their tears, placed their bets, drank their Wild Turkey, smoked their cigarettes. He writes with a stunning accuracy, a convincing authority and a stark reality. At the same time, he strikes a balance between beauty, sensitivity and humor. Edgerton isn’t concerned with keeping your interest. He wants to reach into your heart, tear it out, hold it for you while it’s still beating! His New Orleans and South Texas settings are as rough, romantic and quintessentially American as the writer himself. His themes are Ray Carver meets Charles Bukowski. Edgerton is not just another stunning narrative talent, he is an important narrative authority--a master of his or any other generation. Vincent Zandri, Author of As Catch Can, Permanence, and Godchild.
* Monday’s Mealis filled to bursting with writing you can taste. Whether dining on bisque and blackened redfish at an upscale cafe, or eating rank mule meat in a pine board cabin, the characters in Edgerton’s world bite down hard and grind up one another with their back teeth. Their authenticity is palpable as soft-shelled clams; these are sad, mean, fully human characters who long for connection almost as fiercely as they fear it. Monday’s Meal is a most satisfyingly vivid and visceral feast. Melody Henion Stevenson, Author of The Life Stone of Singing Bird
* Edgerton’s best stories are uncompromising in their casual amorality. They stare you down over the barrel of a gun, rip you up whether or not the trigger gets squeezed. Diane Lefer, Creative writing teacher at UCLA and on the MFA in Writing Faculty at Vermont College. Author of The Circles I Move In and has received fellowships from the NEA as well as five PEN Syndicated Fiction prizes. *
From his New Orleans’ setting, Les Edgerton creates a vivid and compelling world. We feel the rhythm of his language and live in the skins of his characters. Altogether, a memorable experience. Gladys Swan, Faculty member, Missouri University and on the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College. Author of A Visit To Stranger, Do You Believe in Cabeza de Vaca? and other novels and collections.
* Les Edgerton updates Everyman for the turn of this century. Their resumes filled with failed relationships, hapless schemes and desultory crimes, his characters inhabit some of the hardest ground south of the Mason-Dixon, a place where the tragic often turns a corner only to collide with the comic, and where the closest thing to hope is a shrug. Carol Anshaw, Author of Aquamarine and Seven Moves.A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, winner of the Carl Sandburg Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award, and a recipient of a NEA Fellowship.
* Humor, tragedy, all part of 'Monday's Meal'By Darragh DoironGot a few days to spend in New Orleans? Or some other part of Texas, like Freeport? "Monday's Meal" is Leslie H. Edgerton's collection of short stories that take readers to cafes, lonely apartments and to Big Easy dance halls, bars and restaurants. The burly, bald man in the Saints jacket pictured on the book's back is a hair dresser. Edgerton also teaches creative writing online for the UCLA Extension Writers Program. Some of his characters are hair dressers, or dog groomers, too. It was my pleasure to relax with his character studies. In "Blue Skies" a man think about how his mentally challenged daughter will always take her bite from the middle of her sandwich, not from the corner like adults do. "My Idea of a Nice Thing" stops in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and "Hard Times" captures the despair of a family starving in their cabin. In "A Shortness of Breath" a old herb woman reveals why all the men in a family seem to die at age 47—they really die when they use up all the breaths they've been allotted. There's humor and tragedy in this University of North Texas Press release ($14.95, 817-565-2142). I love how his characters' actions point out the difference between New Orleans natives and tourists. Port Arthur News, August 2, 1998
* From Library Journal
This collection of short fiction by the author of The Death of Tarpons (LJ 3/15/96) contains considerable variety of tone, voice, and subject matter, but the majority of the stories fall into two distinct groups. A large number of stories focus on troubled and deeply self-absorbed men who seem surprised to find themselves in failed romantic relationships. These men stoically endure the collapse of relationships they have helped destroy, and Edgerton handles the psychological complexities of both his male and his female protagonists very effectively. A number of other stories focus on marginal Pulp Fiction types who are haunted by personal demons and are drawn to violence. In stories that range in tone from the comic and farcical to the darkly tragic and grim, Edgerton draws memorable portraits of these dangerous and unpredictable characters. Many of the stories in this collection are set in and around New Orleans, and Edgerton describes this milieu well. Recommended. Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
*
YA—This collection of 21 unsettling stories will appeal to readers looking for nontraditional contemporary plots with characters living on the fringes of society. These strange tales often revolve around macabre happenings, such as dismemberment, murder, kidnapping, cannibalism, or death. Many are set in the French Quarter of New Orleans with its jazz musicians, numerous bars, night walkers, and even voodoo. Several selections will haunt readers for some time as events often take a morbid twist; others will leave them wondering about the endings. YAs who enjoy reading Stephen King or watching The Twilight Zone will eat up these unique, often gruesome, at times humorous, short stories.—Dottie Kraft. School Library Journal, January, 1998
* Jane Bouterse's WRITERS AT WORK (KTXK Radio)The Book: MONDAY'S MEAL Stories by Leslie H. Edgerton(Excerpts)Monday, in the older South, was traditionally washday, and a week's worth of dirty laundry meant a day of hard labor. Large families still had to be fed, so Monday's meals were often "one pot" concoctions with a little bit of everything, including surprise ingredients. But simmered all together Monday's meal was frequently the best meal of the week. Thus Texas born Leslie Edgerton entitled his first collection of short stories MONDAY'S MEAL. Edgerton's stories are a concoction, including surprise ingredients. They happen in all kinds of places: New Orleans, Indiana, the small towns of Texas, the streets of the Big Easy, the poverty stricken South. The people who populate the stories include both the predictable and the unusual. For example, not this description of the protagonist in his story "The Bad Part of Town:" "He was so mean that wherever he was standing became the bad part of town." Other characters include dance hall girls, recovering alcoholics making tough choices, jazz players, Arnold and Amelia Critchen, victims of hard times, a spoiled Princess, or an old man gathering seashells and remembering. The cast is large and varied and demanding because a reader cannot leave them without having shared a bit of his own humanity and discovered a little of that all important inner self. ...Edgerton's characters win a few and lose a few. '''The Street of Dreams. I guess we've all been there. Historian Bonaro Overstreet in an essay "Little Story, What Now?" explores the possibilities for the survival of the short story, a nineteenth century infant. She decides that, despite its youth, the short story will survive well into the twenty-first century because of its resilience, its ability to distill the experience of its time, whether inside or outside its characters and to give that experience back to readers so they see themselves more clearly. Edgerton achieves that potential in his mixture of stories, a rare concoction; clearly a meal which lives up to its name.—"Writers at Work" is heard on KTXK Stereo 91.5 FM, the Broadcast voice of Texarkana College, Mondays at 6:00 PM; Wednesdays at 12:25 PM, and Fridays at 8:00 AM.
*
Similar subjects and skills (reference to preceding review of Katherine L. Hester's book, "Eggs for Young America") mark the work of Leslie H. Edgerton, who peoples the tales of Monday's Meal with alcoholics, inmates, and an abandoned family that survives on mule stew. The Freeport native, who lives today in Fort Wayne, Indiana rates extra credit for his hook 'em openings ("He was so mean that wherever he was standing became the bad part of town") and punch finales ("Color my ass gone").—Anne Dingus. Texas Monthly, 22 October, 1997.
*
There's no question that Leslie Edgerton loves to write... he does it so well! Edgerton deals with people often called 'losers' in a wonderfully poignant way and his affection for his characters gives strength to this collection of stories, one of which has received the Pushcart nomination. Join our support of this fine writer which Arts Indiana Magazine calls "one of Indiana's best writers."—Border's Bookstore Newsletter, September 27, 1997.
From GOODREADS:
Paul Brazill gave 5 of 5 stars to:Monday's Meal by Leslie EdgertonMonday's Meal: Storiesby Leslie Edgertonread in June, 2011
LES EDGERTON
Who makes the best beer in the world? Maybe the Czech or Belgians. Definitely not the Danes. Or the Americans.
But when it comes to short stories, well, the Americans rule the roost, they really do. Flannery O’ Connor, Raymond Carver, Stephen King, Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Kyle Minor. Loads and loads more.
And you can add Les Edgerton to that list.
Monday’s Meal by Leslie H Edgerton was published in 1997 and contains twenty-one tales of dirt realism. Sharp slices of American life. They’re set in New Orleans and Texas. Sometimes in bars or behind bars. They’re about café owners, hairdressers, nightclub musicians, prisoners, ex-cons, drifters and drinkers.
Monday’s Meal opens and closes ‘Blue Skies’ and ‘Monday’s Meal, tales of strained relationships.’ But the real meat is sandwiched between them. And Monday's Meal is particularly meaty.
Some favourites: ‘The Mockingbird Café’ is the story of a man in a low-rent bar trying to mind his own business; ‘Hard Times’ is bleak and scary and brilliantly written; ‘The Last Fan’ is a tragic look at a shattered marriage; ‘My Idea Of A Nice Thing’ is a touching and sad story of an alcoholic’s crumbling life;’Telemarketing,’ is the story of a young couple just trying to get by; ‘I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger,’ is a Runyonesque crime story.
And there’s plenty more to enjoy in Monday’s Meal. Edgerton has a strong and sure grasp of the lives of people who are standing on the edge of a precipice.
And Les Edgerton will soon have a new short story collection published by the hip new kids on the block, Snubnose Press, which can’t be bad!
Paul Brazill, Author, A Case Of Noir, Guns Of Brixton, Too Many Crooks, The Last Laugh, and Kill Me Quick!
*Thanks for reading this. Hope you enjoy the read as much as I enjoyed writing these stories!
Blue skies,Les
April 18, 2018
Hi folks,For the first time, my short story collection, M...
Hi folks,
For the first time, my short story collection, MONDAY'S MEAL, is being offered as an ebook. There are a few remaining paperback copies still available from the original publisher, the University of North Texas Press as well.
I view MM as my very best work. It was my second published work of fiction and I was definitely an unknown at the time and it gave me great pride when the NY Times compared me favorably to Raymond Carver. Actually, I didn't know who Carver was at the time but learned quickly after the Times review came out. A few days before it was published, a story of mine was chosen for a Tim O'Brien workshop and during the workshop he pulled me aside and told me my work reminded him of Ray Carver. When the Times review came out, coupled with Tim's comment to me, I ran out and bought a copy of Carver's stories and instantly felt like I'd found a soulmate. (Actually, I didn't know who Tim O'Brien was, either. at the time, and then learned he was a big deal in the writing game...)
It's being offered as a prepub sale if you just click below the cover. It goes on regular sale on April 23.
Click here.
Here are a few of the blurbs it garnered at the time:
Praise for MONDAY’S MEAL:
“The sad wives, passive or violent husbands, parolees, alcoholics and other failures in Les Edgerton's short-story collection are pretty miserable people. And yet misery does have its uses. Raymond Carver elevated the mournful complaints of the disenfranchised in his work, and Edgerton makes an admirable attempt to do the same.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Reading Les Edgerton’s stories is like listening to those old World War II broadcasts from the London blitz, with the reporter crouching under a restaurant table, microphone in hand, while the bombs drop on the city and the ceiling caves in. Edgerton reports on the world and the news is not good. There’s a kind of wacky wisdom in these bulletins from the underside of life; the stories are full of people you hope never move in next door, for whom ordinary life is an impossible dream. This is good fiction; Edgerton writes lean and nasty prose.” —Dr. Francois Camoin, Director, Graduate School of English, University of Utah
“Edgerton’s best stories are uncompromising in their casual amorality. They stare you down over the barrel of a gun, rip you up whether or not the trigger gets squeezed.” —Diane Lefer, Creative Writing Instructor in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts
“When it comes to short stories, Americans rule the roost. Flannery O’ Connor, Raymond Carver, Stephen King, Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Kyle Minor. And you can add Les Edgerton to that list. Monday’s Meal contains twenty-one tales of dirt realism, sharp slices of American life. Edgerton has a strong and sure grasp of the lives of people who are standing on the edge of a precipice.” —Paul Brazill, author of Too Many Crooks and The Last Laugh
“Filled to bursting with writing you can taste. Whether dining on bisque and blackened redfish at an upscale cafe, or eating rank mule meat in a pine board cabin, the characters in Edgerton’s world bite down hard and grind up one another with their back teeth. Monday’s Meal is a most satisfyingly vivid and visceral feast.” —Melody Henion Stevenson, author of The Life Stone of Singing Bird
“This collection of 21 unsettling stories will appeal to readers looking for nontraditional contemporary plots with characters living on the fringes of society. Several selections will haunt readers for some time as events often take a morbid twist; others will leave them wondering about the endings.”—School Library Journal
I hope y'all glom onto a copy and if you find it worthwhile, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and other sites. I'd really appreciate it!
Blue skies,
Les
For the first time, my short story collection, MONDAY'S MEAL, is being offered as an ebook. There are a few remaining paperback copies still available from the original publisher, the University of North Texas Press as well.
I view MM as my very best work. It was my second published work of fiction and I was definitely an unknown at the time and it gave me great pride when the NY Times compared me favorably to Raymond Carver. Actually, I didn't know who Carver was at the time but learned quickly after the Times review came out. A few days before it was published, a story of mine was chosen for a Tim O'Brien workshop and during the workshop he pulled me aside and told me my work reminded him of Ray Carver. When the Times review came out, coupled with Tim's comment to me, I ran out and bought a copy of Carver's stories and instantly felt like I'd found a soulmate. (Actually, I didn't know who Tim O'Brien was, either. at the time, and then learned he was a big deal in the writing game...)
It's being offered as a prepub sale if you just click below the cover. It goes on regular sale on April 23.
Click here.Here are a few of the blurbs it garnered at the time:
Praise for MONDAY’S MEAL:
“The sad wives, passive or violent husbands, parolees, alcoholics and other failures in Les Edgerton's short-story collection are pretty miserable people. And yet misery does have its uses. Raymond Carver elevated the mournful complaints of the disenfranchised in his work, and Edgerton makes an admirable attempt to do the same.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Reading Les Edgerton’s stories is like listening to those old World War II broadcasts from the London blitz, with the reporter crouching under a restaurant table, microphone in hand, while the bombs drop on the city and the ceiling caves in. Edgerton reports on the world and the news is not good. There’s a kind of wacky wisdom in these bulletins from the underside of life; the stories are full of people you hope never move in next door, for whom ordinary life is an impossible dream. This is good fiction; Edgerton writes lean and nasty prose.” —Dr. Francois Camoin, Director, Graduate School of English, University of Utah
“Edgerton’s best stories are uncompromising in their casual amorality. They stare you down over the barrel of a gun, rip you up whether or not the trigger gets squeezed.” —Diane Lefer, Creative Writing Instructor in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts
“When it comes to short stories, Americans rule the roost. Flannery O’ Connor, Raymond Carver, Stephen King, Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Kyle Minor. And you can add Les Edgerton to that list. Monday’s Meal contains twenty-one tales of dirt realism, sharp slices of American life. Edgerton has a strong and sure grasp of the lives of people who are standing on the edge of a precipice.” —Paul Brazill, author of Too Many Crooks and The Last Laugh
“Filled to bursting with writing you can taste. Whether dining on bisque and blackened redfish at an upscale cafe, or eating rank mule meat in a pine board cabin, the characters in Edgerton’s world bite down hard and grind up one another with their back teeth. Monday’s Meal is a most satisfyingly vivid and visceral feast.” —Melody Henion Stevenson, author of The Life Stone of Singing Bird
“This collection of 21 unsettling stories will appeal to readers looking for nontraditional contemporary plots with characters living on the fringes of society. Several selections will haunt readers for some time as events often take a morbid twist; others will leave them wondering about the endings.”—School Library Journal
I hope y'all glom onto a copy and if you find it worthwhile, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and other sites. I'd really appreciate it!
Blue skies,
Les
