Christa Faust's Blog, page 13

NoirDog Hits the Road

Fuck it. I'm taking Butch on the road with me.



After all this angst and torment trying to find a dogsitter and dealing with my cheap-ass slumlord and his so-called repairs, the solution was right there in front of me the whole time. Butch has done tons of traveling in his life, and as much as he hates it, he does fit under an airplane seat. He's quite the dapper little gentleman and knows how to comport himself publicwise. Sure, it'll cost more to fly him around and stay in a swankier, pet-friendly hotel in Philly, but the best way to solve any problem is to throw money at it. Of course, I may have no more money to throw by the time I get home, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Thank Dog for tie-in gigs!

Desperate Butch

No, that's not a sequel to "Delinquent Butch." That's me desperate to find someone to take care of my Boston Terrier while I'm away at NoirCon and Muskego. My usual dog sitter isn't able to watch him on this trip, and all my back ups are falling through one after the other. Every conceivable alternate or plan B has failed so I'm throwing this out to the internet hivemind.

Can any of my LA peeps recommend a trustworthy pet sitter? It would need to be someone who can keep Butch at their place, someone with a sub female or mellow senior dog (or better yet, no dog) since Butch has had issues with more dominant males. He's otherwise very well mannered, housetrained and friendly. Loves to play fetch and sleep under the covers. I'm absolutely at the end of my rope here, Faustketeers.



Look at this face! Don't let Butch go to the doggy slammer and end up locked up in a cage at the vet for two weeks. Rack your brains. Ask all your friends. Ask your mom. Please help Butch find a place to crash.

B-Con Follies, Part 4

Sunday is always my favorite day at B-Con. Lazy, low-key, more intimate. Time to catch up with friends and trade war stories. The highlight of my Sunday this year was getting a chance to hang with my pulp hero Bill Crider. I tried (and probably failed) not to act like some gushing fangirl, but seriously kids, have you seen this video?

But I also had to bid a way-too-soon goodbye to Martyn Waites, my beloved B-Con husband, who needed to split early in order to usher his exhausted family through a 12 hour purgatory of airports and timezones and tiny seats. Muskego just isn't gonna be the same without you, English.

Once Martyn was gone, we started to notice a disturbingly subtle Body Snatchers style takeover in the hotel bar. One by one, the crime writers were disappearing, being stealthily replaced by corporate drones from some kind of personal improvement seminar. "They're here already! You're next!!" Clearly, it was time to get the hell out of there.

So Russel and I beat a hasty retreat and took off on a long, rambling, rainy day adventure through the city, ostensibly to locate a new charger for my cell phone. Which never happened, but I couldn't have cared less. Good food, better conversation and no fucking schedule. Perfect ending to a fantastic weekend.

After I dropped the Scotsman off at his dodgy airport motel, I headed out to the Motel Muller, where I'd be spending the night. Since I didn't have Donna and Ewan to share the drive back to L.A, my chewtoy made arrangements to fly up and chauffer me home. Because he's good like that. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to get away until the next day and so the Czar of Noir and his lovely Czarina kindly offered to put me up at their place. That's how I found myself reading pulp in bed with a strange pussy under my covers. Eddie's cat Tizzy had officially claimed me as her own, burrowing under the blankets with me and making biscuits on my belly. Sadly, this was the most action I got all weekend.

All and all Bouchercon By the Bay was a blast. But, hey, if that wasn't enough Faust for you, I'll also be attending NoirCon and Murder and Mayhem in Muskego. Hope to see you there.

B-Con Follies, Part 3

Those zillion things I neglected to mention in the first post seem to be breeding. I've resigned myself to the fact that I can't possibly remember everything, but there are one or two leftover memories from Friday night that deserve a quick mention before we move on to Saturday. Like my spectacular wardrobe malfunction and the subsequent emergency ladies room sewing circle. Lauren Henderson saw my distress and kindly offered to help with the needle and thread. Control freak that I am, I insisted on shoving a stick between my teeth and stitching up my own décolletage, Rambo-style. It wasn't pretty, but it kept the big guns securely in place for the rest of the evening. Which was a good thing, considering the fact that this year's Reacher Party was right there in the hotel bar and open to everybody. I mean every-fucking-body. So if I was gonna flash the whole convention, I'd prefer it to be intentional.

Oh yeah and remember that business about the hotel bar closing at midnight? Well, it soon became clear that this was a 7 day policy, set in fucking stone. Clearly the hotel management was more interested in following ze orders than collecting the thousands of dollars all those thirsty crime writers would have spent if they'd kept the bar open just two extra hours. I don't drink and even I was intensely annoyed by this. Having a hotel bar where everyone hangs together in the evenings makes it so much easier to find your friends and maximize your socializing. Without that central hub, small groups disappear to alternate locations, making it nearly impossible to find anyone. Guilty as charged, since that's exactly what I did. I grabbed the four people standing closest to me at the time and dragged them up to Eddie's suite. So apologies to anyone else who was looking for me Friday night.

In the end, I came away feeling like I'd missed connecting with so many people this year. I think I talked to Megan Abbott for all of ten seconds. I sat on Reed Farrel Coleman's lap for the amount of time it took to snap a photo but that was the last I saw of him. I'm hoping to make up for that at NoirCon.

But nevermind all of that. On to Saturday.

A little backstory. When Claire Lamb first asked me to participate in the reading of Declan Hughes' play "I Can't Get Started," I said no. After all, I'm a writer, not an actor. Claire assured me that it wasn't really acting at all, that it would be easy and that we'd just be standing at podiums reading from scripts. Plus, all the cool kids were doing it. What could I say? I reluctantly agreed. Little did I know I'd wind up with one of the toughest parts, half of a husband and wife screenwriting team. The dialog was all rapid-fire snappy patter and precise comic timing. And, to add insult to injury, I'd be paired up with Mark Billingham, an actual actor whose ease with all his roles and obvious natural talent made me feel kinda like the awkward, ugly friend standing next to the supermodel. Oh, and did I mention that our first (and only) rehearsal would be at 8:30 AM on Saturday morning?

After a late night and very little sleep, I staggered down to the green room at the appointed hour, hanging onto my script like a life preserver. The cast was all friends, Allison Gaylin, Martyn Waites, Megan Abbott, Brett Battles, Declan himself and, of course, my stunt husband Mark. I figured if I was gonna humiliate myself, at least I'd be in good company. But horror of horrors, when I arrived for the rehearsal I quickly discovered that there was no coffee and no breakfast of any kind. Unless you counted the huge jar of Red Vines. Saint Claire saved my life with a large cup of Java and after securing a full pot to keep us all going, we were as ready for it as we'd ever be. Some of us more ready than others.

Mark was really fantastic and leaning on him was probably the only thing that got me through it. He even agreed to meet with me again, just before the reading, to help me go over the toughest section one more time. Thanks a million, Mark. I take back that crack about your nipples.

After all my angst, in the end it was a blast, and I'm really glad I agreed to be part of it. Declan stole the show with his cameo as the creepy brother, but I think I did okay too, all things considered. Hey, don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

The funniest thing about my performance was the number of compliments I got on my crying. I thought I was playing it broad and camp, but all the guys in the audience thought my crocodile tears were amazingly realistic. Too bad I'm not the kind of dame who uses crying to get what I want out of men. I could probably take over the world like that.

In addition to the play, I also had my panel on Saturday. The title was "I AIN'T MARCHIN' ANYMORE-Genre Wars" and my fellow panelists were Chris Mooney, Dreda Say Mitchell, Christopher Rice, and Simon Tolkien. (Yes, Dreda was still alive at this panel, so I didn't actually kill her on Thursday night.) A great discussion with a smart, diverse group. Also thanks to Libby Hellmann for stepping in at the last minute to act as moderator.

Once those two commitments were in the rearview mirror, I was footloose and fancy free. Done with everything official for the weekend. Unfortunately, I had to kiss the Harrogate girls goodbye earlier that afternoon, but I finally caught up with Maria again later that evening and the two of us dragged Russel off for celebratory sushi. (Dinner, you perverts! Get your mind out of the gutter.) And speaking of perversion and the Scotsman, I'm still kicking myself for somehow losing/deleting the best photo of the weekend. Even better than Erica's blackmail photo. All I'll say about it is that it involved Russel, a fist full of twenties and a can of whipped cream. Later that night, Russel was so drunk that he poked himself in the eye. Enough said.

So that was Saturday. Tune in tomorrow for the last exciting episode of B-Con Follies: The Big Adios, and the Aftermath.

B-Con Follies, Part 2

Reading over yesterday's post, I realize I've missed a zillion little things. Like finally meeting Val McDermid (was that Wednesday night?) and getting a peek under supervillain Ali Karim's sinister white glove at his irradiated Godzilla hand (Thursday?) But if I let myself do the full on Romper Room magic mirror list of every single person I saw, we'll be here all day. So, onward into Friday.

Friday lunch had been set aside for catching up with Vince and Rosemarie Keenan. I'm still cursing myself for not snapping a photo with them, but I want to go on public record saying I knew them when. That way, I can collect major coolness points for being ahead of the curve after their mega-bestselling mystery series takes off like a rocket. Which it will. Because it's fucking brilliant. You'll see.

After lunch was my turn to sign at the B-Con 2011 table. And while nobody actually asked me to sign anything, I still made good use of my time by introducing children of deprived nations to the venerable American pastime known as Mad Libs.

It was Jon Jordan's idea to have each writer at the table fill out a Mad Lib for Jen, who was not able to attend this year. But everybody (well, everybody who isn't some kind of foreign commie) knows that Mad Libs are no fun if you read them before filling them out. So when Russel McLean and Martyn Waites made the mistake of wandering by, the unsuspecting authors found themselves Shanghaied into Mistress Christa's Mad Lib Grammar 101.

Martyn went first and proved to be surprisingly rusty on the difference between verbs (or "doey words") and adjectives (or "describy words.") I'm starting to suspect he may have made up that business about being a professor at Cambridge just to get me to marry him. On the other hand, sharing a poetic, deeply moving phrase like "Invasion of the Cucumber Snatchers" is better than crotchless panties for keeping the romance alive in a long term relationship.

Then it was the young Scotsman's turn, and Russel managed to make Professor Waites look like Grammar Goddess June Casagrande. But I have to give him extra credit for his creative use of the word "cuntybaws." Possibly a Mad Lib first.

Once the Mad Libs were done, I finally hooked up with buxom B-Con newbie Maria Alexander. Needless to say, she'd been fighting off amorous authors left and right from the moment she arrived, but those dorks had absolutely no idea who they were dealing with. Just because she's new to B-Con doesn't mean she was born yesterday, boys, and anyone dumb enough to ignore the rattle is gonna get bit.

I really wanted to make it over to the Mullholland Books party but Friday was also Toastmaster Eddie Muller's birthday, so I wound up at his birthday dinner instead. Me and the Czar of Noir go way back. So far back that I agreed to do a write up about him for the program book. And remember, kids, I'm the gal who hates blurbing so much that I agonize for weeks over one lousy line.

Which brings me to the thing that I really hated about this year's B-Con. No Donna Moore. Donna's input really made that write up for Eddie. She should have been next to me at that birthday dinner.

I had such big plans for that broad. We were gonna drive back to LA together. I had Hollywood historian Kari Bible booked to give us a private tour of Hollywood Forever. Pleasant Gehman helped me plan a punk rock walking tour of legendary dives and squats. Joan Renner gave me locations and addresses for a mini Bukowski tour and was gonna meet us for drinks at Musso and Frank. I even have a pair of size 8 Iron Fist shoes sitting in my closet, waiting for Donna. Bottom line, B-Con's just not the same without her. So get well soon, dollface. We all missed you like crazy.

But, Donna-shaped hole notwithstanding, we still kicked out all the stops for Eddie's birthday. After we returned from the dinner, Judy, Martyn, Erica, Lauren Henderson and I headed up to Eddie's suite to continue the merrymaking. I believe that was the infamous "elevator incident" in which Martyn and I decided to marry everyone in the elevator, including (if I remember correctly) a couple of nice older ladies who just happened to be staying in the hotel and had nothing to do with B-Con.

In Eddie's suite, I took my second favorite photo of my wife Judy. (This is my favorite) Martyn and I also tried and utterly failed to impress Erica with our plan for a hit TV series. However, I have a most excellent blackmail photo that may convince her to change her mind. Or if not, maybe I can use it to leverage my way into Harrogate.

Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of B-Con Follies: In Which Your Not-So-Humble Narrator REALLY Can't Get Started.

B-Con Follies, Part 1

On Wednesday Russel and I roadtripped up to San Francisco. We had a few dicey moments with a tailgating drunk in a Jag-You-Are, but thanks to the offensive driving skills of Leadfoot Faust, we escaped unscathed. Well, mostly unscathed. I may or may not be responsible for a grey hair or two on the young head of the Terribly Alert Scotsman. I live in LA, but I drive like a New Yorker.

When we hit the city, I ditched the Scotsman and the luggage at the con hotel and met up with Darren McKeeman. I didn't want to pay the outrageous parking fees at the hotel, so I'd made arrangements to park outside the city and take public transit back in. Darren kept me company along the way, since I knew there was pretty much no other chance of escaping Planet B-Con and seeing any of my local friends.

Once I got back to the hotel, I did manage to sneak away for a quick dozen at the Hog Island Oyster Bar. But then it was back to the hotel bar, where the crime writers were already stacking up and causing trouble. They stopped serving at midnight, but I didn't complain, since I was pretty worn out from the 5 hour drive up. Little did we know, this closed-at-midnight thing wasn't just a weekday policy. But more on that later…

Thursday started off like it always does; lunch date with my B-Con husband Martyn Waites. (Though it must be noted that our natural inclination towards polygamy reached new and absurd heights this year. By the end of the weekend, we wound up married to nearly a dozen different people. But don't worry, English. You'll always be my primary. Well, you and Judy Bobalik.) Anyway, Martyn had already been in SF for nearly a week with my sisterwife Linda and their kids, but somehow he'd managed to restrain himself from visiting Kayo Books. Needless to say, that was our first stop.

Here's what I picked up:

The Computer Kill, by Raymond Banks (!) – "Private eye Sam King tangles with a brain – electronic variety – and a flock of bodies – some blonde, some brunette, some dead."

Run, Killer, Run, by Lionel White – "A hunted hood, a wily wanton and a frenzied flight into hell!"

Strip Alley and Sin Doll, by Orrie Hitt "A novel which focuses on the hot picture racket, boldly revealing how girls are recruited – and why!"

The Woman He Wanted, by Daoma Winston "She begged for his brutal caresses."

New York Confidential, by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer "The big city after dark." (Map back!)

Rump-Mania (!!!) by Cliff Barrett "A documentary (HA!) of anal sodomy perversions as experienced by women to attain incredible forms of sexual pleasure."

And, yes, I really did buy that novelization of Zardoz.

Pulpdrunk and semi-delirious from pawing through stacks of sleaze and huffing the sweet smell of foxed paper, we staggered down the hill for lunch at the awesomely old-school Tadich Grill, the city's oldest restaurant.

The rest of Thursday was mercifully free of serious commitment. I wore my tightly tailored hound's-tooth dress from Pin Up Girl Clothing and hung around the hotel bar, stirring up more trouble and catching up with everyone I hadn't seen since last year.

Later that evening, Martyn introduced me to Sharon Canavar and Erica Morris, organizers of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. I in turn introduced them to the tikilicious Tonga Room. I think I almost killed poor jetlagged Dreda Say Mitchell by dragging her up Nob Hill, but she graciously forgave me, even though she ended up tapping out early on the evening. In the end, after several indoor thunderstorms, Polynesian Marvin Gay covers and deceptively strong fruity umbrella drinks, a good time was had by all. We even managed to catch a streetcar back down to the hotel, although we did have a slasher movie moment when Erica, who had been behind me just minutes earlier, suddenly disappeared. Fortunately we didn't split up to look for her, and no one went into the basement or took their top off. Well Mark Billingham took his top off, but clearly the homicidal maniac who'd nabbed Erica wasn't interested in man-nipples. I think Mark was more than a little disappointed.

We made it back alive, but the con hotel insisted on closing the bar at midnight again. (Are you starting to see a pattern?) A bunch of angry authors took off in search of a more accommodating bar, but that juicy stack of pulp was calling me, so I decided to make it an early night.

Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of B-Con Follies – Doey Words and Describy Words: In Which Professor Faust Teaches Mad Lib Grammar to Foreign Exchange Students.

Purple Heart

Today is "Spirit Day," a day to support GLBT youth and call attention to anti-gay bullying. This is an issue very close to my own hardboiled heart. Because believe it or not, I wasn't always the bulletproof bitch you see before you today.

When I was a young teenager, I was bullied almost every single day. Because I didn't fit in. Because I was weird. Different. Bisexual. A slut. A pervert. A freak. As a result, I was teased, emotionally tortured and beaten up. I was chronically truant, because I didn't want to face the bullies waiting for me in the school bathrooms and hallways.

I escaped into fiction, spending the majority of my time reading and writing in parks or on the subway. I went to the movies alone, got lost in imaginary worlds. My second hand portable typewriter was my best and only friend.

As I got older, I got tougher. I grew a thicker skin and learned not to care what other people thought about me. I poured all that anger and angst into hundreds of pages of unreadablely awful fiction. I kept at it, kept on writing every day and eventually the fiction wasn't so awful anymore. I survived and made it out the other side a better person because of what I'd been through.

Because I believe that kind of outsider's perspective is a critical part of the creative process. If life is a maze, then the popular people who fit in with their peers are like happy rats, only able to see the corridor they're in and one or two choices dead ahead. But people like us, who are forced outside the maze by bullying and exclusion, are able see the whole pattern. And that ability to see the big picture leads to a compulsion to describe what we see. In a strange way, those evil bitches who used to kick my ass in 8th grade did me a favor. They helped me become the writer I am today.

So if you're a queer student who's getting bullied in school, I feel your pain, kid. I really do. But hang in there, because it does get better, I swear. And someday, those fuckers who kick your ass after school will become miserable, pill-popping soccer moms and balding, alcoholic car salesmen and you'll become a unique, creative person whose life is an endless adventure, getting better and more interesting every day.

McLean in LA, Day 3

After dashing off to Arizona for a signing, Scottish crime writer Russel McLean returned to LA the next day, ready for round 3. We started off with a walking tour of Downtown LA that included various Chandler-related locations, the hotel where the Black Dahlia was last seen in one piece, the Bradbury Building where Blade Runner was filmed, and more. I didn't take nearly as many snaps as Russel, but the ones I did take are here.

From there we met up with fellow author and street food enthusiast Eric Stone and his buddy Bill for the Scotsman's first East Los Taco Crawl. We started the boy off right with Tacos El Korita, a truck that makes their own fresh tortillas to order. Unlike many of his fellow countrymen, Russel can really take the heat and was loving the wide variety of scorching salsas. Our crawl continued down Whittier Blvd, hitting a variety of carts, tables, trucks and trailers, including what had to be the strangest juice and smoothie truck of all time. Eventually we ended up where we always end up, at what is unquestionably the best al pastor stand on the east side. The modest, nameless table set up at Cesar Chavez and Hicks puts a hunk of pineapple on the top of the al pastor wheel, and something about the enzymes in the juice that trickles down as it cooks makes the meat unbelievably tender and perfect. It just doesn't get any better than that. Photos here.

Over the course of the crawl, we came up with what may be the best fusion street chow idea of all time. Haggis tacos! So if that whole writing thing doesn't work out for Russel, he can move to LA and run the world's first haggis taco truck. The menu will also include vegetarian "nopales and tatties" tacos (for Al Guthrie) and deep fried Twinkies for dessert. The truck itself will be plaid, with large painting of the Virgin de Guadalupe in tartan robes, surrounded by thistles instead of roses. Somebody get Jonathan Gold on the phone right now!

Coming up next, the Scotsman and the New York dame drive to San Francisco for b-con.

McLean in LA, Day 2

Day 2 I took the visiting Scotsman out of Porn Valley and into Hollywood. First we hit some of my favorite SciFi/Cult movie locations like Bronson Cave and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers bridge. Then it was all Film Noir and Chandler from there on out, with a little Bukowski and Tom Waits thrown in for flavor. We also drove up Mulholland, cruised around Lake Hollywood, and checked out Griffith Observatory. Then, only slightly sunburned, we headed back out to the Valley.

After Russel subjected me to the unspeakable horror of The Krankies, I felt I owed the boy some deep hurting. Obviously a traditional American Bad Movie BBQ was the way to go. I invited all my bad movie loving friends to hit the Scotsman with their best shot.

Keith Rainville brought this extra special nightmare fuel as our opening salvo. From there we ran highlights from such cheesetastic epics as Hercules in New York, The Curious Dr Humpp, Ship of Monsters, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Night of the Bloody Apes, Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood (featuring our own Maria Alexander's man pet as a zombie pimp) and the heavyweight champ of the evening, the awesomely awful Suburban Sasquatch.

Speaking of heavyweights, we wanted to make sure Russel kept his strength up so he could endure this kind of hardcore cinematic torture, so we thought we'd provide some familiar comfort food from his homeland. With an American twist, of course. In addition to the usual grilled hot dogs and steaks, CDV's roommates Adam and Lisa fired up the deep fryer and whipped up a batch of deep fried Twinkies. Not just deep fried, but deep fried in BACON FAT! And because they're just not unhealthy enough on their own, the lovely and talented Lili Chin continued the pork-for-dessert theme with her own homemade bacon ice cream. Let me repeat that, for the cheap seats: deep fried Twinkies with bacon ice cream.

Photographic evidence here.

Amazingly enough, Russel somehow survived both the no-holds-barred bad movie massacre and the artery-clogging deep fried belly bombs. I dropped him off in Burbank yesterday morning for a quick jaunt to Phoenix, and I'll be picking him up in a few hours for round 2 of his L.A. adventure.

McLean in LA, Day 1

Picked Russel McLean up at the Burbank airport yesterday. We ran the luggage out to CDV & Adam's place in Porn Valley (where Russel's crashing, since there's barely enough room for me and my dog in my miserable little ghetto shack) and then it was off to Westwood for his signing at the Mystery Bookstore. Kinda strange first impression of LA, going from the charmless minimall sprawl of the Valley to the sanitized, slightly unreal neighborhood of Planet UCLA surrounding the Mystery Bookstore. I'm hoping the East Los taco crawl I have planned for Tuesday night will more than make up for that.

We had some time to kill in Westwood before the signing, so we met up with Stephen Blackmoore, one of our sista hos on Pimp Daddy Guthrie's string. The three of us made a pilgrimage to Billy Wilder's grave. I snapped what I thought was probably the best photo of Russel ever taken in that graveyard, but you'll just have to take my word for it, because a faulty card reader ate all my photos.

And speaking of things that suck, what the hell happened to all my LA peeps yesterday? Because not one person showed up for Russel's signing. Not one. Way to make a Scotsman feel welcome, Angelenos. Afraid you were gonna hear that damned fan-dabi-dozi song from the Krankies or be subjected to the word "cuntybaws?" Anyway it was your loss, because we had a swell time hanging with Linda and the Mystery Bookstore staff. (Well, Sue Ann Jaffarian stopped by to take care of other business and graciously stayed to listen to Russel's explanation of why you need to move your sporin to the side for dancing. Thanks, Sue Ann!)

Then to cap it off, my plan to take Russel to see Point Break Live (yes, the Reeves/Swayze film, performed live on stage with an audience member chosen to play Johnny Utah) was foiled by inexplicable cancellation. We ended up taking a beautiful magic-hour drive up the coast to Topanga Canyon and then just heading back to Russel's crash pad for a lazy evening watching Strikeforce. In the end, this was probably for the best, because I think poor Russel really needed the downtime after his whirlwind tour. We tucked him in early and let the boy rest, because I've got even bigger plans for him today.

Don't worry, I'll be gentle. At first, anyway.