Stress City – A Big Book Of Fiction By 51 DC Guys
Stress City, A Big Book of Fiction by 51 DC Guys, contains the short story The Conjecture Chamber, by James J Patterson! Stress City is available from Amazon, the Writer’s Center, from the Politics & Prose Bookstore, and for a very limited time, yours truly, by writting to [email protected]. Hey, check out the groovy, psychedelic, rad cover here!
My wife, poet Rose Solari, and I, drove down from a writing retreat in Canada, braving a flash flood, crazy weather, and the DC summer heat, to host the publication reading at Washington DC’s prestigeous Politics and Prose bookstore. “It may have been the best event I’ve ever held,” said publisher Richard Peabody. The bookstore was jammed with writers and patrons of the literary arts, and the nine readers including Brian Gilmore, Dave Housley, Richard McCann, Charles Larson, David Nicholson and myself gave pithy, entertaining snippets of our work, then took a thoughtful, playful, and refreshing Q & A from the hosts and audience. A highlite for some (ahem) was Rose Solari pretending to bang her head against a bookshelf behind Jim Patterson, as he was delivering a rather eloquent and humorous anecdote for the audiences delight and personal edification.
Where do some men draw the line? Brian Gilmore has a story about a man living in South East Washington whose car keeps getting broken into. For him, the last straw is when the thieves broke into the trunk through the back seat and made off with his brand new collection of jazz cd’s by the narrator’s favorite musicians. His odyssey through DC’s black market to get his cd collection back is a harrowing as well as hilarious travelogue through parts of the Nation’s Capital few get to witness. Oh yeah, and help yourself to his collection, it includes Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle (from which the author takes the title of the piece) and Duke’s Live at Newport, Thelonious Monk’s Criss Cross, and Monk’s Dream, Louis Armstrong’s The Best of Louis Armstrong, and Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, and King Oliver’s King Oliver and his Creole Orchestra, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, and The Best of King Oliver.
Another favorite of mine is a trilogy of thoughts about Nixon’s last days on earth by David Everett. Suffice to say he renders possibly America’s biggest asshole, his last thoughts, and subsequent reincarnation, superbly.
And then, of course, there is Dave Housley and his story about Goliath, a fundamentalist Baptist Christian talking dog. Goliath gives us more than a mere guilt trip.
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Richard Peabody is an Eeyore type who eschews praise and fidgets angrily when people linger too long over his many accomplishments.
Too bad.
It was the success he’s had publishing no less than three volumes of fiction by DC area women which induced him to cross back over the gender divide with this big book of fiction by men who hail from The Capital of the Empire. Iconoclastic as ever, Peabody has chosen writers from deep behind the scenes of DC’s intellectual community. Peabody has a knack for hearing the most unique voices from among the many deserving minds that populate any vibrant literary scene and has a tireless and courageous impulse to unleash the fury on this unsuspecting burg known as DC. That makes him a hero to the thousands of people whose work he has put into the world, and now, after 52 volumes of the anthology series Gargoyle, and dozens of books such as Stress City, Mondo Barbi, Kiss the Sky (essays about guitar legend Jimi Hendrix), Peabody continues with his beaver-like tenacity to publish. He is a miracle. He is the type of man around whom a movement could be formed. It’s about time the writer’s who might never have been published without him, and the others who have benefitted from his largess, stood up and gave the “I am Spartacus!†salute to this fascinating man.
“Rick Peabody is at the very least as good a writer as anyone he has ever published,†I said at the end of the ceremony announcing the publication of Stress City. “He is a treasure, and a big part of what makes being a writer from Washington DC so rich and exciting. Rick always makes you feel like you are part of something bigger,†said Rose Solari.
More about Rick from me soon.
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In coming editions of The Current Harangue, I’ll be reporting on what people have to say about some of the topics discussed here on JamesJPatterson.com. I’ll be taking your comments and boiling them down into a compendium of ideas. If you respond by clicking the “comments†button on the home page understand that I will use what you have to say and when appropriate give your name, or whatever handle you give me. Treat it like a letter to the editor if you like. I prefer this to blogging, as a blog can get a little superficial and, well, lame. Just remember, that I am biased, subjective, and have feelings like you do, and we should get along just fine.
Your pal,
– JJP