BIO

KIERAN SHEA’s fiction has appeared in dozens of venues including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Dogmatika, Word Riot, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Crimefactory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir ...as well as in some beefy-looking anthologies most of which will make you question the tether of his shiny, red balloon. To his self-deprecating astonishment he's also been nominated for the Story South’s Million Writers Award twice without sending the judges so much as a thank you note. He co-edited the satiric transgressive fiction collection D*CKED: DARK FICTION INSPIRED BY DICK CHENEY and his debut novel KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY is out now from Titan Books. Kieran divides his time between 38°58′22.6″N- 76°30′4.17″W and 39.2775° N, 74.5750° W.

9/15/09

Rakoff: Give That Man a Klondike Bar

9-15. First anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers. Super-duper meltdown caused by swollen decades of expansion and deregulation and greedy weasels roaming free and eating everything in sight. Under-capitalized banks hawking toxic securities akin to selling you the pretty, little gun you slid into your own mouth. Gun oil is tasty, is it not? The sheer hubris, the greed. If Buddy Christ were around, I'm sure the tables would not only be tossed, but piled high and set aflame like a high school bonfire, every last one of the scumsuckers slow-roasted while being forced to eat their own taloned feet. Sure, the fix has always been in, but it still distresses me. The vastness leaves me nonplussed. Often I've started to pull together a story that makes mincemeat of these bastards (wasn't it Chandler who said follow the money?), but I always stumble on the financial complexities and it's hard to find an empathetic character. But someday, baby, someday...I'm gunning for you Wall Street. Class war, you don't %$#@*& KNOW class war. But every once in a while, a hero, an honest man enters. Let's hear it for horse sense and chutzpah. Give 'em hell, Jed. But watch your back. Watch your back.