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.
2/1/12
Laissez-Moi Tranquille
A few posts ago I mentioned I recently cruised through the late Warren Zevon's biography I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD and, well, since I'm half-heartedly calling this "French Week" here on the blog I thought I'd include a famous French song Zevon once covered...Serge Gainsbourg's Laissez-Moi Tranquille. Need a translation? Leave me alone. Now, there's a writer-ish sentiment. Writers, by and large, are isolated pricks--often cranky and locked in horrific, artistic battles within their heads, at least that's been my impression. Really, I dare you--show me a bubbly 24/7 crime writer. (Taps foot, checks watch.) Not so easy is it? It's also interesting to note that Zevon was a huge fan of noir/mystery books, palling around with iconic fat cats like MacDonald, Crumley, Hiaasen, etc. (Carl Hiaasen, in fact, was a good friend in the third act of Zevon's truly self-destructive life.) At one point the original "excitable boy" even tried to dash off a detective novel believe it or not, and when I read a diary excerpt that he once tried to hit on Vicki Hendricks I had to laugh out loud (we all know Vicki is the silky, bee's knees, no?) No wonder so many writers I meet day in and day out dig Zevon. Humor, horror, violence, wry eyes cast on a duplicitous and doomed world. Splendid isolation indeed.