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.

2/2/12

My Other Favorite Noir: French Week (Cont.)

I suppose I could go off at length about this dish, but let's just say I discovered it early in my youth and parcel the indulgence out now, maybe treating myself once a year (so bad for you, but sooooo good). Always thrilled to the core when I find a bistro or butcher hawking it. Can't handle the idea? Consider yourself uninvited to my kitchen. You might find it mentioned in a Bruen novel--"black" or "blood pudding". Charcuterie's true star--to wit, "...boudin noir — blood sausage — is one of France’s oldest charcuterie preparations. It’s part of a sausage making tradition in France that has lasted well over 2000 years. “There is evidence of the activities of the lardarius, the Gaulish charcutier, in a number of bas-reliefs and inscriptions found at Narbone, Bordeaux and Cologne, and at Rheims, where a bas-relief shows two of these specialists at work…. All the items of charcuterie shown in the relief are easily identifiable: [blood sausages], strings of sausage, joints of pork, pig’s heads.” As my old boss once said, "Oh, man. It's goddamn delicious." Of course it is. Anthony Bourdain echoed the sentiment, "...some of the best eating on earth." Onward.