My latest gig for LAMAG is an article about the sexy mid-century artware created by a mysterious woman named Dorothy Kindell. The all-knowing interwebs offer very little concrete information about her personal life. Who was she? How did her family and other people in her community feel about her erotic figures during the 40s and 50s? She was clearly not ashamed of her work, since all her pieces are proudly signed with her full real name.

Check out this series of “stripper mugs.”



Not the kind of thing you’d expect from a woman in the 40s.

It seems like my research so far is revealing more questions than answers. I have no idea what I’m ultimately gonna find out about Dorothy Kindell, but the digging is half the fun.

Today, I’m going down to my pal Jane’s loft to watch an LAMAG shutterbug shoot her collection of Kindell figures and vessels.

You can see more of Kindell’s work here.

MWA-SoCal balloting has been concluded. The results:

Chapter President - Naomi Hirahara

Chapter Directors (two-year terms) - Deborah Atkinson, James Scott Bell,
Christa Faust, Darrell James, Pamela Samuels Young, Evan Kilgore

The new directors and Naomi as Chapter President take office on January 16, 2010.

Holiday music blaring in every public space. The bottomless consumer feeding frenzy. Mall rage.

But, hey, it's not all bad. There are some good things about the holiday season too, like Broguiere's egg nog, Matt Wallace in a Santa hat, and my annual viewing of BLAST OF SILENCE (best Christmas movie of all time.)

For Faustketeers who still feel the need to shower your not-so-humble narrator with gifts, the usual Amazon Wish List is up. Of course, I do encourage everyone to purchase any books on the list from indy sellers whenever possible. Email me for my mailbox addy if you need it.

I will also mention (as a not-so-subtle HINT) that this eBay seller has been putting up more and more mint condition vintage size five shoes from her late mother's extensive collection. I'm especially obsessed with 50's Spring-O-Lator mules, but any high heeled shoes from the 40's or 50's would make these tiny feet very merry.

I got an iPod Touch as an early xmas gift and one of the first things I did was load it with classic Outer Limits episodes. Don't need a big screen to enjoy them and if I'm stuck in an airport somewhere, I can watch them over and over again and never get sick of them.

However, there's something seriously mind-bending about listening to the Control Voice talk about controlling your "television set" on an iPod.

By now pretty much everyone who cares knows about the sale of my new book CHOKE HOLD and the film option for MONEY SHOT. However, for anyone out there whose still behind the curve, here's the deets:

From Publisher’s Marketplace:

Christa Faust’s Edgar Award-nominated MONEY SHOT, a tribute to vintage pulp fiction with a uniquely female twist, optioned to producer Daniel Ostroff (THE MISSING) with Jim Sonzero to direct and the author adapting, by Allan Guthrie of Jenny Brown Associates.

Also from Publisher’s Marketplace:

[SOLD] Edgar Award-nominated Christa Faust’s CHOKE HOLD, about the dangerous underground of the ever-expanding world of Mixed Martial Arts fighting, to John Schoenfelder at Thomas Dunne Books, by Allan Guthrie of Jenny Brown Associates (NA).

And there's a short summary of the new book on my page of the JBA website:

I’ll be talking kink and pulp on Talking Sex Radio tonight at 8pm PST.

If you’d like to watch the program, you need to sign into TSRNetwork.com. It's free, but you’ll need to set up a basic profile. If you are signed into TSRNetwork.com, you can also go into the chatroom during the program and send me messages and questions. Or you can call the show at 323/272-3536.

Since I have a day or two off from deadlines (sort of), I've been sorting and organizing my vintage shoe collection. I decided to start posting snaps of some of my favorites, mostly for my own entertainment. Nothing so organized as shoe of the month, or week, or anything like that. Just whenever.

So to kick things off, here's a pair of curvy, lipstick red leather pumps with black suede trim and an unusual spiky pattern on the toe. Probably late 40s early 50s. Labeled "Design by DeMarco."

Glasgow is a real city. Edinburgh is beautiful, but it looks kinda like a movie set built by elves. Glasgow is a place you could actually imagine living.

Remember the deadly salad I mentioned yesterday…

I started off that morning feeling a bit queasy. But hey, I only had one day in Glasgow and there was no way I was gonna miss hanging with Badsville Broad Donna Moore.

On the train ride to Glasgow, I started feeling seriously green around the gills. Awful, painful stomach cramps and more intense nausea. Hard bitch that I am, I was still determined to tough it out no matter what.

Donna met us at the Queens Street Station and it was easy to forget my dodgy belly for a while. We rode a double decker bus all around the city and instead of plugging into the canned audio tour, I had way more fun listening to Donna’s running commentary. “Here’s where I was half-mugged!” “Here’s where I threw a suitcase at my cheating boyfriend!”

We jumped off the bus at the Necropolis, an enormous, gorgeous cemetery on a hill overlooking the city. After a brief, fearful peek into a public toilet that had to be the second worst in Scotland, my ever increasing nausea demanded that I find a clean, private place to toss my cookies ASA fucking P. I’m sure thousands of Glaswegians have puked in the street before I got there, and will probably continue to do so now that I’m gone, but I’ve lived my entire adult life so far without throwing up in public and have no plans to start. Many people (heavy drinkers, most of them) seem quite cavalier about that sort of thing. Not me.

So, after evicting a goodly portion of the demon salad in a clean, inoffensive bathroom beneath the church gift shop, I felt a little less dire. We tromped around the Necropolis for a while, peering into mausoleums and snapping photos in the fading orange twilight. It was really beautiful, but before long, the nausea started creeping up on me again. I could no longer deny that I needed a visit to the chemist. Just some good old Pepto Bismol or the UK equivalent, and I’d be right as rain. Right?

So, off to Boots in the train station. One of the many amusing difference between Europe and the old US of A is that you can’t just walk into to a pharmacy and buy Pepto Bismol. You need to consult with a pharmacist.

After a bit of comedy in which I endeavor to explain my situation to a handsome Sikh pharmacist with a strong Glaswegian accent, I was finally able to make him understand that I had food poisoning but only seemed to be having problems in the upper half of my digestive tract, not the lower. He gave my symptoms a moment of sage-like reflection and then handed over the Pepto.

The kindly gal behind the counter gave me a handful of plastic bags to keep in my purse just in case and tut-tutted over the fact that it was rival city Edinburgh that served me the demon salad.

“Just remember,” she said as she rang me up. “Edinburgh made you sick, but Glasgow made you well!”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t well just yet.

We were planning to find a place where we could sit for a while so I could take the newly purchased Pepto and maybe sip a ginger-ale or something equally soothing. But on the way out of the train station, I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the next bathroom without embarrassing myself. So, there I was, faced with a choice between the scary public toilet or the street. It’s bad enough sitting on a train station toilet. Sticking your head in there is infinitely more horrifying. But in the end, my need for privacy overruled my fear and loathing. Really, it was no choice at all.

Of course, you need a coin to get in. Being American, I can’t make heads or tails out of the various pence in my pocketbook but Donna rescued me by pressing the right coin into my sweaty hand. I paid, pushed my way through the turnstile and made a run for it.

Whereupon I discovered that the Gents is right dead ahead, but the Ladies, for some inexplicable and cruel reason, is located up 400 flights of stairs. There were fewer steps inside the Wallace Monument than in that fucking toilet. Miraculously, I made it. Barely.

From there on out, my visit to Glasgow became infinitely less dramatic and much more fun. I got the damn Pepto down and even though I really wasn’t able to eat much of anything for the rest of the night, my stomach finally calmed the fuck down. It was great to meet and hang with Kieran G. and Donna’s boyfriend Ewan (not the guy who had a suitcase thrown at him!) I only wish I’d had more time. There’s plenty I more want to do in Glasgow, like hit Rebound and check out more restaurants when I can actually appreciate them.

Clearly, I need to go back.

I’ve been working overtime to make yet another deadline on yet another an unmentionable project. As a result, I haven’t had time to blog about my amazing trip to Scotland, or anything else for that matter. Well, the deadline’s been met and I have a few desperately needed days off, so here you go.

The eight hour flight to Heathrow was truly hellish. A grungy, overcrowded sardine tin filled with fussy toddlers and TB patients. When a flyweight like me doesn’t have enough room in the trade paperback sized seats, you know everybody on the plane’s gonna be homicidal before we hit the Atlantic. Sleep was not an option.

By the time I got to Edinburgh, I was near delirious, which made my first in-the-flesh meeting with Tartan Ninja Al Guthrie even more surreal. Al already had explicit instructions to make like we were on the run from the body snatchers and chase me around the city, at least until something resembling a reasonable bedtime.

Over the next couple of days, we walked all over the city. Edinburgh is a stunningly beautiful place, despite the ongoing construction of the “cunting trams” tearing up the streets. Here in L.A., my adopted teenage city, buildings from the 1920’s are considered “historic” and the only castles were built by movie moguls, magicians and Walt Disney.

We hit the Edinburgh castle, of course, but we also visited some of the coolest cemeteries I’ve ever seen. Wandered along winding cobblestone streets and poked around in used book shops. Climbed both the Duane Swierczynski memorial staircase and the Salisbury Crags. Descended into the ancient underground city through Mary King’s Close. Al was a wonderful, patient and endlessly amusing tour guide.

Castle notwithstanding, I was really impressed with the food. I was expecting everything to be greasy, bland and starchy. Haggis with neeps and tatties and deep fried Mars bars. Truth is, Eddy-B is a surprisingly foodie city. The Dogs was hands down my favorite restaurant, with haut-vegetarian David Bann in a close second. Of course, I had haggis too, and Irn Bru. I went to a café which claimed to be the birthplace of Harry Potter, where I nearly made the cute, chubby barrista drop her lattes with my “fantastic accent.” Unfortunately, I also managed to get food poisoning along the way, not from haggis, but from a deadly salad. Figures. Should have had the deep fried pizza. But more on that later.

Tromping through castles and other historic sites was a blast, but I really had the most fun hanging with my Scottish peeps, including Russel McLean who came down from someplace much less cool to hang with us.

The last word on Eddy-B is my new favorite: Cuntybaws. I particularly like using this exclamation in a hard New York accent.

(Doesn’t Cuntybaws sound like a mean old troll who eats naughty children in a Norwegian fairy tale? He also has an ugly old sister named Fannybaws.)

Back home in L.A. and lagged to hell and back. There'll be words when I'm more coherent but meanwhile here are some pix, from Edinburgh, Stirling, and Glasgow.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this hot button issue, particularly the complaints about gory serial killer books both written and read by women. With everything else going on, my chances of actually finding the time to really tear into this interesting and thorny topic are currently slim to none, so, while I’m gone, here’s a question for the virtual hivemind.

Do you think that seeing a female byline on a serial killer book gives female readers “permission” to be titillated by extreme violence against women in a way that would be uncomfortable for them if the same book were written by a man?

Discuss.

edited to add - I'm not talking about well written books here, I'm talking more about bestselling junkfood books. And I'm not talking about smart readers either, I'm talking about average, airport/beach readers.

and here's that Jessica Mann quote, context for the click-phobic.

"When a female corpse appeared on the jacket of a crime-writing colleague's new book, she pointed out to her publisher that the victim in the story was actually a man. Never mind that, came the reply, dead, brutalised women sell books, dead men don't. Nor do dead children or geriatrics. Which explains why an increasing proportion of the crime fiction I am sent to review features male perpetrators and almost invariably female victims — series of them. Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive. "

I’ve been fighting off the superflu, constructing my pre-travel list (item #1: Buy More Sweaters!) and otherwise getting ready for my trip to Edinburgh. I have an insane amount of work to finish before I leave on Sunday, but I’m excited to hang with all my Scottish peeps, including Tartan Ninja Al Guthrie, Russell McLean, and more Donna Moore too. I don’t know what sort of internet access I’ll have, but I’ll do my best to post as much as possible along the way.

Are vampires like fantasy pimps for middle class girls? He’s a handsome, possibly dangerous older guy who picks you out of all the other girls at school, who really loves you and makes you feel special. Then he wants to “turn” you (out) and asks you to do something kind of exciting but also very wrong, but you’re willing because you love him.

Is there some common thread in what appeals to most teenage girls that makes both pimps and vamps seem so sexy and irresistable?

Thoughts?

Last night was the big night, the annual Bowling for Boobies fundraising tournament. Not only did Team Sisters in Crime raise over 6000 dollars to help women with breast cancer, but we also had a fantastic time.

Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself!

Went to a local MMA tournament yesterday to cheer for a young fighter who helped me research my latest novel. It was ungodly hot and rank in a way that only a high school gymnasium filled with nervous, sweaty, hormonally charged teenage boys can be. I still had a great time people watching and snapping photos of the fighters.

By Sunday at b-con, I’m usually pretty punchy. This year was no exception. Another well-documented phenomenon in b-con physics is the “black hole bar effect.” This is why it’s so hard to achieve escape velocity no matter how late it is or how tired and burnt out you feel. You fight your way to the perimeter, determined to call it a night, but the next thing you know the gravitational sling-shot effect has funneled you back into the center of the bar. This mysterious force is particularly powerful on Saturday nights.

Despite the late night in the black hole, I still managed to get myself up Sunday morning for the free book feeding frenzy. I didn’t sign up as an author and didn’t want to brave the crowds to try and score five free books that I’d need to squeeze into my already overstuffed suitcase, but I was curious to see how it would work out.

It was nuts!

Best moment of the morning was Anthony Neil Smith tossing his free book tickets off the second story walkway into the rock-concert crowd.

Afterwards, Jon Jordan was talking about taking a field trip to a local comic shop and invited me along. I had to get packed up and check out, since I needed to be at the airport by 3pm, so I bowed out. Unsurprisingly, I found they were still there in the lobby bar when I returned. I guess the black hole bar effect is still hard to break, even during the day.

I was still waffling about going along with the large group by the time they broke free from the bar. I did have a little time to kill, but not all that much and didn’t want to get stuck out in the wilds of Indianapolis and end up late to the airport. In the end, I’m really glad I went because a) I needed to break out of the habitrail and breathe some real non-recycled air and more importantly b) that was really the only time I got to spend with Peter Rozovsky. Last year, it seems like I spent more time hanging with him than almost anyone else, and so this year I felt severely deficient in the Rozovsky department.

The punchline to this little outing was that the comic shop was closed. We wound up wandering like lost souls through the huge Borders down the street, but I did end up buying Volume One of The Walking Dead, which I read on the plane to punish the uptight yuppie broad in the seat next to me. She deserved it. She was reading Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

All in all it was a great con. Looking forward to San Francisco 2010.

Saturday. Right.

Well of course the big event on Saturday was the Anthony Awards. I managed to lose gracefully to the very sweet and funny Julie Hyzy’s culinary mystery State of the Onion but I’m still bitter over losing Best Cover to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I mean, really, it’s not a bad cover, but better than Money Shot? I think not.

Later than night, the Reacher party at the amusingly named Slippery Noodle. Very cool place with a live blues band, but way too loud for me, since I was already well on my way to developing the inevitable b-con Wolfman Jack voice. I tapped out after about twenty minutes, but not before having a chance to meet and shout briefly at Jason Pinter.

But the really memorable moment that night was sighting the astounding and now legendary Chicken Limo!

Don’t expect strict continuity here. I’m still way too jetlagged.

Of course, since our zombie walking tour of Indianapolis has overshadowed the rest of Thursday in my jetlagged brain, I neglected to mention that I also accepted the Crimespree Award for Money Shot, didn’t win the Barry, and nearly fell out of my dress.

So, on to Friday. I had a nine am panel, which after our misadventure the night before seemed particularly cruel. “More Noir Than You Are.” I had no idea what I could possibly say about noir that hasn’t been said before and better, but in the end, I think it went extremely well. We had a packed house, and the sharp, funny and always entertaining Victor Gischler kept things lively. Donna did a fantastic write up of our panel (so I don’t have to) and made me sound like I actually knew what I was talking about. (Must have been the foot massage.) It was also a real pleasure to meet my fellow panelist Charlie Newton. He’s a genuinely fascinating character and I can’t wait to read his novel Calumet City (next on the TBR pile.) I wish I’d gotten more of a chance to hang with him.

After that, I was off the leash. No more responsibilities. I celebrated my freedom by indulging in another miraculous one-on-one lunch, this time with Reed Farrel Coleman. It’s such a rare treat to be able to sneak away from the b-con crowds for a meal with less than 47 people and I’d already gotten away with it once. Of course, I’d pay for my presumption later that night…

I managed to hit Megan’s panel “The Dark Side of the Fair Sex” and met some new kids on the block, including Guthrie stablemate John Rector and fellow vintage shoe whore Carolina Bertrand. I hung in the bar and caught up with old friends, avoiding all the publisher parties and being generally lazy and unmotivated until the dreaded dinner hour rolled around.

Why is going out to eat so damn complicated at conventions? It’s like there’s some form of inescapable particle physics that clusters everyone together at the atomic level, making it impossible to get away from the hotel with less than nine other people. At least two people you meant to include end up getting left behind and the one person you actually wanted to have dinner with ends up at the opposite end of six pushed-together tables while you end up sandwiched between someone you were hoping to avoid and a well-meaning but socially challenged fan who’s already had seventeen beers on an empty stomach.

That night I managed to get sucked into TWO consecutive group dinners, both at the same mediocre chain restaurant, like some weird, culinary version of Groundhog Day. I didn’t actually manage to get anything to eat until nearly 10 pm. Fortunately, I wound up with Sean Chercover on my end of the table, who was still relatively sober, hygienically inoffensive and, as always, great company.

After my clean shaven companion and I returned to the con hotel and went our separate ways, I realized that the cool bar recommended by the cute counter girl at the barber shop was the very same bar in which the Black Mask party was set to take place later that evening. I’d already made plans to meet Donna Moore for dinner and for lack of a better idea, we figured we’d give the counter girl’s Tapas place a try and then hit the Black Mask party.

I met Donna and Martyn at the allotted hour and we headed out into the wilds of Indianapolis, armed only with this map:



The black dot on Washington is the barber shop. The unreadable blur near the center is the Tapas restaurant. The X in the upper right is supposedly the Dorman Street Saloon.

I have a very good sense of direction and rarely get lost, even in cities I’ve never visited. We figured we’d head in the general direction of the Tapas place but stay flexible in case we saw something we liked better on the way. We didn’t, and the restaurant turned out to be exactly where the cute counter girl had indicated. We found it without a hitch, which clearly made us cocky. Donna and Martyn got a few pomegranate margaritas into them (I had no such excuse) and we decided we’d hoof it to the Dorman Street Saloon. On the map it looked like we were already half way there.

The map is not to scale.

The first leg of our epic, post apocalyptic pub crawl took us through clusters of empty “Luxury Condominiums” stuffed between raw, industrial buildings and sorry-looking gas stations. It felt like we were on an abandoned movie set. Once we passed under the freeway, we wandered into even grimmer territory. Shabby Victorian houses and more unmarked industrial buildings. I kept expecting to see Mrs. Bates silhouetted in an upper window as we passed. We only encountered a single live human, who immediately ran away from us as we approached. We were convinced that zombies were about to come shambling out of the shadowy alleys and eat our brains. At that point, it didn’t seem like such a bad alternative.

Also, keep in mind, Donna was wearing these shoes.

Although it isn’t obvious in the lousy phone photo, the pattern on her shoes is tiny ice cream cones. Horribly appropriate, since by the time we got to the intersection where the saloon was supposedly located, our feet were nearly frozen solid.

So there we were, standing at Michigan and Dorman street. There was nothing even remotely resembling a bar for as far as we could see in any direction. Still no humans, but we eventually spotted an empty cop car. No idea what had happened to the occupant (zombies?) but by the time we had given up all hope of ever finding this damn bar, the missing cop came out of a nearby house. Checking out a prowler report for a beautiful young housewife who’s husband works nights, maybe? I figured we should send a Brit over to ask for directions, but the cop was not swayed by Martyn’s “posh” accent (note the thick layer of sarcasm between those quotation marks.) He tried to blow us off by claiming he couldn’t help us unless we had an exact address. Lucky for me, I’d put the addy into my phone when I got the Black Mask invite and the uptight bastard was shamed into admitting that the bar was four zig-zagging blocks north.

Possibly the longest four blocks of my life. In fact, the less said about those last four blocks the better.

Amazingly enough, we made it. The Black Mask party was already in full swing when we arrived, full of happy, tipsy writers who had been ferried to the bar in a warm, cherry ‘38 Cadillac. I wanted to kick every one of them in the shins, but my frozen foot might have shattered on contact.

Since I felt responsible for leading my foreign friends astray, I bought them a round and gave poor Donna a desperately needed foot massage. Normally you’d have to pay $4.99 a minute to listen to the kinds of sounds that were coming out of her over the course of that massage. That and the ride back to the hotel in the ‘38 Caddy made the whole crazy misadventure worthwhile. Plus, it does make for a pretty entertaining story.

In addition to the jetlag and mental exhaustion I suffer every year post b-con, there’s also this weird kind of humor decompression that I go through. I always get very tight, very quickly with friends I haven’t seen in a year and a whole crop of complex, multi-layered private jokes develop over the course of the weekend. When I get back to the civilian world, it always takes me a day or two to realize that the people around me have no idea what I’m talking about when I say “long handled saucepan.”

That being said, here’s the Cliff Notes.

I arrived late Wednesday night to find the hotel bar already filled with troublemakers. I didn’t stay too long, just long enough to reconnect with old friends and meet a few new ones.

I was staying in one of the spillover hotels and the entire convention center complex was set up like a giant hamster habitrail for humans. There were glass tubes connecting the hotels, the expo center and a huge mall so you never had to actually venture outside. Very Logan’s Run. On Thursday morning I managed to navigate my way through the tubes and find the registration table. First stop, the dealers room.

There were hardly any vintage paperbacks this year, which was a good thing. I managed to get out the door with only two. A lot of people were bitching that the dealers room was nothing but 4000 dollar collectable hardbacks but I couldn’t complain. It made packing on Sunday much easier. Unlike Badsville Broad Donna Moore, who had already bought nine pairs of shoes before lunch.

Speaking of lunch, I’ve developed a b-con routine of lunch with Martyn Waites (if two years in a row counts as a routine.) Last year we did sushi, but this year was all about the meat. (Insert your own gratuitous meat joke here. I’m fresh out because I think we already cracked pretty much every single one that exists and then some over the course of that meal.) We wound up in this insane Brazilian steak house that had an all-you-can-eat set up where guys in MC Hammer pants come around with huge slabs of meat stuck on swords and pile it on your plate until you tap out or die from cholesterol poisoning. I think I ate more meat at that lunch than in the whole rest of my life.

On our walk back to the hotel, we stumbled upon Red’s Classic Barber Shop. Martyn had been talking about needing a hair cut and I was dying to check the place out, so we went in.

Over the past few years, I’ve come close to despair regarding the state of men’s grooming. I’m horrified by the trend of young men sporting homeless bum beards and unkempt, raggedy bedhead. The existence of a place like Red’s gives me hope that all is not lost.

They were able to fit Martyn in right away for a shave and a hair cut, so I got to hang with the cute counter girl and chat about vintage clothing. I scored a fantastic handmade silk bow tie for my pop. Meanwhile, the counter girl gave me the lowdown on what was worth doing in Indianapolis. She told me she also worked in a Tapas restaurant and mentioned a bar called the Dorman Street Saloon. She even drew me a very detailed little map showing both the restaurant and the bar. Remember this map, because it will take center stage the next episode of my b-con (mis)adventure.