Gary Phillips, author of One-Shot Harry, is my guest. Gary has been a community activist, labor organizer and has published various novels, comics, short stories as well as editing several anthologies including Orange County Noir (which is how we met; I have a story in the Akashic anthology) and the award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was a senior story editor on FX’s Snowfall, about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. His newest novel is One-Shot Harry, which has been receiving quite a bit of love from the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. On the show we discuss why he set his novel in the early 60s, loglines, creating a photographer protagonist, and so much more. 

Kim Dower, West Hollywood poet laureate, instructor at UCLA Extension and Antioch LA, and book publicist, and I discuss her latest volume, I Wore This Dress for You, Mom (Red Hen Press). They talk about inspiration, on not getting an MFA, what to do when you hit a wall, and more.

T. Jefferson Parker, author of the new novel, A Thousand Steps (Forge) and I talk about the book he’s wanted to write for years, finding his voice, rituals, and more.

This show was especially fun for me because I got to talk with Mark Wish, editor of Coolest American Stories 2022, an anthology that includes my story, “Blue Martini,” along with stories I loved by two other writers in the book, Mary Taugher and David Ebenbach.