BruenFest begins

That’s what I’m dubbing the monthlong tour that Ken Bruen is starting on today in New York City with a PR lunch hosted by his American publishers, St. Martin’s Press. Once that ends, the drinking begins…

Yes, there’s a small — OK, not so small — part of me that is very sad and a bit jealous that I cannot be there, especially considering who will be around for the signing and, of course, the drinking afterwards.  But for those who don’t know about it yet and are in the New York area, get yourselves over to the Upper East Side tomorrow night and hang out with Bruen and his crew at Black Orchid Bookshop starting at 7 PM.

I’ll just content myself with the stories to follow — especially of rotten hangovers the next morning…

And to get you started, check out the outtakes from Duane Swierczynski’s recent interview of Bruen with Mystery Scene:

**SDB: It’s been said that hardboiled fiction has a limited audience,

while suspense thrillers seem to do monster business. Is it smart to

try to think of what we do as “suspense thrillers” more than crime

novels? Do labels ultimately matter?**

KB: If you can write

your books to your own satisfaction and have them cross over to

thriller market, all the better. I’m not precious about being noir, or

whatever. I just want to sell books. I’ve had all sorts of labels—from

the very limiting “caper” tag to procedural to that strange beast…

“literary crime.”

The best solution seems to be to include,

humour, tension, noir and suspense, and thus get the whole shebang—just

as long as I don’t get tagged soft boiled or cozy, I’m easy.

Ha. Were it ever thus.

Let the drinking begin.