The first few weeks are paramount for a book’s survival. I feel like Moth is, hands down, the most sophisticated, intricately plotted, and deftly characterized of all my books to date.

How can you help? Why, tell your friends, of course! The number one way a book sells is through word of mouth. So if you’ve read it and liked it—or even if you haven’t and didn’t—tell your friends, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, or anyone I may have missed.

Next up on the writing docket, we have BIGGER BITES, a collection of short stories (and an essay) I’m compiling now (Summer 2024), and later this year will be the sequel (of sorts) to Say My Name. I WON’T SAY A WORD: A SAY MY NAME NOVEL will bring us back east, in the snow and cold, with many familiar characters and some new ones as well. I am also currently working on two more books, one that is so clever I’m scared to name it (sci-fi) and a horror(ish) novel (HOMESICK) that I’ve already signed a contract for over at Wicked House Publishing. (I can’t wait to get back to just writing. My wife is in marketing. I’m just an … artist.)

In between, I’ll be on assorted book tours, from Seattle to Italy. Left Coast Crime. Thrillerfest. The Book Passage Mystery Conference. Keep an eye out for when I might be in your town!

Last, on the rock-and-roll front, over the summer, I’m getting the band back together, man. We’ll be playing a one-off, live show as part of our record release for A Better Machine, with 5/6ths the record’s lineup reprising their roles! Somewhere in the Bay Area. More soon!

In 2015, I read with one of my biggest literary heroes/influences, Jerry Stahl. The event at The Last Bookstore in L.A. is only a few blocks from the Mission Shelter where I used to sleep when I was a homeless junkie.

The reading was to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Jerry’s Permanent Midnight, a recovery masterpiece. People frequently say this or that book changes their life, but we understand that is generally hyperbole. (Changing a life is much harder to do.)

Permanent Midnight changed my life.

I first read it during the aforementioned hobo years. (Junkies tend to be very well read. We have a lot of time on our hands.)

I still had a band back then. Or pretended I did. (It’s kinda hard to play guitar when your guitar is at the pawn shop.) I found Jerry Stahl’s Permanent Midnight (literally) lying in the gutter (i.e., the junkie library). It was like gold in my hands. I remember reading that book, thinking, I can do this. If I can somehow survive this mess I’ve gotten myself into, I too can write a book. Maybe my book won’t be as good, but I can do it. This was my chance.

Fast forward to the 2015 reading. As you know from these newsletters, I managed to get straight (took 18 trips to rehab and several arrests, but we did it). And along the way, I managed to earn a couple degrees, start a family, and even publish a few books.

The event was great. House was packed. I saw many familiar faces in the crowd. Although one stood out more than the rest: Gina, a drummer from my old band the Creeping Charlies. Only I knew from social media and the occasional text that Gina was living three thousand miles away on the East Coast. I hadn’t told her about the reading, and even if I had, no one is flying three-thousand miles for a book reading!

So when the event was over, that’s the first thing I asked. I thanked Gina for coming, said it was great seeing her (which it was), but I had to know: why would you fly three-thousand miles across the country for a literary event?

She said, “You might not remember this, Joe—(she was right, I didn’t)—but the last time I saw you in San Francisco, I thought you were gonna die. You were skeleton-thin, covered in scabs and sores, and so strung out you could barely stand. But you were clutching that book, Permanent Midnight, to your chest, and you said to me, ‘Someday I’m going to read on stage with this man.’ And when I saw that was happening, I wasn’t going to miss this for the world.”

For the first time in my writing career, I had the chance to break the Amazon Top 100 for full-priced pre-orders in new releases for my upcoming novel Say My Name. When I saw I was climbing up the chart, I took to social media, where so many lent a helping hand and made that possible. We not only broke the Top 100—we made it to #1! Like I say, this is a first for me, offering a huge boost of hope and optimism for my upcoming debut Square Tire Books © release.

I wanted to take a moment and say thank you.

In a fun if bittersweet twist of fate, I had just finished up a follow-up to Say My Name—I Won’t Say a Word: A Say My Name novel. In this one, my brother Josh, who many of you know passed away prematurely in 2017, is a character. It was crazy spending so much time with Josh again. When you are writing about people who have left this earth, you bring them back to back to life in a sense. I know that sounds a little crazy, but it’s true. For the past several months, Josh and I were having wild adventures again. I can’t tell you the solace I felt seeing the big guy again. Then the draft was done. And he was gone. And that had me feeling a little down. Helping me bring the Say My World universe to life this past weekend, you all raised some spirits (pun intended). (If Josh were here, he’d tease about having lived too long on the Left Coast. He’d have a point!)

Hippy-dippy-ness aside, thank you.

Say My Name is up for e-pub pre-order now.

Hardcover and paperback will be available soon.

]]> https://joeclifford.com/goodbye-josh/ Sun, 12 Mar 2023 22:53:07 +0000 https://joeclifford.com/?p=12623 I finished a new book. And I have to admit, this one fucked me up. Writing it, I mean. It’s called I WON’T SAY A WORD: A SAY MY NAME NOVEL. So it’s the second in the series, with the first (SAY MY NAME) out this June (Square Tire).

I made the decision to resurrect my dead brother Josh and make him a character in my latest mystery. I’m not sure if it works. Readers can decide that. Personally, I think it’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever written, with a kick-ass plot, in-depth, gut-wrenching characterization, and a mind-blowing ending; and as cool as all that may be (and for an author it’s very cool), I have to say, as a person—a man and a brother—um, yeah, it’s was a mind fuck.

Every day, I’d begin work and get to see Josh again. Anyone who knows writing or art or me knows I subscribes to a certain mindset. Like an actor, I engage in what I’d call “method writing.” Yeah, I know, it’s heavy-handed, cheesy, maybe overwrought. I don’t give a fuck. It’s how I create. I submerge.

I saw this great clip with John Mellencamp, whose looking a long way from his Johnny Cougar days, but good for him. Life is meant for living. Like Frank says, “We’re not delivering a perfect body to the grave.”

Anyway, in this clip Mellencamp says there’s a reason why so many artists are hypochondriacs. He evokes Stephen King, who he calls “Steve.” I guess they are friends. Mellencamp goes, “Steve says, Of course we’re hypochondriacs! We’re creators. When we’re not making art, we have to create something!” So we invent illnesses. Although sometimes illnesses are real, like the stage 3 chronic kidney disease I found out I had last week. Which turned out to be a typo. Guess it’s getting easier to be a doctor these days.

Back to Josh. So, yeah, I made my dead brother a character and for the past month I brought him back to life. We went on crazy adventures again, laughed and cried, and for eight to ten hours a day, it was like he never left.

That might sound nuts if you’re not a writer/artist. But I know it allowed me to say goodbye. Not a final one. But check off an item from the list.

I’m really proud of this book, and I set the record straight with what (who) killed our dad, no longer hiding behind fiction to spell out the guilty party. But it’s still fiction. Sort of. It’s also as close to a Junkie Love sequel as I’m likely to write. It’s basically if Jay Porter and Junkie Love had a baby.

Mike TV and I (and David Corbett) are doing some cool stuff over at Square Tire. Along with David, I am releasing my first ST book in June. David and I will be doing some local events in Northern CA (if we’re not under water and/or burning by then). So I hope to see you sometime in June.

In the meantime, if you want to help? Visit my website and sign up for my newsletter. I promise not to inundate your in-box but I should have some cool deals on new releases. Shit like that.

For the next six months, I get to rewrite this draft, which means more time with Josh. So calling this “goodbye” is totally disingenuous. Like the Boss says (and it gets repeated often in this book): “[The dead] don’t leave when they die; they leave when we do.”

I’ll be rewriting and proofing for a long time, getting to spend some quality hours with my best friend, so don’t feel sad. I’m also signing up for some more fucked up dreams…

Oh, one last thing about John Mellencamp. I finally got that line: “life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone.”

Damn, that one’s a sucker punch to the solar plexus.

Here’s to sucking on chili dogs…

@tommcgovern27

this is the dumbest video I have ever made #fy #dumb #chilidog #fyp #karaoke

♬ suckin on a chili dog – Tom McGovern

So when that fateful day came in November six years ago, I snapped. I’ve never had the firmest grasp on reality, part of the reason I became a writer. It’s how I navigate my world and changes in it; and this isn’t going to be a dismal post about love and loss. I am currently writing a new novel that is a blend of crime fiction, true crime, and time-travel. I’m working my way through these issues.

The point of this post is to announce: I’m back! (To quote Nick Cage, “Not that we went anywhere.”)

I tried quitting writing; I really did. But it was during a FaceTime call with my friend and editor Josh Kendall, who heads a major mystery division of a bigly press, that the point was hammered home.

Josh—the editor, not to be confused with dead brother Josh—said something like, “Joe, you could tell yourself you’re quitting, but I think we both know, you’ll be writing sooner than later.”

And he was right. Sooner. Much sooner. I have three books that will be coming out. While we wait for those, I sat down last week to begin work on that new novel, a follow-up (loosely) to my newest book, SAY MY NAME, which is coming out in June. And not to brag (but I’m bragging), I’ve written 30,000 words in less than a week because I am a fucking machine. Not a fucking machine. A fucking machine. I used to be a fucking machine but now I’m 52 and my hip hurts when it rains.

That’s the point of this first blog post.

Along with Mike TV of the band Get Set Go, I am joining the Square Tire Concern.

It’s an established enterprise built on the daring new strategy of not making any money. (Trust me, right now, my lovely wife Justine’s eyes have rolled so far back in her head, it’s yesterday, and she’s rethinking her decision to marry me. Kidding. She loves me. I adore her. And we have those two wonderful boys, a darling toy poodle. We also have a shitty Pomeranian. Like the late-great Meatloaf sings, “five out of six ain’t bad.” I’ve never been great at math.)

Mike is opening up a publishing division I will be manning.

This isn’t the first time Mike and I have collaborated together artistically. You might recall this little gem from 2013.

In addition to opening a publishing division to his Square Tire label, Mike also allowed me to achieve a … thirty-five-year-old dream in the making, by signing my band, The Wandering Jews, whose new record, A BETTER MACHINE, will be coming out on Square Tire Records, in June.

There’s a lot more news. But even more work. So I’mma keep this brief. Let’s leave it at: more to come. In closing let me just say this (and as a college professor, I hate hate hate phrases like “In conclusion,” but fuck it I gots to run.

My brother Josh is the one who introduced me to Mike. My crazy-ass dead brother heard Get Set Go’s Ordinary World (the record that featured a few songs on some pretty big TV shows—Grey’s Anatomy, Weeds), and wrote him out of the blue, saying his big brother had written a memoir and inquiring whether Mike would write a blurb for it.

To which Mike responded, “Um…”

But from that a partnership was born. More than that, a friendship. Mike and his band have crashed at my place when they’ve been touring. Mike allowed me to use his song “Won’t Let Her Go” for the Junkie Love trailer, directed by the AMAZING Jamie De Wolf and co-starring a certain lovely leading lady, as well as a spot-on portrayal of a younger Junkie Joe by fellow writer/poet Joel Landmine. (See if you can spot “Evil Ed” from the original Fright Night as “Shady Dealer in Alley.”)

Stay tuned for a revamped website and Square Tire page, and as this thing develops, Mike and I have pledged to provide a platform for artists without a home.

In the words of the great Craig Finn, lead singer of the Hold Steady (whose keyboardist Franz Nicolay plays organ, piano, and accordion on the new Wandering Jews record): Thanks for listening, thanks for understanding. I’ll come up with my own catchphrase soon.

Right now I have a book to finish.

So for all you readers who have been patiently waiting? THANK YOU. Your reward is four Joe Clifford books and a full-length album that will be coming down the pipeline (to fine retailers everywhere) very, very soon.

JC