Mistress Monster on Blue Blood VIP

Mistress Monster posted to Blue Blood VIP in a set by yours truly and Forrest Black called Horror Skirt.

Mistress Monster on Blue Blood VIP

Darenzia in California Deathrock Art Book

Darenzia graces the pages of California Deathrock by Forrest Black and yours truly. Also available at Amazon with two day Prime shipping.

Darenzia in California Deathrock Art Book

Natalie Addams in California Deathrock Art Book

Natalie Addams graces the pages of California Deathrock by Forrest Black and yours truly. Also available at Amazon with two day Prime shipping.

Natalie Addams in California Deathrock Art Book

Domiana in California Deathrock Art Book

Domiana graces the pages of California Deathrock by Forrest Black and yours truly. Also available at Amazon with two day Prime shipping.

Domiana in California Deathrock Art Book

Alecia Joy, Amelia G, and Forrest Black on Side-Line

Alecia Joy in a Blue Blood VIP set by yours truly and Forrest Black posted to Side-Line.

Alecia Joy, Amelia G, and Forrest Black on Side-Line

Penny Poison, Amelia G, and Forrest Black on Side-Line

Penny Poison, Blue Blood VIP in a set by yours truly, and Forrest Black posted to Side-Line.

Penny Poison, Amelia G, and Forrest Black on Side-Line

Blue Blood Exhibiting at HorrorCon Right Now

This gothic scenario just wheeled by the Blue Blood exhibit booth at HorrorCon. Forrest Black and I are here this weekend, exhibiting Blue Blood publications. Stop by our booth if you are here and you can get a collectible 21-year-old copy of the murder issue of our punk humor zine BLT for free. Cause we’re awesome like that. Feel free to also give us dough for cool T-shirts, back issues of Blue Blood in print, and our California Deathrock book of subculture portraits.

Blue Blood Exhibiting at HorrorCon Right Now

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Tattooed and corseted wishes for a Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

This September 19th holiday was founded by two guys named Mark Summers and John Baur, with assistance from their friend Brian Rhodes and boosting from one of my favorite humorists, the talented Dave Barry. And Blue Blood celebrates it, yarrr.

Although our Blue Blood discussion boards here are known for their intelligent and rational conversations on hot button topics, we all are also familiar with the long-running pirates versus ninjas battles. Critical thinking is vital, but being good at pirate lingo is always a plus. So, for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we just had to feature a photo set of Halloween Jen Vixen. Famous corsetmaker Isabella Costumiere donated black pirate pantaloons and a white corset for the cause. Jen already had her own eye patch with a skull and crossbones on it. Now that be a fine lass, yarr. Ms. Vixen is now featured on BlueBlood.com in a dozen sets with a whopping 611 photographs lensed by yours truly and Forrest Black. Reminder: In addition to images of the beautiful tattooed Jen Vixen, membership in the BlueBlood.com mega site includes an additional 80,154 pictures, of 348 other incredibly gorgeous hotties, shot by a variety of cutting edge photographers, quality fiction from established genre authors and Blue Blood’s world famous signature couples photo sets.

When you think about it, the Blue Blood skull does have a hint of the Jolly Roger about it. Avast, all scurvy dogs, prepare to be boarded!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Things Could Be Worse

The folks from Calamity Ware are doing their 10th Kickstarter. Artist Don Moyer is known for making traditional white China with a blue glaze and outlandish designs. I kinda love that, at first glance, the items are traditional and wholesome. But, upon closer examination, you find monsters and killer robots and things on fire. I’ve admired his work for some time now, but I don’t use real plates for most things. I am a fan of paper plates I can throw away when I am done, rather than filling the sink with disaster. But this time around, Don Moyer is making nice porcelain mugs. Even though I drink iced coffee when I drink coffee and I am currently on the wagon, I still like mugs. Mugs are good for many things, including heating water for chocolate milk substitute and consuming petite quantities of chicken soup (which I heart making from scratch.) So, yeah, I think I need a set of 4 mugs that say: Things could be worse. I didn’t even have to use my AK.

No matter how bad your day is going, these beautiful porcelain Calamityware mugs graciously remind you things could be much worse.

Lost your keys? Lost your job? Look at the bright side. At least you’re not plagued by pterodactyls, pursued by giant robots, or pestered by zombie poodles. Life is good!

The Things-Could-Be-Worse Mug is designed to remind you how lucky you are.

These porcelain mugs feature my drawing of a traditional blue-willow paradise discombobulated by more than a dozen calamities, perils, and pests. You’ll find…

• hairy fiend

• giant frog

• pirates

• cephalopod

• unpleasant blob creature

• voracious sea monster

• UFOs

• agressive pterodactyls

• rambunctious robots

• zombie poodle

and other suspicious animals and shrubs.

Things Could Be Worse

BLT Hits New Issues Stretch Goal! 24 Minutes Left

Stretch goal #1 unlocked! You backer folks will all get a new BLT, in addition to all your other goodies from all tiers at contributor or above!

A couple days ago, I was super worried BLT might not hit its goal at all, so, although I had a little chart of possible stretch goals, I was not thinking about them. BLT has now exceeded the goal by enough that we plan to be doing one new issue of BLT. OG Black Leather Times artist Slash is on board for this issue, writer Will Judy has already written some bad/good good/bad advice, Forrest Black will be doing design again, and basically it is going to be really cool and a lot of fun. Of course, I’ll be writing stuff and editing, so please let me know if you’d like to contribute writing or illustration.

As there are only 24 minutes left to go in the Kickstarter, there is not much time left to stretch, but . . .

If we hit $5,200, that will pay for another T-shirt design and 3 *new* issues of BLT. So, if you were thinking of adding $25 to your pledge for another T-shirt or $40 for 2 T-shirts, you can still do that for a little over an hour. If your friend has been contemplating pledging, tell ’em to do it now.

BLT Hits New Issues Stretch Goal! 24 Minutes Left

BLT and Amelia G on Boing Boing

Yours truly posted to Boing Boing with BLT in an article by Cory Doctorow called Kickstarting an omnibus of seminal punk zine BLT.

BLT and Amelia G on Boing Boing

BLT, Amelia G, and Forrest Black on Geeky Freaky

Yours truly and Forrest Black posted to Geeky Freaky Kickstarter of the Week with the 25 Year Anniversary of BLT Punk Humor Omnibus.

BLT, Amelia G, and Forrest Black on Geeky Freaky

University Students Studying BLT, Radical Politics, and Social Class

Students at University of Arizona are reading about BLT for class. This is definitely one of the more amusing things I found while doing research on Black Leather Times for the BLT Kickstarter (less than 48 hours left, eep!) For one of his courses, Professor Malcolm Alan Compitello at University of Arizona assigns Chapter 8 of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. Notes from Underground is an academic study of the world of zines and its political impact (or lack thereof), written by NYU professor Stephen Duncombe and published by the deeply awesome Microcosm Publishing (who I should totally write for.)

Professor Duncombe’s general thesis is that zines often have charismatic convincing voices, but they tend not to effect enough social change because zinesters other themselves and seek intimacy with their audience in a way which requires a small size. Speaking about BLT, in his chapter on “The Politics of Alternative Culture,” he wrote:

Bohemians have worked long and hard, shedding the values and appearances of their upbringing and creating new ones in replacement, why should they turn around and embrace the very things and people they’ve left? Think again of the pride of Black Leather Times‘s Amelia G in “loud, joyous proclamations of our freakdom, our otherness, our willingness to be different”; and her glee in mass rejection: “So what if we horrified the neighbors; we exulted in one another.” The problem is this: in order to effect political change when you have no power, you need your neighbors.

I’m going to resist my own pedantic impulse to take a professor to school on what it means to be punk or at least my own personal micro social psychology. I’m just going to take a moment to stop and smell the roses and be stoked that my sweet antisocial baby BLT is in university textbooks. BLT is being taught in school. Now please go back the BLT Kickstarter and own a piece of zinester history.

University Students Studying BLT, Radical Politics, and Social Class

Wax Trax Documentary and T-shirts

I’ve been so overwhelmed with work for the BLT Kickstarter that I almost forgot to mention that I backed the Wax Trax Kickstarter almost a month ago. There are only 5 hours left in the Wax Trax project’s funding, so get over there right now and check it out.

The Wax Trax roster was incredibly influential for me personally. A lot of those bands were in constant rotation on my and many of my friends’ CD players and tape decks back then. I remember when the Nine Inch Nails single “Get Down, Make Love” came out. The Wax Trax store was the only place in the world which had it. There was a science fiction convention in Chicago. So those two things were reason enough for me and BLT co-conspirators Shariann Lewitt and Julia Winter, plus Boner and Sarah McKinley Oakes, to all road trip to Chicago. The approach to Chicago at night is one of the most beautiful cityscapes I have ever seen. Shariann was on a panel to talk about her novels. We didn’t have a hotel room for the 2nd night, so we improvised: a lesbian friend of ours let all the ladies crash in her room but not the gent, so Boner dropped acid and stayed up all night. Sarah got really good at using those claw machines to capture stuffed animals at like every rest stop between DC and Chicago. Most importantly, we made the pilgrimage to Wax Trax. Okay, that wasn’t the best NIN track which ever came out, but I’m really happy that I got to travel through a spot where history was made.

Hmm, I’m thinking maybe I need 2 Wax Trax T-shirts and not just one. I really want to see this documentary get made, but they are not offering it in the Kickstarter. There are a lot of collectible options though. As the Kickstarter is for the purpose of funding completion of the documentary, I do understand the desire to only offer things they can deliver quickly. Really looking forward to this one. I expect I will learn a lot. Wax Trax had such an important impact on the goth-industrial scene of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

The true story of how two men took a family of queers, punks & criminals on a ride, accidentally changing music along the way. … For those of you not completely familiar with WAX TRAX! RECORDS, the label was largely responsible for fusing punk, glam & electronic music and pushing club culture into a much darker and heavier place on the dance floor. WAX TRAX! artists such as FRONT 242, MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT, MINISTRY, KMFDM, COIL, FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY and so many others, created an entirely new genre, now commonly referred to as Industrial music. The label’s reach and influence during the ’80s & ’90s was global.

Wax Trax Documentary and T-shirts

400 Page BLT Book & Tshirts is a Kickstarter Staff Pick

Whoo-hoo! I’m excited that the BLT book and T-shirts project is a Kickstarter Staff Pick. I’m feeling all validated and stuff :-)

400 Page BLT Book & Tshirts is a Kickstarter Staff Pick

BLT T-shirt Designs

I’ve just added some new BLT t-shirt designs to the BLT Zine Omnibus Kickstarter page. We’re probably going to need to get supporter feedback on which ones people want most. I have a bunch more designs to complete, but I really like these. BLT zine artwork by our cool collaborator Slash. Some of you old school folks might recognize the F-Thee design, which is a bit of an update on the original BLT t-shirt printed by Tony Tribby, some 20ish years ago.

BLT T-shirt Designs

BLT on Zine Wiki

As I continue to delve into internet records of BLT, I keep coming across all sorts of neat things. The site Zine Wiki uses a Wikipedia sort of interface to cover all sorts of zinester history. Topics range from zinester stalwarts like Aaron Cometbus to the less expected Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day (there is even a connection there, as they’ve worked together, but you don’t see much coverage of that, so kudos to Zine Wiki.) Zine Wiki’s interests are far-ranging and pretty deep, although the nature of the zine scene means that different geographies were more aware of some zines than others. Folks from Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland, and Richmond, Virginia, and the surrounding environs are most likely to have been handed a BLT somewhere, followed by people in Boston, Massachusetts, Atlanta, Georgia, Los Angles, California, and San Francisco, California, in no particular order. Zine Wiki founders Alan Lastufka and Kate Sandler appear to be out of the Chicago scene and the current crew of Denny Crawford, and Jerianne Thompson and Dan Halligan appear to be Pacific NW folks.

So, even though Blue Blood is not in Zine Wiki, it warmed the cockles of my soul that BLT is. Someone named ANGST entered the following back in 2011:

Black Leather Times a.k.a BLT

Zine developed by Amelia G and various members of the group house known as “Cambodia” in the DC Metro area in the early 90’s .

Okay, not terribly detailed, but it is nice to be remembered, if only a little teeny bit.

PS Did you know there is a Kickstarter running for BLT right now?

BLT on Zine Wiki

BLT in The Miami Herald, Librarians are Awesome

As I’ve been working on the BLT Kickstarter, I’ve been doing some deep searching in Google and Bing/Yahoo. For those just tuning in, BLT was the zine I started before Blue Blood and it is very funny, if you have ever lived in a punk rock group house, gone to goth-industrial clubs, gotten drunk at science fiction cons, or at least known people who engaged in related activities. So I want to do a giant 400 page collection of all the issues of Black Leather Times (BLT for short), along with some reminiscences and technical production info for fellow zinesters. Okay, now that everyone is on the same page, back to searching BLT and Black Leather Times.

I saw that a journalist named Rene Rodriguez at the gigantic circulation Miami Herald did a huge feature on the zine revolution and selected BLT as one of the zines she covered. The article was not online, but a wonderful librarian I know helped me find the original. In the age of the internet, it would be impossible to get press from a newspaper as huge as The Miami Herald and not know about it.

The tiny (and misleadingly titled) Black Leather Times has only 12 pages per issue, boasting impressively intricate (and twisted) pen-and-ink illustrations along with its grab bag of essays, stories and advice columns, all centering around a different theme (employment, travel, holidays, Valentine’s Day).

Nice shoutout to the awesome artwork, the lion’s share of which was done by Slash. I like that they got the concept that each issue of BLT had a theme. In all fairness, although we thought it was obvious at the time that Black Leather Times was a reference to our crowd all wearing leather jackets, a lot of people did think it was a kinky sex thing. Which helped encourage me to start Blue Blood, so that misunderstanding worked out pretty well in the long run.

Other zines mentioned in-depth in the Miami Herald article “Magazines Like You’ve Never Seen” include Gnosis, Gray Areas, Answer Me, Cross-Talk, Smart Drug News, Diseased Pariah News, Girljock, Twilight of the Idols, Science Fiction Eye, and Boing Boing. There are also brief mentions of Wonderful Lifestyle, Prison Life, Mercury Rising, Whorezine, Satan Wears a Bra, Jack Ruby Slippers, Presence, Short Circuit, The Skeptical Inquirer, Frostbite Falls Far Flung Flier, Whole Earth Review, American Window Cleaner, and Asian Trash Cinema. Out of all of those publications, plus more from Richard Kadrey’s Covert Culture Sourcebook, the author found Boing Boing and BLT the hardest to classify.

BLT in The Miami Herald, Librarians are Awesome

National Ice Cream Day is a Real Thing

I hope you all ate ice cream today. I had two different kinds of ice cream. I ate both the Royal Vanilla and the Hemp Date Nut from Omega Creamery. They were both unbelievably delicious and, even with central air conditioning, nice on a hot summer’s day.

You should know that National Ice Cream Day is a real thing in the United States. As one of his last acts in office, Walter Dee Huddleston, the Democratic Senator from the great State of Kentucky, introduced a bill for National Ice Cream Month. I’ve driven through Kentucky, on my way to the World Fantasy convention when it was in Chicago, and Kentucky does have cows, so that may be relevant. (My ice cream of choice has nothing to do with any sort of animal product.) Anyway, the resolution received bipartisan support and President Ronald Reagan signed it into law, making July National Ice Cream month and the third Sunday of July National Ice Cream Day. While July is undisputedly National Ice Cream Month in the United States, there is some controversy as to whether all the Ice Cream Days since 1984 are 100% official or not. Perhaps some good lawmakers could clear up any confusion, but Walter Dee Huddleston was succeeded by Republican Mitch Mitch McConnell, who is a bit more prosaic in his approach to governing.

Anyway, the good news is that you are totally supposed to eat ice cream through July. Here are some pictures of Mosh eating ice cream from the Blue Blood VIP.

National Ice Cream Day is a Real Thing

Magazine Central: BLT, Blue Blood, Boing Boing & High Times in SPIN

As I’ve been working on pulling everything for the BLT Punk Humor Book 25 Year Black Leather Times Zine Omnibus, I’ve been finding all sorts of odd surprisingly non-ephemeral ephemera from the past. Below you will see an advert which ran in SPIN magazine approximately a zillion years ago. The ad is for both BLT and Blue Blood and a bunch of other titles. Looking through this advert, I think the only other folks left standing from this piece of the zine revolution are Boing-Boing (who are crushing it online) and High Times (who pre-dated desktop publishing.)

There was this project called Magazine Central and it shared large, high ceilinged, nicely sunlit, SF offices with these two zines called Future Sex and The Nose. Magazine Central had the clever business model of buying full page ads in high circulation magazines and dividing those pages up into lots of little ads they sold at a profit, mostly to other zinesters, keeping just a few slots for themselves. Magazine Central also did the order processing, at a time when getting credit card processing was actually rare and challenging. I actually kind of wish someone would do something like Magazine Central now. Only maybe with more careful accounting.

In the end, Magazine Central wound up screwing everybody. Kind of unnecessarily; I would have considered us square if they’d given me some punk rock barter, in place of the funds they owed. I don’t recall either of their names, but I remember having a conversation with the wife of the dude from Magazine Central, where she told me that things were so bad that her husband had taken a day job. At the time, I was publishing Black Leather Times and Blue Blood from spare rooms in a Maryland punk rock group house called Hollowpoint (a nice punk rock group house, but still) and had never quit my day job. So I was nonplussed by her presenting a day job as the worst thing in the universe. Just a really insensitive thing to say to a zinester because most zines are at least partly a labor of love. Heck, I’ve heard the Newhouse family (of Condé Nast) loses money on magazines but loves publishing. Anyway, the Magazine Central mode of outreach was pretty cool while it lasted and I think we connected with a lot of readers we might not have gotten to reach otherwise. I only wish it had been able to continue longer (by say not blowing so much of their budget on San Francisco VC parties and expensive offices.)

The best ad ever was in Esquire for one issue before the mag decided stuff like Blue Blood was too racy for their readership. Their readership, who purchased in great quantity, clearly did not agree with their editorial management. Fortunately, others like SPIN were more progressive and open-minded.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about those times a lot. I’d love it if you guys would check out the BLT Kickstarter and consider backing it. You know you need 400 pages of bite-sized anti-social humor.

Magazine Central: BLT, Blue Blood, Boing Boing & High Times in SPIN

Comic Con Makes Me Miss East Coast Fandom

The first time I went to a science fiction convention was with the Wesleyan Science Fiction Club when I was around 17. It was Boskone in Boston. My friend Sue and I ran around the convention in crazy outfits we hoped were sexy, meeting all kinds of people, discussing books we had previously read in a more solitary way, and checking out lots and lots of hot pasty-faced D&D boys. It is funny that the boys seemed very important at the time, but what I remember most vividly now is Sue and the fandom community. I met people like a bearded gent named Jailbait because he had been going to conventions since he was a young tyke. I heard about the whole concept of Fandom As A Way of Life with the folks whose whole social lives revolved around going to cons all up and down the Eastern seaboard. While cons were never my only social outlet, I have surely attended a lot of them. As an attendee, as a guest, as an exhibitor, and as a crashing miscreant. Before I moved to the West Coast, my roaming range stretched from Boston to New Orleans.

Once I graduated from Wesleyan and ended up at Cambodia (the storied DC punk group house, not the country), I started publishing Black Leather Times with the help of my unsavory pals. At every convention we would go to, we would have a new issue and we’d give out thousands of copies of BLT for free. Each issue had a theme and some of the fandom themes were the apt D&D/B&D issue, the traditional Science Fiction and Fantasy issue (Spock ears versus elf ears!), and the conventions issue a.k.a. How Amelia’s Unsavory Pals Feel About Cons — Mostly About the Sex Part. (You can visit Kickstarter for what BLT has planned for its 25 year anniversary.)

I went to Comic Con for the first time not that long after Forrest Black and I arrived in Southern California. Angelenos suck at estimating how long a drive is, or at least they did before Wayze and Google Maps, so everyone told us that it would only take like 2 hours to get to San Diego from Hollywood. It actually took all day because, even then, Comic Con was so huge that it had an extreme impact on traffic patterns. I don’t recall what magazine we were covering the event for. Maybe Marquis. At any rate, we were there both for our own interests and a publication was depending on us to come back with press coverage. I believe in giving my all to deliver as promised, so this made us doubly hellbent on getting to the convention. We finished with press registration at the very end of the day and the exhibits were closing up.

We had planned to go for only one day, but we hadn’t seen anything yet, so we needed to find a hotel. During Comic Con. In San Diego. We literally walked the whole Gaslamp district, asking, at every place from corporate hotels to flophouses, whether they had rooms available. Finally, around midnight, the beautiful Horton Grand had availability from someone who had missed their connecting flight from Paris. So we ended up in a lovely boutique hotel, in a historic location that used to be a brothel. But it took a lot of wear and tear and extra bother and then there were no groups of people wearing costumes and/or black in the hallways, getting into mischief and LARPing and deconstructing Bladerunner and William Gibson.

When we got to the convention, I was surprising to see so little costuming, after people had raved about the outfits. There were tons of people there and we ran into a lot of folks we know, including various comic book fan rockstars wandering around. That was cool, but, on the overall, it seemed like just a really big store.

I’ve been back to Comic Con a number of times since, both as press and as an exhibitor. The show itself will allow a corporate movie like SAW to have hundred foot banners with severed body parts flying in public. But they will be bitchy about SFW flyers for indie NSFW products on the flyer table. There are literally lines for any panel you’d want to attend. The convention center A/C is not up to the task at hand. Cosplay is on an uptick, which is visually nice and I give kudos for that. One of the last times I exhibited at Comic Con, this armorer guy forced one of the girls in our booth to take one of his pieces and put it in our luggage, when I was not there. Months later, he contacted me all pissed off that we hadn’t photographed his stuff, when I had to go bust open the Comic Con boxes to even find out that we had it on hand. Basically, the show has its merits, and I should probably do more with it, but, on the overall, that last anecdote is illustrative: the show is more about business than culture, but it is so overwhelming that the business tends not to go terribly smoothly.

Most of the cons out here feel more like clocking in to work than visiting with members of my community. I really need to spend some more time going to the East Coast shows. Everyone, please hit me up with what conventions you are planning on attending in the coming year or two, ’cause I clearly need to make some plans. If all goes well, maybe I will have some new issue of BLT to give out.

Comic Con Makes Me Miss East Coast Fandom

Summer Fun BLT

Forrest Black and I have had to hit Blue Blood’s storage facility as part of working on the BLT Punk Humor Book 25 Year Black Leather Times Zine Omnibus project. We were able to find quite a few vintage issues of BLT where we had enough to be able to give some to our friends and compatriots in Los Angeles. So we made flyers to explain what BLT is to new folks and brought some collectible zines to the 4th of July shindig at Death Knight’s house. BlueBlood.net forums readers will remember Death Knight for his insightful and reasonable deconstructions of all topics. BlueBlood.com readers will remember his beautifully well-appointed house from some hot pirate and steampunk shoots and related goodness.

I was excited to run into Damon Knight, pictured here in Death Knight’s pirate cove hot tub with a substantial percentage of the ladyfolk at the party, who I believe he is directing in some sort of patriotic star-spangled water ballet. Damon was one of the first people I met and photographed in Los Angeles, back in town now, after stints in Las Vegas and Chicago. Sometimes it seems like all the people I enjoyed the most in Hollywood have been pulled into some huge diaspora and so few are left in and around the city of Los Angeles.

California flight aside, the Summer Fun issue includes Sarah McKinley Oakes’ suggestions for horrifying tourists on the DC Metro, Michael Clay’s advice for meeting rebellious teenage girls, Vladomir Dracovitch’s thoughts on interfacing with the Moral Majority and NASA, Deborah Ellington’s Romantic true or false, and Will Judy’s breakdown of why Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “unusual travel invitations are dancing lessons from G-d.” And I wrote the masthead, a checklist of appalling things to do over the summer, a nostalgic reminiscence of making scenes in public places with friends, and a summer beauty and fashion quiz. Here is a sample quiz question:

2. When invited to a pool party, you wear:

a) A micro-thing bathing suit recent imported from Rio

b) The typical attire of the sky-clad

c) A latex catsuit, a gas mask, and a poodle

If I didn’t see you on Independence Day, you can still get the answer key at Kickstarter. Please check out the nifty video of me over there. Thanks!

Summer Fun BLT

Black Leather Times Sex Talk Led to Blue Blood

BLT was my first publishing project as an adult. My friends and I did it from various different punk rock group houses. It is hilarious as fuck, especially if you’ve ever spent time in dark smokey clubs or science fiction conventions and related haunts. It was distributed primarily at sex shops, punk boutiques, SF&F and RPG conventions, and in the aforementioned dark smokey clubs. (I managed an adult boutique called Night Dreams, so the sex shop distro just seemed logical.)

I used to get a lot of letters from people who assumed a zine called Black Leather Times was a porn or fetish mag of some sort because it had leather in the title. Especially after it got written up in The Washington Post and such, so a lot of people from very far afield heard about it. So I thought about what sort of adult mag I’d like to be producing, as there seemed to be a demand, and I started publishing Blue Blood magazine in print. Which, of course, eventually led to BlueBlood.com and its suite of spooky naughty membership sites and this SFW entertainment site and a bunch of other cool stuff.

In all fairness to those titillated by the Black Leather Times moniker, BLT has had a lot of funny and insightful writing about sex and fetish and dating. Ever wanted to know how to use stage blood for birth control? Wondering whether to share your crack cocaine on the first date? Considering the finer etiquette points of threesomes? Want to be a goth-industrial strength heartbreaker? Want to pick up punk rock babes? Considering jobs where you have to read things (translated from a Japanese scientific study) like “sperm was harvested from male rabbits using an artificial vagina”? BLT has you covered. Back the BLT Kickstarter and you can get 400 pages of appallingly humorous advice like this :-)

Black Leather Times Sex Talk Led to Blue Blood

Richard Kadrey Killing Pretty

Happiness is getting something in for review that I actually really want and am excited to read. I’ve been a fan of Richard Kadrey‘s writing since Metrophage came out approximately two point five zillion years ago. I’ve been really enjoying his Sandman Slim series. Even if I was discomfited by the one which had too much action at the Beverly Wilshire, which I read at a time I was staying at the Beverly Wilshire once a month under stressful circumstances. But I digress. Anyway, Richard Kadrey’s Killing Pretty just came out from HarperCollins, and it’s as awesome as I would have hoped.

You can read the Sandman Slim books as just very satisfyingly fun action adventure with lots of monsters, quite a bit of underbelly, and just a dab of glitz. But they are also laugh out loud funny and very insightful. A lot of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of the character’s mundane humanity and the wild extremity of their circumstances and quests. Characters enjoy Angeleno Mexican food, suspect they are too offbeat for a shrink’s help, despise Hollywood agents and silly nightclubs, and try to figure out how to talk things out with a significant other. They also battle angel vandals and use their ghost connections to get movies which were never actually made. I’m going to restrain myself now from going off on a tangent about movies which I’d like to see made by dead people. I think the technology will get there for dead actors and shot-for-shot remakes with different casting, but we are SOL for dead directors. Fuck, I digress again.

At the center of the events in Killing Pretty are plots to murder/resurrect and replace/save Death, depending on which side folks are on. Without his special powers and 24/7 escorting people beyond this mortal coil job going, Death is very innocent and Richard Kadrey makes full use of the comedic possibilities there. Sometimes more standard comedies leave me cold, but the story here is too brutal and well-written to ever hit a false note.

James Stark a.k.a. Sandman Slim is no longer a gladiator or exactly a hitman, but he may not fit easily into the more humdrum safe opportunities being thrown his way. He always wants to do it the hard way, but he does the hard way so very very deliciously well. Personally, I know I’ve been to a lot of the locations in many of Richard Kadrey’s books. I’ve shot nudes of Fedora and Samantha Grace in the motel the good guys hide out at in Hollywood by the Museum of Death. So I feel like I really need to know where the piss-drenched alley is where I could leave offerings to request fulfillment of my unholiest wishes.

Killing Pretty is a good read. I recommend it. The author himself will be giving out Bamboo House of Dolls and Aqua Regia coasters at Comic Con this coming week, so keep an eye out, if you are in San Diego. Bamboo House of Dolls is James Stark’s favorite bar in Hollywood and Aqua Regia is what everybody wants to drink in Hell. Cheers!

Amelia’s copy of Killing Pretty

Comic Con swag

Richard Kadrey photographed by AddictedImage

Death needs Sandman Slim’s help: he believes anyone who can beat Lucifer and the old gods at their own game is the only one who can solve his murder.

Killing Pretty

Sandman Slim investigates Death’s death in this hip, propulsive urban fantasy through a phantasmagoric LA rife with murder, mayhem, and magic.

James Stark has met his share of demons and angels, on earth and beyond. Now, he’s come face to face with the one entity few care to meet: Death.

Someone has tried to kill Death—ripping the heart right out of him—or rather the body he’s inhabiting. Death needs Sandman Slim’s help: he believes anyone who can beat Lucifer and the old gods at their own game is the only one who can solve his murder.

Stark follows a sordid trail deep into LA’s subterranean world, from vampire-infested nightclubs to talent agencies specializing in mad ghosts, from Weimar Republic mystical societies to sleazy supernatural underground fight and sex clubs. Along the way he meets a mysterious girl—distinguished by a pair of graveyard eyes—as badass as Slim: she happens to be the only person who ever outwitted Death. But escaping her demise has had dire consequences for the rest of the world . . . and a few others.

For years, Slim has been fighting cosmic forces bent on destroying Heaven, Hell, and Earth. This time, the battle is right here on the gritty streets of the City of Angels, where a very clever, very ballsy killer lies in wait.

Richard Kadrey Killing Pretty

Introducing BLT Kickstarter

This weekend saw the launch of my Kickstarter project BLT Punk Humor Book 25 Year Black Leather Times Zine Omnibus. BLT was the first zine I did as an . . . well, I hesitate to say it, but as an adult. It is one of the creative projects I am the proudest of working on. A lot of great people have contributed to it over the years. Here is a quick behind-the-scenes snapshot Forrest Black took of me on the set of the Kickstarter video for this project. Doing video still makes me jumpy sometimes, but BLT just makes me happy. I hope it can make some of you all laugh and smile with its punk rock humor. If you’ve spent any portion of your life at science fiction conventions or in dark smokey clubs with unusual music, then you will definitely get the jokes. Please pop over to Kickstarter and check out the details on this (hopefully) forthcoming 400 page book!

Introducing BLT Kickstarter

Dana Dark on Blue Blood VIP

Dana Dark posted to Blue Blood VIP in a set by your truly and Forrest Black called Strait Jacket. Another image from this set is featured in our California Deathrock book, which we will be signing at the La Luz de Jesus art gallery Friday, May 8, from 7pm to 10pm.