What I Saw at the Pulp Fiction Expo

Today I hit the NYC Paperback & Pulp Fiction Expo -- Gary Lovisi's annual festival of all things good and holy in this world -- with Ed Pettit. We left Philly a little after 8 a.m. and made it to Manhattan by 9:44 a.m. (Gotta love the non-traffic on a Sunday morning.) By 10 we had slipped the front desk a pair of fins and made our way to the main room, which looked like this:


But wait. You really can't appreciate the lurid, yellowed, slightly-mildewed splendor of a pulp paperback show until you venture a little closer:


The trick is to know how many vintage paperbacks you can buy before your wife digs up the name of a good divorce lawyer, then subtract $50.

Nonetheless, Ed and I did some damage. He found the steal of the show: a $5 copy of Charles Williams's The Long Saturday Night (the only other copies I saw were $25 and $30). Fuckin' bastard. But I found some fairly sweet titles, too, including They Don't Dance Much by James Ross (which Joe Lansdale has recommended in a few places over the years); Prelude to a Certain Midnight, by Gerald Kersh; Very Cold For May, by William P. McGivern (Philly represent!); The Fifth Grave, by Jonathan Latimer (to make up for the copy I almost snagged at Chicago B'con two years ago but missed by two seconds); Go Home, Stranger, by Charles Williams; Everybody Does It, by James M. Cain (a paperback collecting "Career in C-Major" and "The Embezzler"); and the true prize of the day, Somebody's Done For, by David Goodis (the last novel he ever wrote).

And celebrities? Oh, yeah. There were celebrities. Such as these two familiar characters:


Jason Starr (right) was there to sign copies of Slide, his newest Hard Case Crime collaboration with Ken Bruen; Charles Ardai was there to point out some cool finds in the $1 boxes. (And okay, to promote Hard Case.) Charles was also giving away cover flats of two hot upcoming HCC titles: Money Shot, by Christa Faust, and the Robert Bloch double novel, Spiderweb and Shooting Star. At one point, I told Charles about an obscure British crime novel by Gerald Butler called Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (really worth checking out, if you can track it down). Charles thought I said Kiss the Blow Off My Hands. Which then morphed into Lick the Blow Off My Hands, and then finally, an hour later, Lick the Blow From My Septum, which I intend to pitch to Charles a few weeks from now, when he forgets this conversation.

But the celebrity I was really dying to meet was Jack Ketchum (a.k.a. Dallas Mayr). Huge fucking fan here. Off Season is on my Top 10 list of Favorite Novels Ever, and his name triggers an automatic purchase. So like a raving fanboy, I not only asked Dallas to autograph both Off Season and Offspring (the sequel), but to also pose with my large Polish self for a photograph:


I found that copy of Off Season, by the way, just 10 minutes before Dallas showed up to sign. It's the original Ballantine paperback from 1981, which I've wanted for years now. (I already own the Overlook Connection Press expanded edition, as well as the Leisure Horror reprint.) Yes, the Paperback Gods were smiling upon me today.

Meanwhile, the Elder Gods were smiling upon Mr. Pettit, as he lucked upon a copy of his favorite magazine:


That's Cthulhu Sex, for the uninitiated. In this photo, Ed has just turned to the centerfold, where Y'ggoth, Devourer of the Babies, is chained to a bed, and slathered in... oh, never mind. This a family blog. You'll have to read the issue for yourself.

Good times, good times. I highly recommend next year's show, if you're anywhere near New York. Just don't go finding $5 Charles Williams novels before I do, or I'll have to kick your ass.