Coming Soon: The Road to Del Rio

Starting in a week or so, we'll be documenting Herbert T. Barrow's "escapitude" from the eastern Tennessee border, through Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas to Del Rio on the Mexican border. We'll stop along the way at different towns and places where Herbert spent some time running from the devil, evading God, hiding from Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, and on a crime spree with Bonnie and Clyde. Wherever he goes, oddball and interesting things happen. First stop will be Knoxville, TN, coming soon. Y'all come!

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Here is an excerpt from Friend of the Devil :

At that, my ears perk up. “The Crossroads? You mean Highway 61?”

“Why, yes, yes,” he says. “Highway 61. I was supposed to meet a man there at midnight.”

“At midnight?”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s when we agreed to meet. But like I told you, I’ve had a lot of problems and now I’m late.”

“The Crossroads at midnight?”

“Yes.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been a street singer and traveling blues man for some years now and I’ve probably had a hundred different cats tell me the same tale about meeting a man at midnight at the Highway 61 Crossroads.

I let out a little chuckle. “So what were you planning on doing, Mister Stevens? Selling your soul to the Devil?”

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Friend of the Devil

On this date two years ago I first put out Friend of the Devil on Kindle.  I confess, we haven't sold thousands of copies yet, but we've sold some. And after having already gone through hell with New York publishing, I don't mind telling you that this is FAR preferable. This way you actually connect with readers and build communities and if any mistakes get made, at least they're your own.

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I've been a deadhead longer than I care to admit. American Beauty and Workingman's Dead were a big influence on my life, like a lot of other people. 

So once again I'm reaching out to all you readers out there in Radio-Land. Isn't this a perfect occasion to buy your very own ebook copy of Friend of the Devil or even Germania??

Don't wait, friends!  Get your copy today!

http://www.amazon.com/Friend-of-the-Devil-ebook/dp/B004VXK1LK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1365430453&sr=8-3&keywords=friend+of+the+devil

Hepcats, Vipers, Texas Outlaws, and Cheap, Cheap Marihuana

This rainstorm is a real East Texas gullywasher. I’ve been sitting here, stuck inside this car for two hours and it still doesn’t give any sign it’s going to ease up anytime soon. I think something is broken. I can get the engine to start, but the wheels won’t turn or anything. My stupid fault. Why did I have to drive off during a rainstorm? Why? The exact same reason I didn’t ditch the car and buy a train or bus ticket to Del Rio. In a word: marihuana.

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I’d fully intended to take a little cure from the weed and let my feet put down some roots into straight reality and having come to ground in a place like Nacogdoches, I figured that would be easy to do, since this town is not exactly renowned for its jazz clubs and viper scene. Therefore, imagine my surprise, that as I stroll back to my hotel after having breakfast in a local diner, I should catch a whiff of some exceedingly righteous bush being burned in the backdoor of a Mexican bakery. All I have to do is walk up and say “Mota, por favor?” and the next thing I know, I’m getting set up with a lid of stuff that’s way, way better than any of the shit ol’ Mezz was peddling back on Lexington Avenue. You can probably see where this is leading, right? For a while I’m goofing around the streets of this East Texas city, laughing and feeling fine, and then I sit down on a park bench and pick up a copy of the local rag that’s lying there and right there on the top of the front page is a big article about how the Barrow Gang, now being led by Clyde’s cousin, criminal mastermind Herbert T. Barrow, pulled off two daring filling station robberies in Southwest Arkansas within a half hour of each other, the first of which involved a shootout with the Barrow Gang and a posse consisting of two FBI agents and the celebrated Texas Ranger, Captain Frank Hamer, the three of whom were briefly captured by the desperados before successfully turning the tables on them and sending them on their way...

I put the newspaper down. On the park bench across from me, a couple of old ladies give me a hard look and before I know it, I’ve got me a first-class case of the heebie-jeebies. When I get to the train station, the idea of going up to the ticket agent and having to talk with him about tickets to different places seems just way too complicated and scary. So instead I go find a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy and spend the rest of the day getting myself plastered. Somehow I manage to stagger back to my hotel room and go to sleep.

(Excerpt from "Friend of the Devil," by Brendan McNally, available on Kindle. Get more "Friend of the Devil" quotes and trivia on our Facebook page)

Time for a Little Old-Time Texas Twang?

It's about twenty years past the time of Herbert T. Barrow, Bonnie and Clyde and the other characters from my novel "Friend of the Devil," but their deep-rooted sense of Southern resentment and stick-it-where-the-sun-don't-shine rebelliousness still rings true in this song. Enjoy!

Listen to the clip on YouTube here: Duane Eddy Rebel Rouser

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"Friend of the Devil" is a piece of Texas gothic about what happens when a reefer-addled, unreconstructed Texas atheist runs into the Devil and a guy who may or may not be God, and decides to show them both what for. 

Friend of the Devil? No friend of His!

"Friend of the Devil" was one of the most universally popular songs in the Grateful Dead songbook. It tells the story of a man running from the law who gets briefly helped by the Devil, who lends him twenty dollars, only to come back later, taking it back and vanishing in the air. That's most of the story right there, other than the fact that after the Devil loaned him the 'twenty bills,' he spent the night in Utah in a cave up in the hills.

My novel "Friend of the Devil" definitely takes its inspiration from the Dead song. The protagonist, Herber T. Barrow, is also running from the law and he also runs into the Devil. But this time it's Herbert that does the Devil a favor, not the other way around. Without wanting to, he puts the Devil in his debt, and then refuses to let the Devil pay him back. And in a way, that's where the fun starts.

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The Grateful Dead song seems to take place sometime in the mythic Old West. My Friend of the Devil takes place in 1930s Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas. Even so, it's still an age of desperados and lawmen. Herbert, in accordance with time-honored Western tradition, is skedaddling for the border. There, he believes, he'll be able to hide out, albeit in plain view, while working as a singing cowboy on XER the mega-powered "Border Blaster" radio station that sits just across the Rio Grande in Mexico.

Getting there is no easy feat, since neither God nor the Devil is a friend of his!

Following is an excerpt from Friend of the Devil, a novel: 


"From the corner of my eye, I can see him reaching back into his waistcoat pocket, pulling his watch back out and popping open the lid. “All right now,” he says. “Exactly how fast are we going?”

I take a quick look at the speedometer. “Ninety,” I say.

“Ninety,” he says back as he fumbles with the stem on top, turning it and at the same time pulling it up and down. I take another look in the mirror and see that ty he white light has nearly caught up with us, but that it’s already broken up into an array of colors from the rainbow, only they’re all glittering and changing.

Stevens holds the watch up with his thumb on the top button. “Okay,” he says, “get ready. Here we go!” He presses down the top button and immediately it’s like we’re in a small boat carried along by a giant wave. I feel the car lifting from the back and we’re rolling and swaying and the blackness has turned to light, only now it’s like we’re on a river inside a bank of fog.

“All right,” says Stevens, turning around and facing forward on his seat. “That’s that!” He smiles like he’s very satisfied with himself.

“That’s what?” I ask. “Where are we?”

“We’re neither here nor there,” he declares happily. “It might just be a good time to light up one of them reefers you got in your shirt pocket.”

The Final Battle with Frank Hamer

Finishing up translation for the Czech-language edition of "Friend of the Devil", which will be launching soon as na ebook. Lots of shooting, crazy driving and romance here in the last chapter. Here's a little sample - enjoy!

"Rose keeps driving for a minute, then stops and turns the car around. She looks over and sees all the blood coming out of my shoulder and starts to cry. Then she stops. “How many shots we got left?” she asks.

“In the chamber? One.”

She nods at my report.

“Plus the one you got.” I add. “What do you want to do?”

She thinks about it for a second. “You take your best shot, Slim. I’ll take mine.”

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We stay where we are, looking silently up the road until Hamer’s car appears. Rose mashes in first, hits the gas and we’re off. Second, third, fourth, and Dr Brinkley’s Packard is now a speeding Sikorsky fighter, a fiery meteor shooting across the sky, hogging the middle lane, the same as Hamer.

This time it’s a real bitch getting up to my shooting spot. I manage to seat on the edge of the window, while using my left hand to grab hold of a piece of the dashboard. Hamer’s a hundred yards away now, Rose floors it and now we’re charging hard. Hamer still doesn’t get out of the way and neither does Rose. I aim at the spot on the windshield where I know he is. An instant later we’re up on each other and I fire. A second later, we smash into each other and I go flying."

Best-selling author David Abrams ("Fobbit") loves "Germania"

 David Abrams, author of New York Times best-selling novel "Fobbit", says this about Germania:

"If the image of Albert Speer, a prominent Nazi, juggling rubber balls as a way to relieve stress in the waning days of the Third Reich doesn't make you sit up and say, "Mein Gott, vas is los?" then Brendan McNally's debut novel, Germania, might not be for you. On the other hand, if rollicking adventures of Jews masquerading as Nazis, secret wartime shipments of gold, SS officers dreaming of hunting walrus in Greenland, and the tense emotional dynamics of theatrical families intrigue you, then Germania will fit the bill quite nicely."

To read the rest of the review, click here: 
http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.cz/2012/02/juggling-for-nazis-germania-by-brendan.html

West Dallas, home of Bonnie & Clyde, and a whole lot less

My second novel, Friend of the Devil, is a somewhat supernatural tale set during the last days of Bonnie and Clyde's bloody run for glory. My hometown, Dallas, lays claim to two moments in history: the JFK Assassination, and Bonnie & Clyde. And, naturally, is uncomfortable with both. The cool thing growing up there, though, is finding out how the two phenomena were inextricably linked together. Though separated by thirty years, a number of the people involved in the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde were later players in the Kennedy assassination. The most famous being Sheriff Bill Decker. Bonnie and Clyde are still everywhere in Dallas. You just have to nose around a little bit and not be afraid to ask people. Because all the old geezoids in Dallas tend to have stories about them. For instance, I discovered a bank they robbed only about half a mile from my house. Our favorite butcher at Whole Foods revealed to me that Clyde had dated his grandma

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before settling down with Bonnie. One of my writing students, a Mexican lady, told me how her great uncle had a bakery in Denton, famous for its tamales and also the marihuana that they sold at the back door. Apparently old Clyde had a taste for both. And her grandmother still remembers them coming by. Even better, I learned our house was on the grounds of what had been a bridle trail next to a riding stable, where the two often hid out. The last time Clyde was seen in Dallas, one of the cops who was later to kill him spotted him driving up Buckner Boulevard only to disappear before he could catch up with him. Sounds like he was probably hiding there at the time. The spot was only a couple of hundred yards from the stables. Bet you anything that where he disappeared to.

I guess the point of all this is that my hometown had a colorful past once and I hate the idea of it being forgotten in favor of all the corporate blandness that seems to have smothered it in the last 50 or so years.

Want to read a cool book where God, the Devil and a dope-smoking, atheist blues musician collide with Bonnie and Clyde in a bizzare and weirdly funny road novel? Have a Kindle? You do? Good! Be a pal and go download Friend of the Devil.

Also, check out this article about my friend, Catherine Horsey, a daughter of West Dallas and all-around artiste. http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/2012/07/catherine_horsey_tells_us_abou.phpD