Take The E-Train

Choo-choo! The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman (right) steams into the digital age with a short e-collection of short stories, titled DUBLIN EXPRESS. Quoth the Batemeister:

“‘Dublin Express’ itself first appeared in Maxim Jakubowski’s SEX IN THE CITY anthology of erotic fiction, the Dublin edition, and is chiefly notable for having no erotic content whatsoever; ‘Unhappy Endings’ was selected for this year’s MAMMOTH BOOK OF BRITISH CRIME; ‘NIPD Blue’ was my first ever short story, and the basis for a short film I directed was back in the 90s; ‘The Case of Mrs Geary’s Leather Trousers’ was the short story that originally inspired my Mystery Man novels; and finally ‘The Prize’, about an ex-terrorist who applies his old methods to conquering the art world, was originally broadcast on BBC Radio Four live from the Belfast Festival.”

  So there you have it. But lo! There’s more! Bateman has also deigned to e-publish is debut play, which was shortlisted for Best New Play at the Irish Theatre Awards last year. Back to the Batemeister:

“I think [National Anthem] is probably the best writing I’ve done. The play was premiered at last year’s Belfast Festival and was completely sold out. It was shortlisted for Best New Play at the Irish Theatre Awards but was scandalously beaten by another play.”

  DUBLIN EXPRESS can be found here, and NATIONAL ANTHEM can be found here, both at the cheap-as-chips, recession-busting price of £2.10.

“But When We Said ‘Stripped-Down Prose’ We Meant … Oh, Never Mind.”

Maxim Jakubowski has more than a couple of projects floating around right now with his editor’s imprint on them - the Dublin edition of SEX IN THE CITY features Ken Bruen, Colin Bateman, Sean Black and CSNI’s Gerard Brennan getting into a sweaty fret over erotic Dublin, while the eighth MAMMOTH BOOK OF BRITISH CRIME collection of short stories is due in the near future - but Maxim’s also got a novel of his own on the way. I WAS WAITING FOR YOU hits the shelves on November 1st, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

A young Italian woman flees her home in Rome and gets involved with the wrong man in Paris. Cornelia, the fearless stripper and killer for hire, who proved such a hit in previous novels, is back. And on another mission to kill. As the two women’s paths intersect, an English crime writer down on his luck is mistaken for a private eye and goes on a quest for a missing person. From New York to Paris, and then on a thrilling journey through Barcelona, Tangiers, Venice and then finally to a small medieval town outside Rome, the waltz with darkness of the three characters in search of love, lust and redemption becomes ever more poignant and mysterious. This is a sexy, sad, breathless, a memorable tale of lost souls caught in a spider’s web of their own making.

  Yes, yes, that’s all very fine and well, but here’s The Big Question: Where can we get a poster of that cover?