The day this blog becomes a Siren (as in the Greek myth, not police car) for Tony O'Neill's 'Sick City'

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Tony O'Neill in conversation

'Well, I am a one trick pony. My one trick is that I can write books, and I suppose it isn’t too bad a trick. It’s better than your one trick being the ability to post a snarky comment on some fucking blog. But it’s a funny thing isn’t it, that you write a book about heroin and — and I got this from my very first book, the very first thing I ever had published — all the critics say, “Well that’s nice, but can you write about anything else?” I didn’t hear anybody asking Frank McCourt why he kept writing about starving Irish people. But when it comes to writing about drugs, suddenly everybody gets a bit snobby and uncomfortable, and they’d rather you wrote about something “nice”.' -- Tony O'Neill, from an interview @ 3:AM Magazine

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Tony O'Neill in motion

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Tony O'Neill in absentia

America's Dopey Approach to Pot
Tao Lin interviews Tony O'Neill
Haim On You, Dr. Drew
Tony O’Neill is a Writer I’d Like to Fuck
How I found hope and redemption on Hackney's Murder Mile
7 questions for Tony O'Neill
Boris Vian: still spitting from beyond the grave

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The Sick City Section

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Sick City in others' opinions

'(Tony) O'Neill lines L.A.'s back alleys with syringes and hunting knives, but much as his staccato text spills loving bile on the street-dwelling denizens, his most caustic venom is reserved for the high and mighty of the entertainment industry. Fearless about naming, shaming, and spoofing brand-name burn-outs, O'Neill is the anti-E! News, his jittery tone chopping the land of celebrity excess into near-poetic lines. When his Hollywood burns, even the flames are on meth.' -- Austin Chronicle

“Sick City is a disturbingly twisted ride through Hollywood’s underbelly with a degenerate cast of colorfully interwoven characters. I loved the whole f**ked up journey.” — SLASH

“(An) inspired comedy of errors…a post-punk crack at Hollywood’s legacy that’s funnier than its predecessor, and just as cringe-inducing…infused with enough black humor to make Bill Burroughs choke on his apple” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

'Page-turner galore! There is nothing better then to sit down in the backyard and read about people who are worst off then the reader. Tony O'Neill has a great understanding of the narcotic world, and he uses that knowledge to write a thriller of sorts - or a plot driven by characters we care about. It's classic noir country and he uses Los Angeles as a character in the narrative. ' -- Tosh Berman

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The setting

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The official schpiel

'The latest page-turning romp from Tony O’Neill, author of Down and Out on Murder Mile and Hero of the Underground, Sick City is an outrageous adventure of one legendary sex tape, two desperate dope fiends, and all the trouble in the world.

'Jeffrey has nowhere to go when his sugar-daddy boyfriend, Bill, croaks. But before Jeffrey sets off into the glare of LA, he grabs a few parting mementos: two grand in cash; a handgun; Bill’s police badge; a wild assortment of drugs; and a film canister that contains a treasure greater than all the rest combined: a reel featuring Steve McQueen, Mama Cass, Yul Brynner, and Sharon Tate in a never-before-see, drug-fueled orgy.

'Randal is the fallen scion of a great Hollywood family. His drug addiction and his rehab bills have been long overlooked by his indulgent father; however, with him no dead and gone, Randal’s left to the zealous sanctimony of his younger brother who has admitted him to Clean and Serene, a celebrity treatment center run by TV personality Dr. Mike, which is where Randal meets Jeffrey.

'Together the new friends scramble to unload the sex tape before their pasts, and a killer, catch up with them. Sick City rollicks in the absurdities of celebrity culture, entertains from first to last, and reads as if Elmore Leonard co-opted the métier of Irvine Welsh.' -- Booksmith

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The orgiasts

Sharon Tate


Yul Brynner


Steve McQueen


Mama Cass

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The playlist

from Large Hearted Boy's Book Notes

In his own words, here is Tony O'Neill's Book Notes music playlist for his novel, Sick City:

Putting together a soundtrack for my book, Sick City, proved to be somewhat difficult. The biggest problem I had was this: do I go for an album that amounts to a bunch of my favorite songs (subtext – please, please think that I have cool taste in music!) or do I go for something that is more representative of the book as a whole? In the end, I opted for the latter: these songs are a collection of numbers that in one way or another had an impact upon the book, or are specifically mentioned in the text. I think that revealing a characters taste in music can fill in subtleties and shades of the character really well. I also am forced to agree with the late, great Sebastian Horsley when he concluded, "all art is failed music".

"City" – Primal Scream (Evil Heat, 2002)

When I was struggling to find the right title for Sick City, I turned to music for inspiration. This track off of Evil Heat – one of my favorite Primal Scream albums, and one of their most under-appreciated – hit all the right notes for me. It really summed up a lot of the skuzzy feel I was going for, and the chorus of "Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick City! Gonna be the death of me…" really summed up a lot of the love-hate feelings I once had towards LA, feelings that have inspired a lot of my fiction. It's the one song on the album that doesn't fit somehow: while the rest of EVIL HEAT was founded on a kind of Krautrock motorik beat, "City" comes steaming in like Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, if someone swapped their skag for meth. It's messy, it's dirty, and it's impossible not to like.

(read the rest)

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The Sick City Tour Trailer

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The exclusive excerpt

By noon Jeffrey decided it was time to go in and wake up the old man. He found him dead. Jeffrey stared mutely at the body for a minute. He’d seen dead bodies before, but never one he’d fucked in the previous twenty-four hours. Looking up, Jeffrey caught his own reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Impassive, he studied the corrugated contours of his ribs poking through the skin of his stick-thin torso. His arms were a tapestry of cheap, blurry tattoos. Designs once meant to shock or even threaten now just looked like half-faded bruises on his bony body. Around his throat an India-ink necklace of barbed wire. His dark, thick hair stood straight out from his skull, adding another half inch to his gangly frame. His eyes were gray, sleepy, and full of lost hope. Jeffrey pulled the sheet over the old man’s head and looked at his reflection again. He felt like a thirty-seven-year-old orphan.

He drifted back downstairs, poured another cup of coffee, and read the LA Times for a while. The television bleated something cheerfully moronic, so he turned it off again. Jeffrey sighed, and called Tyler, his on-again, off-again lover and OxyContin connection. Tyler sounded agitated and hungover.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Bill died.”

Tyler, on his end of the phone line, took a bite of his toast and looked at his kitchen clock. He suddenly exclaimed, “Dude the Steve Wilkos Show is on right now!”

Jeffrey lit a cigarette and listened as Tyler bounded into another room and switched the TV on. The static roar of faraway applause.

“Shit, it’s the pedophile one. I’ve seen this already. Check it out, Steve says, ‘You should pick on someone your own size. Why dontcha pick on me?’ You seen this one, bro?”

“No. I don’t watch TV.”

“Dude, this one’s awesome. Were you fucking him when he died?”

“No. He went in his sleep.”

“What you guys do last night?”

“Partied with some whores from Santa Monica Boulevard.”

“He was just watching and getting high?”

“Yeah.”

“Coke and poppers?”

“Yeah.”

“So, his heart finally gave out,” Tyler announced with a coroner’s certainty.

“Yeah. Maybe. I guess.”

“So, uh, you wanna come over?”

“Shit, Tyler, I’m kinda freaking out right now, you know? I mean, what do I do now?”

“Come over and get high with me!”

“No, I mean money, all of that shit! It’s so fucked up. I’ve been living with Bill for four fucking years, day in, day out, and now he’s dead and I’m shit outta luck. I could have married some rich cunt in Las Vegas for like two weeks and I’d be entitled to something. Shit’s so fucked up, man.”

“You oughta write a letter to the governor. Look, look—he’s gonna say it. ‘Why dontcha pick on me!’ Dude, Steve’s awesome.”

Jeffrey listened to Tyler watching TV for a while. When the silence became uncomfortable he said, “Okay, I’ll call you, bro.”

“Yup,” Tyler said, “let’s hang.”

Jeffrey re-cradled the phone, sat in his chair. Bill lay cooling the bed upstairs.
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p.s. Hey. All hail Tony, won't you? Not just today, but ... forever? ** Wolf, Hey. Yeah, I hear you about the drunken, violent atmosphere in the UK, or in London and in the other cities I know a little there. That combination of alcohol, despair, anger, etc. always unnerves me when I'm London, and it's a big reason I'm never in love with being there. I'm sure you recall that I was knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly in the head by a crowd of very drunk young guy there in the early 90s. The way social life there is organized around pubs and drinking is very foreign and disquieting to me. I can't relate. I can see why thinking about Higgins or reading the coverage would be very different where you are. So, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, Peyre's cool. He has a storefront studio in Montmartre, and he often lets people in and shows them his works and works-in-progress and stuff. Next time you're here, maybe we can go calling. Yet another volley of love and respect from me. ** David Ehrenstein, I'm going to try to get the Steward book at Les Mots a la Bouche, and I bet they'll have it. I read something about that 'Scott Pilgrim' movie the other day, something very positive, on Aintitcool, I think, so I'd guess the Comic.con scene is already all over it. Thanks for the report. I'll watch for the film. ** OscarDavid, Hey, man. I'll be mostly around when you're here, yeah. So, meeting up shouldn't be a problem. I'm usually pretty free except in the mornings when I do the blog. So, most afternoons or early evenings would probably work, and I guess just let me know what's good for you. ** Statictick, The reading sounds most cool. I might have my dunce cap on without my knowledge, but who is this JJDR you keep name-checking? Should I have recognized the name? Since you kind of asked, I'll just say quickly that I can't stand Kiefer's work then move along. Don't let that spoil your fun. You're busy, you're hungry: awesome. Oh, I do have the ACT thing. I confess it got lost, and I haven't even opened the envelope yet, but I will now. The Mike Kelley piece sounds awesome. I'll google it. ** Killer Luka, Gosh, thanks about the 'Closer' thing. Hm, okay, I'll look for that Cornwall book. But it'll be her authorship rather the JtR connection that gets me to crack the covers if I find it. JtR has never done it for me. Too much hype or ubiquity or something. He's kind of like the Elvis/ Marilyn/ James Dean of killers to me or something. When I see his name, my brain is teflon. Weird. Suede doesn't suck. ** Paul Joseph, Hey. Well, the impending possible presses are all very good ones, obviously. Suggestions ... wow, there are so many interesting presses, it makes it hard. Two Dollar Radio? I like them. Publishing Genius? Featherproof? Hm, I should sit down and think more thoroughly about it and make a list. NYC is awesome on the bookstore and noise music merchant front. Is NYU getting you housing? ** Sypha, Hey. Uh, I guess the simple answer is that the post-cycle novel haven't suggested epigraphs so far. In the cycle novels, I employed them as clues or little directives or something like that as part of the overall structure/ strategies. ** Brendan, Oh, the email, which I yet again didn't send you, was no big. Heck, I'll just write it here in a few words. Ahem, your post will appear here on Wednesday the 25th. Owing to a possible short Amsterdam trip around that time and a consequent blog hiatus, that date might change, but it probably won't, and, if it does, I'll let you know very soon. That was the email you will never receive. ** Memoirs of a Heroinhead, Hey, man! Higgins fucked your mother? Whoa. That's pretty wild and cool. Yeah, I was way into Higgins' playing for a while back when watching him play was technologically possible, and I think aspects of him probably ended up in one of my characters even, if memory serves. Great to see you, Shane. ** JW Veldhoen, Oh, Go, yeah. I've watched people play it. Perec got me into being interested in it too. Beautiful game, very charismatic. That Stagliano story's great, ha ha. Martin Amis, yeah, hm. He used to write very cleverly composed sentences sometimes. I don't know if he still does. I remember kind of liking 'The Rachel Papers' at the time. That's about all I remember. I did find the phrase interesting, yes. Good call. ** Edward Cole, Hey. Oh, thanks a lot for the recommendation. I'll try to find that book at the English language bookstore here as early as today. Wow, your blog has become much less fledgling even since I last spoke to you. 'Period Piece': wow, I'd never heard of it. And I look forward to digging into your piece on 'The General'. You're doing very fine work, sir. Dare my blog declare yours brotherly? ** Syreearmwellion, John Fahey called Garcia a psychic vampire? Wow. Hm, have I ever done a Fahey Day here? I don't think so. Strange. I will. I'll check out the new Grinderman video asap, clearly. Gracias. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. Yeah, that's a beautiful piece on Bresson. Gilbert Adair has written a few other terrific pieces on Bresson's work too. Thank you for the pass along, man. If you ever want to read more extensively about Bresson, I very, very highly recommend James Quandt's 'Robert Bresson' (Cinematheque Ontario Monographs). It's an extraordinary book with essays on Bresson by all sorts of interesting writers/artists including Fassbinder, Scorcese, Roland Barthes, Godard, Alberto Moravia, and on and on. Adair has something in there too, I think. ** Misanthrope, Which porn star would I want to be an escort were I rich and were my libido was on the market, so to speak? Hm. You know, my favorites don't even have names to identify them with, or I don't know their names. That's one odd thing about watching porn online in renamed clips on xTube or its thousands of imitators: you hardly ever know the stars' names or the real titles of the porns you're watching. So I'd pick this nameless (to me) Eastern European blond skinny boy with a turned up nose who's in three scenes in the first two porn videos in a series that may be called Eurosperm. Not much help, sorry. If I had to choose a porn star with a name, hm, I think I might pick Lance Evans. You'd pick Mr. Starr, I'm guessing? Glad you're doing the good son thing for your mom. Sorry you have I hope is just a head cold, man. ** David, Greetings. ** Stan_cz, Well, hey, man. Welcome back. What a load of shit you've been through, and very sorry to hear it. Next time someone's jaw drops and temper boils when I say I'm not into Walt Whitman, I'm going to introduce the someone to you, okay, ha ha? Excellent news about your novel's racing along, and about the short pieces too. My novel creeps, unfortunately, but at least it creeps forward. ** Rigby, Hey. Well, yeah, email me about the Day idea/thing. Nothing's ever irrevelant around here. Time is an onion or something. A million helped people is much better than a million pounds. God, what a shit sentence that was. And they call me a writer? ** Steevee, Hunh, curious to see this shorter American 'EtV'. If Noe says it's fine, I guess it is. Transcribing, ugh. You're a good man. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Oh, I didn't understand 'sugar' either. I thought you might. It seemed like a poetic choice, and I liked that. No, I didn't finish the interview. I'm bad. I'm not tearing myself away from my novel much right now, and that's bad, I guess. I never can quite tell your friends apart, but this wet one seems to have a nice amount of pizzazz. Yeah, I can't go out without brushing my teeth first. So, I read your day account thinking, oh, I sure hope his mouth doesn't taste and smell too unpleasant. It gave your day a cliffhanger quality. My day: Uh, ... worked on the novel. What else is new? Went okay. Alix, one of Gisele's management people, called to say some journalist for a gay newspaper in Dublin needed to interview me asap re: the upcoming 'Jerk' gig there, and it was like an emergency, last minute thing, and how soon could I do that, and I said the guy could call me in an hour, but then he didn't call, and Alix texted me to say the guy would call me in September, so that was vaguely weird. I ran into the mother of that kid who said 'sugar' in the hall, and she said they were leaving the Recollets and returning to their home in Wisconsin today, and did I want their coffee maker, and I said, sure, thanks, and now I have a coffee maker. I've been boiling water and using a strainer all this time. I had coffee with Kiddiepunk and Oscar. Oscar and I decided to go to a movie later today. Kiddiepunk wanted me to tell him about Amsterdam, so I did, and, since I'm in charge of finding us a hotel there, he wanted me to know that he was not okay with staying in some 'shithole', and I said, Like I would make us stay in a 'shithole', Jesus. And we talked about other stuff. Then I worked some more. I bought food. The Monop boy who intrigues me looked slightly hurt when I took my purchases to a cash register other than his, but his had a long line, and I didn't think he'd give a shit, and I guess the fact that he did only added to his intriguing quality. Etc. You can guess the rest of my evening's activities: eat, TV, texting, Yury, etc. And so Friday is yours. ** L@rstonovich, Hey. Really glad the novel's accumulating. End of 2011 seems like a fair, reasonable deadline. I've missed mine, but having one was good. Pass on any thoughts re: your novel as the time and need arises, okay? I'm curious, you know. ** Bill, Hey. Glad you liked it. The Peyre stuff. Even Gisele really liked 'Cupidon', and that's saying something. She likes little in the theatrical realm. Cool about 'Taxidermia'. Deranged: how so? ** Bollo, Hey, bud. Cork, nice. I was there once. It had a nice vibe. I liked the canal or river or whatever it is. Alex was probably there, but I don't know. He's there a lot, I think. I'll google those artists you mentioned. Grant Hart ... not the Grant Hart from Husker Du, surely? ** Oscar B, Hey. Oh, I guess the 5:35 or 7:20 showing, hm. I'll call you, and we can decide collectively. I like your two cup thing. I think you should do even more drugs in Amsterdam than I used to think you should do there. How's about them apples? (Old American saying/ rhetorical question). ** Thus, we close another page in this cyber-book, and it's all about Tony O'Neill and his magical new novel now. Dig it. See ya.