Austin novelist Jesse Sublett first tackled the enhanced e-book market earlier this year, when he reissued his novel Rock Critic Murders digitally via the then-new iBooks Author app.
There were road bumps in the process, which he detailed in a feature for us back in March (“Ex-Punk Author, DIY or Die Forever”), but for the most part, Sublett wrote, “it’s empowering … Before, the novels always seemed incomplete.” Going digital allowed him to round out the reader experience with video postcards, original music, interview clips, and more.
And it appears there’s no turning back: Sublett has just released a brand-new, digital-only noir novella called Grave Digger Blues; the author describes it as “a wild, post-apocalyptic pulp fiction crime novel told from the POV of a war veteran private eye named Hank Zzybnx and a doomed jazz musician everyone calls The Blues Cat”:
“It’s a dangerous and strange world. Grizzly bears and alligators have invaded the cities, walking catfish prowl the exurbs, and the best bar in town is the Morgue, so-named because its previous incarnation was the cold storage of the dead; now its industrial sized refrigerator serves an even more noble purpose: sweet relief for the last survivors of the rotting Republic.”
There’s a stripped-down Kindle (& other e-readers) version available, but the iPad version is the one with the real bells & whistles – think an original blues soundtrack and photography from Austinites Mona Pitts and Ricardo Acevedo. Hey, if it’s the end of the world as we know it, why not enjoy it in full color and with a murder ballad to close out the show?
This article appears in November 30 • 2012.
