30 Sept 2017

Blog Tour Book Extract / Zero Avenue by Dietrich Kalteis

About the book:

Set to the cranking beat and amphetamine buzz of Vancouver’s early punk scene, Zero Avenue follows Frankie Del Rey, a talented and rising punk star who runs just enough dope on the side to pay the bills and keep her band, Waves of Nausea, together. The trouble is she’s running it for Marty Sayles, a powerful drug dealer who controls the Eastside with a fist.
When Frankie strikes up a relationship with Johnny Falco, the owner of one of the only Vancouver clubs willing to give punk a chance, she finds out he’s having his own money problems just keeping Falco’s Nest open. Desperate to keep his club, Johnny raids one of the pot fields Marty Sayles has growing out past Surrey, along Zero Avenue on the U.S. border. He gets away with a pickup load and pays back everybody he owes. Arnie Binz, bass player for Waves of Nausea, finds out about it and decides that was easy enough. But he gets caught by Marty’s crew.
Johnny and Frankie set out to find the missing Arnie, but Marty Sayles is pissed and looking for who ripped off his other field — a trail that leads to Johnny and Frankie.
About the author:

Dietrich Kalteis is the award-winning author of Ride the Lightning, The Deadbeat Club, TriggerfishHouse of Blazes and Zero Avenue. Nearly fifty of his short stories have been published internationally, and he lives with his family in West Vancouver, British Columbia.

Social networking links:
Website: http://dietrichkalteis.blogspot.ca/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietrich.kalteis/
Twitter: @dietrichkalteis

Available:
October 3

Buy links:

Chapter 2 Excerpt
[Frankie] walked in, Falco’s Nest open to the indie music scene. Johnny Falco being the second club owner with the balls to do it. Most venues around town treated punk like taboo: pogo dancing leading to underaged drinking, leading to drunken fist fights, leading to police raids and shutdowns.
Johnny moved here from back east, got to know the punk scene in Toronto, told her about living in the Lawrence Hotel, rooms like two bucks and change a night, a Sabbath cover band called Never Say Die stayed down the hall, the band living on potatoes and soup packets. Getting to know them while bowling with empty ketchup and beer bottles in the hall, driving the landlord crazy.
She loved hearing Johnny tell about the Toronto scene: the Viletones, the Demics. Bands like the Diodes, Cardboard Brains and Teenage Head out of Hamilton, venues like Larry’s Hideaway on Carlton. Johnny saying he wished he’d been on the coast to catch the Furies before they split up, loved their sound, getting out here a couple years too late.
Photos were tacked up behind the bar: him standing arm in arm with Frankie Venom, another one of him and Daniel Rey, producer for the Ramones, one with Carole Pope out front of the Concert Hall.
Lachman over at the Buddha was first to do it in Vancouver, bringing the sound to town. The Young Canadians, still called the K-Tels back then, put on a hell of a show, followed by the Subhumans. The Buddha had been packed ever since, Lachman still trying to live down the night he kicked out Hendrix, back in the club’s R&B days a decade earlier, Lachman telling anybody who’d listen the guy just played too loud.
Falco’s Nest had been catching the Buddha’s overflow since opening its doors eight months back. Johnny usually short on cash, but long on ideas, showcasing new talent, giving bands a chance to jump off the hamster wheel of shit gigs available to them. The local papers called both clubs a spawning ground for a new terrorism on the sensibilities, but Vancouver’s punk scene didn’t read the dailies — fans flocking from as far as Mission, giving the “No Fun City” image a good shake.
Not sure who Johnny had booked in tonight, she walked by the posters plastered across the storefront window. Hoping to duck Marty till later, she’d come to hear some music, have a beer with Johnny then drop in at the Buddha, catch some of D.O.A.’s second set. The guys sometimes letting her sit in. Her Flying V locked in the trunk, just in case.
She stepped into the warmth and the smoke.

Excerpted from Zero Avenue by Dietrich Kalteis. © 2017 by Dietrich Kalteis. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com


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