Come and GET LIT at The Vin Club, San Francisco with readings
by authors Brixton Key, “Charlie Six,” Dana Sitar, “The Hart Compound,” Michelle
Murphy, “Jackknife and Light,” and “survival poet” Hollie Hardy. The evenings compère
will be the inimitable Claudia Holmes.
Hollie Hardy’s poetry is published in Eleven Eleven,
sPARKLE & bLINK, The Common, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Parthenon West
Review, Transfer, One Ded Cow, Milvia Street, and other journals.
It's fab to read with great writers. Keeps you tippetty-toed. Wonderful ideas transpire and open up the mindwindows when you listen to writers as gifted as those joining me at the Vin. Hope to see you there.
I've been editing a bunch of Charlie Sixvideos with my friend Larry "Trousers" Drabble. He's cool with the moving montage. The videos are for a promotion via Kindle for next month. In the meantime we had a great reading by my Claudia Holmes from the chapter "Blown up like Al Capone," which didn't quite fit into the series of readings by Max Harley Rogerson. It was put aside until Freddie Fable popped in to see me on a business trip to San Francisco from London. Freddie loves mobsters being a bit of a wide boy himself. He reckons I modeled Spider after him, which is weird as Spider is Jamaican and Freddie's paler than newspaper. Still he's deft with the video cut and after polishing off a couple of bottle of Charles Shaw he banged this together with some great music by Pippa Lang and John McManus for the soundtrack.
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1960's COMING OF AGE NOVEL EXPLORES FAMILY DYSFUNCTION AND LOVE
Jan 19, 2012, 9:04 a.m.
Set in London during the transitional era between
World War II and the sexual/musical revolution, Charlie Six, by Brixton
Key, is a coming-of-age novel centered on a young boy – the title
character—with a need to escape life's daily challenges. He is being
raised by an odd lot of characters; a gangster father on the run from
the law, a mother with an addiction to nightlife and alcohol, and many
‘uncles’ and other relatives still struggling to cope with the aftermath
of the war.
That seven-year-old Charlie smokes and drinks a sip of alcohol can be
both liberating and shocking. It’s the way things once were.
There’s an uncanny truth between the pages. Charlie Six is not your
normal coming of age story. It’s a tough, funny, and brutal story of an
era that has now gone, although Key wonders if it really ever existed.
“I made it my business throughout the novel to create an imaginary
world. It was never my intention to bring back to life a time that’s
past,” says Brixton. Like other authors he admires, he wanted to blur
‘the realities of time and space until it seemed like everyday life.’”
Charlie Six does not believe in politicians or religious
superstitions. Being around his family has proved old dogmas to be
obsolete. He’s completely contemporary in his disdain of the way things
are. The novel touches a nerve in people who lived through the 1960’s
and the decades close to it. But equally important, Charlie Six speaks
to a younger generation who are intrigued by the influences that shaped
their parents and grandparents.
Despite the dysfunctional nature of Charlie's family, they are driven
by love; love for the world and for each other. It is this love that
seeps into every crevice of Charlie's upbringing, and it is this love
that helps Charlie to realize his full potential during his teenage
years, and eventually get out of the London slums, using his passion for
music as his propeller.
“Everyone I knew was hopped on amphetamine,” says Key of his
childhood experience, “when we weren’t out watching British bands
playing rhythm and blues or soul music we sat in each other’s bedrooms
playing the records we’d copped from America. This is what Charlie Six
is all about. I funneled my growing up through him.”
With optimism and incredible honesty Charlie Six explores:
The 1960's music scene in the U.K.
Dealing with drug and alcohol abuse
Love—the most important part of family
The power of imagination
Growing up during a cultural transition
About the Author
Brixton Key was born in Isleworth, England in the 1950s to a
party-loving scallywag Mum and an errant Dad. Expelled from boarding
school, which he attended on a scholarship, Brixton landed a gig with
the British music weekly Melody Maker, writing under the name of Mark
Plummer. He left for America one step ahead of Margaret Thatcher’s
clampdown to manage Chris Isaak in the 1980s, guiding the pop idol and
actor’s career as MTV started ruling the airwaves. In the 90's Brixton
suffered a life-threatening brain aneurism. After he recovered, on the
advice of his stepson he began writing fiction. Brixton lives with his
girlfriend Josephine in a downtown San Francisco loft. In the late night
hours he reads his favorite authors under skyscraper shadows, and works
on his sequel of the Charlie Six trilogy, There Ain't No God Here. A
lifelong insomniac he has little time for sleep. Who would when another
story is lurking around every dark corner?
Website: www.whereischarliesix.com/
Charlie Six is available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com
In a fascinating interview Brixton will
discuss his unusual upbringing as well as the U.K. music scene in the
1960's, a time fueled by drugs and rock and roll. He will talk about
dysfunctional families, what it was like working for the British music
weekly Melody Maker; becoming Chris Isaak's music manager in
America, getting a second chance at life (his battle and recovery from
heroin addiction as well as a life-threatening brain aneurism), and his
semi-autobiographical book Charlie Six. More info can be
found on his website www.whereischarliesix.com
Brixton Key was born
in Isleworth, England in the 1950s to a party-loving Mum and an errant Dad.
Expelled fromboarding school, which he attended on a scholarship, Brixton
landed a gig with the British music weeklyMelody Maker,writing under
the name of Mark Plummer. He left for America to manage Chris Isaak in the
1980s, guiding the pop idol and actor's career as MTV started ruling the
airwaves. In the 90's Brixton suffered a life-threatening brain aneurism.
After he recovered, on the advice of his stepson he began writing fiction.
Brixton lives with his girlfriend Josephine in a downtown San Francisco
loft. In the late night hours he reads his favorite authors under
skyscraper shadows, and works on his sequel of theCharlie Sixtrilogy,There Ain't No God Here.
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