Hope Idiotic
It's the dawn of the Great Recession. The future looks good for most of us, including best friends Lou Bergman, Chuck Keller, and Neal Harding. But when Lou leaves Las Vegas to be with his girlfriend Michelle and family in his hometown of Chicago, the friends experience a fast unraveling of all they've tried to hold dear. They realize they need each other now more than ever if they’re going to survive all this death, love, unemployment, and alcoholism. Absurdly hilarious and universally tragic, Hope Idiotic is a late-stage coming-of-age novel that is a sardonic and heartbreakingly honest look at how people reveal their best and worst selves when they’re faced with their most extreme self- and fate-inflicted troubles. The characters in this story have to learn that the hope that disappoints might be the only hope they have of saving themselves, and each other. (Literate Ape Press)
The Last DJ
In the years before corporations neutered and nearly eliminated the on-air personality, a young Las Vegas college student strives to triumph in an industry that he has cherished since childhood. Seeking to impress his bosses, however, David Himmel’s Dr. Dave Maxwell participates in dismantling his own profession, while at the same time navigating a diminishing gauntlet of local celebrity status. Whether using the company credit card to purchase hookers for a guitar legend or avoiding being destroyed by a troubling co-worker girlfriend, Dr. Dave finds himself barely surviving at the margins of a compressed and morally compromised line of work that never quite loves him back. (Literate Ape Press)
Listen to David’s appearance on Car Con Carne as he discusses The Last DJ.
A Camp Story
The tale of a legacy left by an orphan. It's a story of boys and girls in bathing suits and bug spray as they sail about, sneak out, fall in love, and find themselves, summer after summer. A Camp Story is a poignant and hilarious account about the ultimate camp experience how it touches so many people, how it continues to shape so many lives. (The History Press)
The Anthology of Cozy-Noir
A collection of thirteen tales of murder, mystery, and mayhem from Darkhouse Books. Authors with stories in this volume are: Robert Lopresti, Judy Brownsword, Magdalena Jones, Herschel Cozine, L.E. Schwaller, Percy Spurlark Parker, Michael Guillebeau, Kate McCorkle, David Himmel, Bobbi A. Chukran, Lynn Kinnaman, Wenda Morrone, John Haas. (Darkhouse Books)