Digging the Vein
Authors: Tony O'Neill
Tags: #addiction, #transgressive, #british, #britpop, #literary fiction, #los angeles, #offbeat generation, #autobigrapical, #heroin
DIGGING THE VEIN
Tony O’Neill
Originally published by Contemporary Press
This edition published by Vicon Editions / Smashwords
Copyright © 2013 Tony O’Neill
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. However if you want to share it with someone, go right ahead. Just use your common sense. If you have the money, buy it. It’s less than five bucks so you ain’t gonna break the bank. Writing is a tough game and there’s a reason so many of us in the Shakespeare Squadron get hung up on drugs, off ourselves, go crazy, etc: being broke all the time will do that to you. I didn’t get an advance from Contemporary Press when they published
Digging the Vein
back in ’06. They were an indie. A
real
indie as in one-hundred percent independent. It was kinda amazing they got their books into stores at all considering how broke and drunk everyone was most of the time. Remember this was in 2006, just before e-publishing got respectable enough to tip the balance a little and give the smaller guys a fighting chance.
CP’s office was a bar off of 14
th
Street were they met for drinks after putting in a full day at their straight gigs. They were really good to me. I started off as their intern and slipped the manuscript into their ‘to read’ pile. When they said they wanted to put out
Digging
I had no illusions I was going to get rich. Just having a book in print seemed like enough. They put all their money into printing the book and making it look cool. They even paid for my train ticket to go do a reading in Montreal, which I couldn’t afford at the time. Even though there was no money to be had they bought that ticket for me because they believed in the book. The CP crew were - and are - 100% thoroughbred Johnsons, i.e.
good people
...
Digging the Vein
’s launch party was at the much-missed The Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St Marks Place. Jay Brida gave me a five-dollar bill for the jukebox, we stuck up some posters, and everybody got smashed. I never made a penny off the book in conventional terms but it acted as a calling card, which eventually lead to a deal with Harper Perennial for
Down and Out on Murder Mile
. I’ll always be grateful for the leg-up that the CP crew gave me. I tell this story because I want you to understand that
Digging the Vein
never made anybody rich, myself included. It was my first book. Not a perfect book by any means, more like a cry of pain than a love song. Living as a writer for these past ten years I’m broke more often than not. I’ve got a family; so be honest with yourself: if you can spare the four bucks then pay for the book. If you can’t, well shit, I’m not gonna lecture you. I stole plenty of stuff when I was strung out so it’d be a little rich for me to start coming on like the copyright police at this late point in game. But remember this: unless you’re Stephen King or JK Rowling it’s tough out there for a writer. I’ve got more books in me, but I gotta eat and my kid needs shoes. This isn’t a hobby. I don’t have the ace-in –the-hole of my parents paying my bills. If I don’t sell books, I don't eat. Try and support artists. You don’t try and fuck Ronald McDonald out of his five dollars when you get a Big Mac with coke, so don’t be a dick and do it to me.
That’s it, lecture over. Go read the fucking book already.
“
Digging the Vein
will appeal to all Tony O’Neill fans – of which I’m one. It’s another pitch-dark classic.”
“
Digging the Vein
is mining diamonds for the crown of the King of Hell.
“
In Digging the Vein O
'Neill does something quite special: he simply returns literature to its guttural, all too human, roots. He doesn't mystify his words; there is no higher, spiritual, cryptic language or elongated metaphor. Digging the Vein is a human fiction, a book ostensibly about misplacement and love, a book that is true in every sense of the word, penetrating into the deepest, darkest recesses of human existence without fuss, arrogance and obfuscation. There is no need for Tony O'Neill to try and dazzle us with his prose styling…a weight that seems to loom large in the forefront of many writers’ mind… he knows he will be heard, that every word counts, because he experienced each painstaking syllable. Digging the Vein is a book that, although steeped in its genre's traditions [think Burroughs’ Junky here], transcends this very same genre [think Burroughs’ Junky here also]. It is first and foremost a work of Literature - and I can honestly say this without my toes curling in disagreement.”
“
A noir to stand up with Dante and Bukowski… what separates O’Neill from more fashionable junkie peers is a reservoir of self-awareness and not an ounce of self-pity. His evocation of the haunted landscapes of Los Angeles resounds with the gnarled grace of vintage Tom Waits…”
“
Reading it I could taste the LA smog. Here pain comes at you like a Mack truck – relentless and unavoidable. Don’t blink… keep reading.”
“
This book will take you inside the mind, heart, spoon, pipe and needle of a junkie. Tony has cooked down the life of an addict and injected it into these pages. It brought me back to the street, back to the hell of craving and the bliss of getting as fix.”
“
It’s a great book… an existential look at non-existence. Instead of feeling disgusted or revolted by this dark vision of the world, you just want to keep reading.”
Word Riot
“
It’s not very often that a writer’s words can punch builder’s hands through the paper, and throttle the lifeblood out of you. But Tony’s words do just that. His experiences are so powerful and emotional, and full of fucking heart that it pales everybody else’s work into insignificance. Tony O’Neill will be remembered as one of Northern Britain’s great young hopes in years to come. When Monica Ali, Dan Brown, and Zadie Smith are nothing but footnotes in the history of writing, O'Neill’s work will still be standing tall and proud; a testimony to life in the gutter in the late nineties. Digging The Vein isn’t a story of redemption, there’s no happy ending, its just pure, unadulterated
Brutalism
.”
Straight From the Fridge
On Digging by Dejan Gacond and Kit Brown
The Art of Digging – Covers 2006-2014
Saturday, Joan and Why I Hate the English In Los Angeles
Part Two – Alvarado and 6th Blues