Well, they blew up C-8 in Asbury last month ...

... and it only took 17 years.

For Shore residents, the unfinished structure called C-8 that loomed over Asbury Park's beachfront had become something of a local landmark. A high-rise condo project that went unfinished after its developers went bankrupt in 1989, the skeletal 12-story building had become a symbol of Asbury's failed redevelopment. Readers of THE BARBED-WIRE KISS will note that I used C-8 as the setting for the climactic scene in the novel, and at the time (2002) I was concerned the building would be demolished before the book came out. Well, obviously I didn't need to worry.

The end finally came on April 29, 2006, when a demolitions team imploded the structure to make way for a new condo development, part of Asbury's master plan for revitalizing the oceanfront. Will the Wonder Bar be next?

(Photo by Jackie Fritsche)

Fun with French

Recently received my author copies of the French version of HEARTBREAK LOUNGE (retitled FROIDEMENT, or COLDLY) and again Calmann-Levy did a beautiful job with the book, with (as far as I can tell, not reading much French) another great Florence Mortimer translation and a totally re-envisioned - and very evocative - cover.

However, it's always fun to run the jacket copy through an automatic - and strictly literal - internet translator. Below is the translated jacket copy for FROIDEMENT:

"The ex-cop Harry Rane meets one day of winter, in the small city of the New Jersey where he officiates as private detective, Nikki Ellis, a thrown into a panic young woman who research of the assistance: his/her former companion, Johnny Harrow, have been just released after having purged a seven years sorrow of criminal reclusion for murder. Nikki knows what it is able. It also knows that he will seek to find it, and especially to find their child, that it gave up with its birth and who was adopted.
In fact, Johnny, an intelligent man that the clink completely dehumanized, begins his trâque in Heartbreak Lounge, a cabaret where Nikki was a dancer. From there, it goes up the track which leads to its ex. For Johnny, revenge is a dish which is eaten cold, very cold. It only the guide - against its former owner, the caïd Joey Risk, counters his former accomplices who balanced it, counters the police force and the legal institution which believe capacity to handle it, and counters his/her former partner, culprit “to have given his son to the unknown ones”. All will have repentance to be had one day betrayed or underestimated Johnny Harrow, who eliminates them like one empties an ashtray - coldly.
Will Harry Rane be rather strong - or rather unconscious - to face such a machine to be killed?"

Poetry!