Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, No Bullshit, No Regrets

Anthony Bourdain 1956-2018

"Bullshit!" Such was the first word rendered on the first episode of Anthony Bourdain's 2005 culinary adventure cable TV program, No Reservations. Of course, I was head over heels for the show from that moment on. I'd known the former Les Halle top chef peripherally in crime lit circles in the mid-1990s since he used to write mysteries and was even published at the same imprint as I am in Japan. I never gave much thought to his day job as a cook, until his hugely successful 1999 memoir burst onto the scene, Kitchen Confidential, and entire generations of foodies stopped eating fish on Mondays.

Mine and my then wife's favorite NYC restaurant became Les Halles on the corner of 28th and Park, back when it was still a small bistro where you could get sweet breads, steak frit, and eat at its small bar. The restaurant was expanded later on but it was never the same and more recently it has closed forever. That's sad enough, but to lose it's chef forever...now that's disconcerting. But Bourdain would break the bonds of NYC to become something of a phenom. A culinary adventurer who, and I quote, "... will risk everything...I've got nothing to lose." That risk earned him millions of dollars and world adoration.

After all, back in the early 90's he was a heroin addict reduced to selling used CDs on the side of the road for food money. He had a love affair with alcohol which lasted up until the end. His favorite music was punk rock...New York bands like The Ramones, Patti Smith, Richard Hell and ummm, Suicide. He cut the sleeves off his black CBGBs t-shirt and of course, he loved his Marlboro cigs so much that a chef bud of his invented a custard dish that featured the vague flavor of a Marlboro Red cigarette. Yup, you can't make this shit up.

When he began his first low budget show, A Cooks Tour, back in the early 2000s his heart was breaking while his long time partner and wife Nancy Putkowski and he were breaking up. Some of the early episodes demonstrates his desperation (he jumps off a cliff into the sea at one point). But he had a searing wit, wasn't afraid to call out his fellow culinary pros on being suckups or just plain sucking (he was particularly tough on Emerald and Rachael Rey). After all, Tony was authentic. He was the real deal. He hated the commercialization of anything, especially when it came to food and words.

He inspired me as a writer, so much so that back in the early 2000s I wrote a non-fiction proposal for a book called Construction Confidential, an insiders look at the building business (He, no doubt, would have laughed at it). It was rep'd by the William Morris Agency but went no where (Thank God!). Food is way more romantic and emotional. But when I started traveling not occasionally, but often enough to lose yet another wife, Tony Bourdain was never far from my thoughts. I never travel without looking at his essays and videos first. Just last night I was YouTubing his many visits to Cambodia and his favorite place on God's earth, Vietnam. Little did I know he was in the process of killing himself. I'll be in So East Asia a week from Monday on a research trip. No doubt, I'll dedicate a few drinks to Tony. I wouldn't be surprised to find his ghost bellied up to a bar right beside me.

Whenever a literary hero of mine dies by suicide it shakes me to my core. Brautigan and Hunter Thompson come to mind. The late, Jim Harrison, another lit hero of mine who also considered suicide at one time, said that when he saw his daughter's red bathrobe hanging on the door knob, he knew that he couldn't go through with it. Tony Bourdain leaves behind a little girl from his failed second marriage and that's the saddest thing of all. Jim Harrison also added that the next meal is also worth waiting for. Too bad Tony Bourdain didn't wait for one more great meal. And one more after that, and one more after that. Eventually, he might have changed his mind.

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Amazon giveways, food poisoning, and a new release: Just another day in the life

Three weeks ago I was lying on a bare mattress with only a ceiling fan to cool my sweat-soaked body. I was suffering from the effects of food poisoning which I attributed entirely to my own carelessness. You don't travel to a third world country and eat as many street tacos as humanly possible and expect to feel well. What I'm about to tell you is not for the weak stomached nor it is for the kids, so skip a bit if you must. But at one point, nature was not taking it's normal course, rather, I was bleeding out.

The fixer for my research trip explained that a hospital might be in order, but together we gazed into one another's eyes, and the answer seemed obvious enough. Better not to go to a hospital in Guatemala than to willingly go. In the end he suggested I just allow the disease to take its course. "Oh, and we leave for the six hour overland drive at four in the morning," he added.

I wanted to die.

Here's a bit of video shot as I was beginning to recover the dreaded disease...

So now I'm back in New York and facing other more business related challenges that also make me feel like I'm bleeding out. One of these might not seem like a big deal to some, but I utilize Amazon Giveaways as one of my primary marketing tools. But for some reason, Amazon won't allow me to giveaway any of my titles as of this past Friday. Now you might think there would be a quick fix to this, but after spending countless hours and days on the phone with everyone from KDP to Kindle Retail and back again, no one can figure out what the hell is going on. It's almost like someone or something is tossing a wrench into the Zandri publishing works.

You'll also recall that I was unceremoniously removed from Kindle Select a few months ago without warning. Hmmmm, not that I subscribe to conspiracy theories, but things are beginning to smell a little bit. Or maybe my overactive imagination is playing tricks on me again. In any case, I've spoken to some very nice people at the firm and they are working the problem, even if they are doing a lot head scratching in the meantime. Hopefully, my giveaways will be up and running soon, and you dear fans, will be able to take advantage of some new free book offers.

Speaking of books, I have a new series starting up in July. The PI series will feature Steve Jobz (get it?). It will combine some wry humor with all the action, romance, and suspense you might expect from a Zandri crime novel. The pilot novel in the series is The Embalmer. In a nut shell, it involves a serial killer who enjoys embalming his victims while they're still alive. "Where do you come up with this shit?" a doctor once asked me. So there you have it.

Please pre-order now at a special low price!!!

I have quite a few new projects on the horizon including a brand new full-length Chase Baker action/adventure novel, the first in the Young Chase Baker YA series, and even a new erotic noir series. The latter will most definitely not be for the kiddies but Mature Audiences only. Now that the journalism is all but entirely paused, I'm putting out as many fictional words as possible everyday. It's what I love to do. And I hope you love to read them.

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Florence Writer's Retreat Report

A room with a view...

Some writers apply to conferences like Bread Loaf or Yaddo where they go to get some writing done in peace and without the day to day intrusion of job, kids, bills, sig other, Facebook, or whatever life-force gets in the way of their creative muse. It's the same for musicians and visual artists too. They apply to elite artist residency programs like the Millay Colony. I've been to Bread Loaf for an extended residency and conference, but haven't applied anywhere else. The application process takes so much time and effort that, in my mind, could be better spent actually writing. Which is why I choose to create a writing retreat of my own. In this case, it's located in Florence, Italy.

I first came here during my honeymoon twenty three years ago. Then I came back with my girlfriend ten years later. And for a short time I made this a temporary home base while writing and photographing for RT and other world publications. But over the past 4 years, I've been coming here twice a year, sometimes for a month at a time, only to write fiction. Over the past year I've spent more than one hundred days in Italy. At that rate, I will become a resident. Unofficially.

The important thing is that I can escape to place where I can live cheaply yet richly in a city full of romance, classical art, architecture, the memory of Dante, and get lost in my work. I've been close to some visual artists over the past few years and for obvious reasons, it's easier for them to demonstrate the progress they are making at their artist residencies and retreats. But I can tell you this: since having arrived in Florence by way of Rome just 3 days ago, I've written nearly five thousand new words on my fifth Moonlight novel, Moonlight Sonata, and edited twenty pages of my new stand-alone literary thriller, Precious (Aziz). I've also written several design pieces for Globalspec, and reviewed a part of the galley for my novel, Permanence, which I am putting out under my own, Bear Media, label in a month or so.

So I'm working hard in Tuscany and making my time here count. There is no better place to work than in an ancient city haunted by the ghosts of artists, writers, and musicians whose memory and work belong to the ages.

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