I have known Tom Pitts for quite a few years... During the 80's he played guitar with the San Francisco band Short Dogs Grow. The band had a couple releases out on Rough Trade Records and toured alot... After the band broke up in 1989 I lost contact with him... However he resurfaced on Facebook and Twitter.. He sent me a link for his blog and I was able to read some writing... I was impressed enough to publish his work in Punk Globe... Tom has turned out to be a very creative and talented writer with a great sense of humor... He recently interviewed Chris Walter for a cover story in Punk Globe which landed him much praise..

Snubnose Press has just released his first book "Piggback" and I was lucky enough to get to interview Tom about the book and what he has been up to.

Congratulations on release of your book Piggyback... Before getting into questions about Piggyback. Tell us a bit about your background....

I’ve been kicking around San Francisco for the last 26 years. I’ve been in bands, been on drugs, been on the street, and overcome some personal demons. I’ve been writing the past few years, that is to say, sending stuff out and publishing in magazines. Some of it is true, some of it not so true. On top of the writing, I’m also assistant editor over at the Flash Fiction Offensive. In addition, I’m a dad, husband, and hard-working son of a bitch.

Where in Canada are you from

I was born in Calgary and raised outside of there. But, because I went to school on Vancouver Island, my early Punk Rock experiences were in Vancouver. I packed my bags at the tender age of seventeen and moved to San Francisco.

Had you played in any bands before coming to San Francisco in 1984?

Only for a minute, and I’m not sure that counts.

Tell us about your band Short Dogs Grow?

Short Dogs was formed way back in 1985 with the intent of doing something different, an alternative to the music being created in the scene around us. It was a time when the whole punk thing was degenerating into formulaic and predictable “hardcore.” It all started to sound the same, look the same, and act the same. Punk was developing its own conventions; something that punk was designed to get away from. It’d turned into music that, to me, sounded like static punctuated with a rapid-fire snare drum, crested with vocals you couldn’t understand. Our intention was to keep the mood light and the songs different, and, to some degree, I think we succeeded in that.

How did you all meet?

We were all bike messengers in San Francisco. It was a time when it seemed every band on the local scene had at least one bike messenger in its line-up. I remember going to the Mabuhay and if you saw a huge pile of Schwinn one-speeds knotted-up on the sidewalk, you knew it’d be a fun night.

I remember that Short Dogs Grow released an LP called "Matt Dillon." Was it for the actor Matt Dillon or James Arness the actor who portrayed Marshall Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke?

Definitely the actor, Matt Dillon. The Smiths (also on Rough Trade at the time) were putting out all these 12-inch singles that had dead movie stars on their covers, we thought we’d one-up them by not only putting on a live movie star, but one that was considered very un-cool at the time. We wrote Coppola for permission to use a still for the cover—an 8x10 glossy shot from The Outsiders—and got back a very cold and decisive NO. I do know Matt Dillon eventually found out about the record, because the Soul Asylum guys saw him at a bar up in Portland and brought it up. He was very annoyed and said, “Yes, yes, yes, I know about the Short Dogs thing.” They said he was very testy about it.

Any other releases? Were they all on Rough Trade Records?

We had one album out before Matt Dillon called Self-Entitled. It was released in ’87, also on Rough Trade Records.

Did you tour a lot with Short Dog Grows?

You know, it seemed like it at the time. There weren’t many bands in our circle that were getting into the van and leaving the state. But, in hindsight, we were only really out there a few weeks at a time. We managed to make all around the United States, though. When you’re moving from town to town like that, time slows down and you bring back a load of experiences that would have otherwise taken years to build up. It was a strange feeling pulling back into town, feeling as though you’d been gone for a year, and people barely knew you had left.

Didn’t you play a show for Punk Globe at The Stone?

Perhaps, my memory is spotty. We only played the Stone a couple of times. I do remember being in the backstage bathroom thinking, Geez, Patti Smith probably threw up in that toilet.

You played a lot at The Chatterbox I remember. What were your favorite venues to play?

The Farm, the Mabuhay, and of course, the Chatterbox. Don’t forget the Club Foot and the Sound of Music; I’ve got some warm and weird memories from those joints, too. I’ll go out on a limb and speak for the rest of the band and say that our favorite place to play was Vancouver. We loved it up there. We must have done 20 gigs in Vancouver and only one that I can remember in Seattle.

When did Short Dogs Grow break up?

I think in 1990. Maybe ’89. The drugs had started to set in with me and it’s a bit grey. It broke my heart, but you can only fuck with the bull so long before you get the horns.

Now tell us about Piggyback? How would you describe the book?

It’s a fast moving crime-story. No vampires here. This is the one-sentence description that I’m using for Amazon: When two young girls disappear with a trunk-load of pot, unaware that their payload has been packed with an extra five kilos of cocaine, a lovable loser persuades a sociopathic killer to pursue them across Northern California in a violent, twisted goose-chase that ends in a horrific place none of them could have foreseen. How’s that?

Who is releasing it?

Snubnose Press. They’re an up-and-coming outfit that’s been grinding out killer noir and crime-story books for the last couple years. I’m proud to be a part of their growing stable. In my mind, Snubnose Press is very similar to some of the indie labels of the late 80’s. They’re working hard and taking risks to get some good stuff out there without having to compromise with the middle-of-the-road crap the major publishing houses generate to keep their giant ships from sinking; somebody that can give literature’s underbelly a voice.

When was the official release date? October 29th, 2012. Yep.

Do you plan on doing a tour reading your book?

As much as I would like to, I don’t think today’s publishing world budgets allow for much of that stuff. Besides, Anderson Cooper never returned my phone calls about the TV interview. Fortunately, social media provides a good outlet for shameless self-promotion. I’ll be hitting up the network, doing some interviews for online magazines and hoping for some good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Tom you should have asked Kathy Griffin to put some pressure on Anderson... Are you planning a release party?

Maybe some champagne with the wife. I’m holding out on the party until my novel, Hustle, gets finds a home and gets released.

I am very impressed y your writing and judging from the hits you received so are other people. Any thoughts about that Tom?

Thank you, I’m both pleased and flattered. Why does the stuff resonate? I’m not sure. I try to keep it moving fast with the dialogue forming the characters. Lean and mean. People are so accustomed to having a story unfold in front of them on a screen nowadays; I like my stories to have the same flow. Elmore Leonard’s famous advice is: Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip, and that’s what I try to do.

Who were your inspirations for the book?

The genesis for this novella came from a bad experience that a friend of mine in the pot industry had. Similar premise, different outcome. I took his bad fortune and let my mind run with the “what if’s.”

Who are some of your favorite writers?

Hmmn, that’s a long list. I love some of the big-shots, Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard, Don DeLillo. I love a lot of the ol’ standbys, Bukowski, Hemingway, Steinbeck. But these days I’m reading a lot of up-and-coming guys that are publishing on the same online mags as I am. Joe Clifford, the man that single-handedly kick-started my writing. (Joe and his wife have a popular reading series called Lip Service West. In October 2010, Joe convinced my timid ass to get up and read a short of mine called Turk and Taylor. It gave me the push I needed to send it out. It got published in July 2011 and I’ve been going strong ever since. He’s still instrumental in pushing me forward.) Joe’s heartbreaking memoir, Junkie Love is being released next year. Eric Beetner, he’s another Snubnose author who also did the cover for Piggyback, he cranks out a lot of good stuff. Chris Walter, he’s always fun, if your idea of fun is Vancouver’s skid row. Recently, I was lucky enough to be included in an anthology put out by the very cool magazine, Shotgun Honey. It’s packed full of these guys. 29 stories by 29 writers. I’m working my way though, when I hit somebody I like, I Google ‘em and get more stuff.

You have been getting some great reviews... Which review are you most happy about?

An Irish writer named Ken Bruen blurbed my book for me. He’s kind of a big-shot, a two-time Shamus Award winner. He said, "Piggyback by Tom Pitts restores Noir to it's dark kingdom, a rollicking pumping novel of losers, psycho's, stone killers, idiotic amateur rip-off artists and a road-movie of a story that is as fast as it is beautifully written. Think Don Winslow's Savages meets Christopher Cooke's Robbers and you have the dark read of the year." Tough to beat that kind of praise.

Do you have a web address for Piggyback so readers can purchase the book?

Piggyback will be up on Amazon or available via the publisher, Snubnose Press, on October 29th. There’ll be a link on my site http://tom-pitts.blogspot.com/

Any other web addresses that you would like to give the readers so they can keep up to date with what you are doing?

Well, there’s http://tom-pitts.blogspot.com/ which is not really a blog, just a spot to link my stories. My previous tales in Punk Globe are linked there, too. The magazine I help edit, Flash Fiction Offensive is at: http://www.outofthegutteronline.com/search/label/The%20Flash%20Fiction%20Offensive if any of your readers care to submit something. Other than that, it’s Facebook and Twitter where I can be easily tracked down.

Are you writing another book while you are promoting Piggyback?

Funny you should ask, I’ve just completed a full-length novel called, Hustle. A very sleazy tale. It’s about two drug-addicted male prostitutes who attempt to blackmail one of their clients. I had a friend read the first draft and he said he had to shower after reading it. I took that as a compliment.

Any final words for Punk Globe readers?

Just keep reading, and keep reading Punk Globe. Keep linking the stories you like to the social websites.

And for you, Ginger, keep doing what you do. You know, I sometimes joke and say Punk Globe is like a cross between Maximum RocknRoll and TMZ, but truthfully, there’s nothing like it out there. There’s a void and I’m glad your filling it. Thanks for your time.