Fiction. Book + CD. Music by Six Organs of Admittance. "Here I was, doing ninety on the Santa Monica Freeway with a quart of whiskey shoved into my crotch and my dead neighbor in the trunk. It had come time to leave Los Angeles...." Thus begins the pre-apocalyptic, cross-country race with death to bury the murdered past in Joseph Mattson's urgent, beautifully reckless debut novel of transgressive loss and hunted redemption, culminating in a shotgun fight with God. Includes an open-road, open-whiskey soundtrack by enigmatic and stunning Drag City recording artist Six Organs of Admittance.

Author City: LOS ANGELES, CA USA

For years Joseph Mattson was a rambler, working as a farmer, fisherman, dishwasher, short-order cook, getaway driver, blood donor, home healthcare worker for the developmentally disabled and the clinically mentally insane, playing punk rock music, and too much more. He is the author of the collection of stories Eat Hell (Narrow Books) and EMPTY THE SUN: A Novel with Soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance (A Barnacle Book/Drag City), which were the #1 and #10 best-selling Book Soup paperback fiction books of 2009, respectively, and is the editor of Two Letters: Collection of Art & Writing, Vol. Two (Narrow Books) and THE SPEED CHRONICLES (Akashic Books), an anthology of original fiction about the drug speed. Mattson's award-winning poetry and prose has been published in Ambit, Slipstream, Pearl, and dozens more, and EMPTY THE SUN is currently a finalist for the 2010 SCIBA Fiction Award. Mattson has also been shortlisted for DZANC's 20 Writers to Watch list, an alternative to The New Yorker's 20 under 40 list.

Reviews and Other Links
author site
Andy Stewart @ Rain Taxi
Steve Miller @ The Boston Phoenix
David Todd @ The Villager