Tony
Fennelly
When I was young, I traveled the country with all my worldly possessions in one suitcase and found my jobs in the "Miscellaneous" column of the classifieds. I sold lingerie at Altmans in New York City, peddled books door-to-door in Puerto Rico, clerked in a bank in L.A., waited tables in Chicago and worked in a "bust-out" joint on Geary Street in San Francisco. (They were open after hours, sold cheap gin in coffee cups, and when someone yelled "Vice!" all the gin went on the floor. Or on some sailor’s knee.)
Hitting New Orleans in '69, I ordered stripper gowns with three-foot industrial-strength zippers, and danced on Bourbon Street for two years.
In '72, I married Richard Catoire, a gorgeous Cajun pipe-liner, enrolled in the University of New Orleans and studied Drama.
After graduation, I eschewed gainful employment for the life of a novelist. I stayed home and wrote full-time for ten years before making a sale.
The Glory Hole Murders, my eighth full-length book, was the first to be published. It got a great review in the New York Times and was nominated for an Edgar. Set in New Orleans, this whodunit introduced the bitchy gay detective, Matt Sinclair, who has since become a cult favorite here and abroad. It came out in '85, the year I needed to earn some money and took a job in the welfare office. I used that eye-opening experience for my second Sinclair mystery, The Closet Hanging.
My third Sinclair mystery, Kiss Yourself Goodbye, appeared abroad, but not here. By the end of the ‘80's, U.S. publishers eschewed a gay hero because of the burgeoning AIDS epidemic.
My Margo Fortier series features a former stripper turned society columnist. The first Fortier mystery, The Hippie In The Wall, came out in '94 and the second, 1 (900) DEAD, in 1997. The third, Don’t Blame The Snake, is about to be published by Top Publications.
The mystery writer’s life offers wonderful opportunities. In '89, I was invited to the Semana Negra in Gijon, Spain, where I rode in the king’s plush black train and led a conga line of 4,300 people along the marina. In '91, I made a reading tour of Germany and earned enough money to buy a mink coat. I comported myself well enough to be invited back to Germany in ‘95 where I shared the former residence of the East German Prime Minister with Jane and MickeySpillane
I learned about Mexican politics at Paco Taibo’s dining room table in Mexico City, climbed the Toltec pyramids at Chichen Itza, traveled through the mountains of Cuba with a former guerilla who had fought for Castro and had my shells read by an Yruba priest outside Havana. I travel whenever I can, but my characters don’t stray far from New Orleans. That’s not a restriction. Anything that can happen anywhere else can happen here.
