Hi folks,
The day I've been waiting for is here! My memoir, ADRENALINE JUNKIE, launches today! Available on Amazon and other venues. Hope you'll give it a read and if you like it, please consider leaving a short review on Amazon--those mean a lot!
Here's the announcement by my publisher, Down & Out Books:
New from Down & Out Books: Adrenaline
Junkie: A Memoir by Les Edgerton
New from
Down & Out Books …
Buy the
trade paperback from the Down
& Out Bookstore and receive a FREE digital download of the
book!
Synopsis … Adrenaline
Junkie is more than a renowned, multi-award-winning author
entertaining with his life history. Les Edgerton understands that backstory
matters. It influences the present. So he journeyed through his past seeking
answers for why he was the way he was. Seeking answers for his thrill-seeking,
devil-may-care, often self-destructive, behaviors. Seeking a sense of personal
peace.
Why was he compelled to be the best he could be in all his
endeavors—legal or otherwise. What drove him to excel, then flee success, only
to strive for supremacy in another field?
Adrenaline Junkie holds the answers.
With nothing held back. With his life-saving humor, an indomitable spirit, and
a fierce courage to expose the ugly and painful. Like the tough, raw,
vulnerable characters Les writes about in his short stories and novels, he
exposes us to a man fighting against family, society, and his own sense of
injustice. Fighting for a moment—regardless of how fleeting—to feel in control
of his life. And, as uncomfortable at times as Les’s life adventure may be for
us to witness, we come away grateful he took us with him.
So settle back. Meet a real-life, twenty-first-century Renaissance
man. A real-life adrenaline junkie.
Praise for ADRENALINE JUNKIE:
“Adrenaline Junkie is a raw and harrowing memoir that
brilliantly combines great sensitivity with brutal honesty. Les Edgerton is
never afraid to reveal his vulnerability—and culpability—as he takes us on a
head-spinning ride through the bizarre and terrifying experiences in a life
that was often defined by violence. The result is a breathtaking page-turner
that will keep readers hooked from page one and will never let them go.” —Lisa
Lieberman Doctor, former Warner Bros. prodco president, president of Robin
Williams prodco, Blue Wolf Productions
“Filled with stories of knifings, armed robberies, brutal prison
fights, and Charles Manson (yes, that Charles Manson!), Edgerton proves that
life can be stranger (and certainly more violent) than fiction. But Edgerton
isn’t just a guy with a tough story to tell. He’s a poet who startles you with
sentences both stark and darkly beautiful. An astonishing accomplishment.” —Jon
Bassoff, author of Corrosion
“Adrenaline Junkie is the compelling, beautifully
written story of an extraordinary man who has lived on both sides of the
tracks. Les Edgerton achieves a sort of sainthood among sinners, an apotheosis
of rebellion and force, much like Harcamone at Fontevrault, or a hero in a
Johnny Cash song, a huge, Promethean work of major significance and scale.”
—Richard Godwin, critically acclaimed author
“Edgerton’s prose hits with the force of a hammer—as does his
recollection of an America, both deeply flawed and wonderful, that is now more
important than ever to keep in our sights. Adrenaline Junkie makes
sense of one man’s life while showing us all new aspects of our own.” —Jenny
Milchman, USA Today bestselling and Mary Higgins Clark
Award-winning author of Cover of Snow and Wicked River
“No one can accuse Les of being a ‘crime tourist’. He’s lived the
life, done the bird, and now he’s written the book. Adrenaline Junkie should
be on any prospective (or established) crime writer’s list. An entertaining,
darkly-rendered tale of one man’s adventures in the very belly of the beast.”
—Tony Black, author of Her Cold Eyes
“Sometimes shocking, often poignant, occasionally distasteful,
frequently funny, and always brutally honest, Adrenaline Junkie tells
the story of one man’s harrowing yet ultimately successful quest for
redemption. Written with razor-sharp clarity, Edgerton’s memoir is a triumph.”
—Robert Rotstein, author of We, the Jury
“Adrenaline Junkie will be required reading for crime
writers one day, a bible for future authors to study rebellion and the human
spirit, that smart-ass spark inside us all that doesn’t like taking orders from
parents, teachers, and even the law. Author of The Rapist and The
Bitch, two of the most profound noir novels published, an ex-criminal and
former prison inmate, Edgerton knows what makes all of us tick, and how, with
not much of a shove, any one of us could end up behind bars. One of the most
fascinating autobiographies you will ever read: from professional thief and
pimp to award-winning author and teacher.” —Jack Getze, author of the
award-winning Austin Carr Mysteries
“Adrenaline Junkie is at once heartbreaking as it is
funny, and just plain sick. A masterful work that will be lauded by both
writers and the general reading public alike.” —Vincent Zandri, New
York Times and USA Today bestselling and Thriller
Award-winning author
“Edgerton is a back-alley Kerouac. Walk away from this knowing
that your life-defining moments were his slow Tuesdays.” —Liam Sweeny, author
of Presiding Over the Damned
“In a way, Edgerton already wrote Adrenaline Junkie in
his crime novels. With the veneer of fiction removed, his always entertaining,
often enlightening, sometimes infuriating and unapologetic stories hit even
harder. Without any doubt, Edgerton is one of the great storytellers of
fiction—and now non-fiction.” —Benjamin Sobieck, author of The Writer’s
Digest Guide to Firearms and Knives
“Having survived an American Gothic horror story of a childhood,
unrepentant former thief, dope dealer, hedonist, Navy hellraiser, and porn
actor, Les Edgerton—now a writer and teacher—tells a tale of many tales: If
Scheherazade were an old pirate who got away with the gold, this would be his
opus.” —Earl Javorsky, author of Down to No Good
“Les Edgerton’s expertly told memoir is in turns tragic,
thrilling, funny and heart-breaking. Adrenaline Junkie is a
powerful blend of coming-of-age story, family drama and low-life crime
thriller.” —Paul D. Brazill, author of Last Year’s Man
“Edgerton has lived a life most of us only write about. That he’s
actually lived it and has the chops to deliver such a vividly drawn memoir
gives me a raging case of writer’s envy.” —Maegan Beaumont, award-winning
author
“How often is a memoir genuinely astounding? A reformed outlaw
takes us through his harsh rural childhood, working harder before he was twelve
than most of us ever will. There follows armed robbery, pimping, drug dealing,
rape in prison, narrowly avoiding a hellcat’s castration attempt, suicide
foiled by the rope breaking, a walk on part for Charles Manson and his creepy
serial killer mate—who got short shrift from our host. And so much more…So many
startling sentences: ‘She was going to be his last fuck before the operation
and I was going to be his first after he became a woman.’ ‘It was then Charles
Manson started to contact me…’ There’s a satisfying twist late on after he
becomes a family man so this fascinating book has just the right ending.
Essential reading. Makes Bukowski seem like Donny Osmond.” —Mark Ramsden,
author of The Dark Magus and the Sacred Whore
“A tryst with Brit Ecklund, a shoot-out in a deserted high school,
robbing a laundromat in front of a patrol car. Those are just a few moments is
Les Edgerton’s checkered past. He went from a Huck Finn-like childhood in
Texas, the swinging sixties as a criminal, time in Indiana’s Pendleton prison,
and eighties excess in New Orleans, with little slowing him down until a good
woman found a way. Funny, harrowing, and poignant in spots, reading Adrenaline
Junkie is like being lucky enough to sit at the bar next to that guy
who has lived a lot of stories and knows how to tell them. Yes, Les Edgerton
was an adrenaline junkie and he always knew where to get a fix.” —Scott
Montgomery, MysteryPeople Crime Fiction Coordinator
Posts
