Hard Times Blues — Elwin Cotman

With its intoxicating blend of rock and roll and the supernatural, crazed religion and visionary prose, Hard Times Blues is a wild ride down the same shadowy American sideroads traveled by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Greil Marcus and Samuel R. Delany. A marvelous collection by a strikingly original new voice in contemporary fiction.
--Elizabeth Hand, author of Errantry

Hard Times Blues reads like a wake-up call; a collection of remarkable stories that are as ambitious as they are personal. Cotman is a first-class stylist with a heart and a wit to match. He knows how to make us want to follow him and his marvelous characters down into the lovelorn, maddening, and scary places we already inhabit but so rarely recognize.
--Paul Tremblay, author of Swallowing a Donkey's Eye

Elwin Cotman's carefully wrought, gracefully accomplished, and lyrical narratives range in tone and style from picaresque and carnivalesque to elegiac, ironic, and melancholy. Yet, while tonally distinctive and aesthetically vivid, his stories are not so much driven by style or voice, as they are by love in the largest sense. For love does not exclude chaos nor avoid the vicissitudes of history and neither do Cotman's socially engaged, brilliantly crafted stories.
--Miranda Mellis, author of None of This Is Real

An exciting, inspiring, and sublime mix of beautiful imagery, old-fashioned pulp, gritty predicaments, biblical poetry, soul, charm, heart, heartache, ghosts, lost souls, bad attitudes, and literary invention. I love these energetic, wistful, vibrant stories. Elwin Cotman writes like a brilliant maniac, as if he's afraid someone will take his pen away too soon.
--Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope

With hyperbolic, technicolor imagery and engrossing characters that radiate intrigue, these modern tales comprise a new book of essential fables for our time--read it, close your eyes, and delight in the words still glowing hot inside your brain.
--Alissa Nutting, author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

Train hopping, a shrine to Elvis, chain-store zombies, dreamlike pulp novel love poetry... This is Hunter S. Thompson meets The Bible. Cotman has a gift for metaphors and images that stay with the reader. These are stories you want to tell to your friends.
--Amelia Beamer, author of The Loving Dead

Tales that manage to be funny, dark, whimsical, and more than a little trippy are always trips worth taking. Hard Times Blues is like a journey through the woods in a world that vaguely resembles this one--strange new wildlife peeks at you through the trees, and you can't even imagine what you'll find at the heart of this forest, but isn't that part of the fun? Cotman has laid an enticing path before your feet. Following it would be a wise, and thoroughly entertaining, decision.
--Dan Parme, author of Hungry