Poker fiction
I love reading the fiction in a gambling magazine. They always have these stories about guys sitting around the table, and then they get into a huge hand where there is quads over quads, rendered in tense, action-packed turn of the card prose, and then one guy thinks the other is cheating and goes to the bathroom and they get in a fight for their money.
The stories are almost always the same, and yet magazines continue to print them. You often see the same writer writing almost the same story every month. I wonder how much those guys get paid.
I’d like to see a proliferation of new poker fiction. Maybe with some elements of magical realism and/or metatextual interludes, wherein you become the player and are caught in a labyrinth and the dealer is a wood nymph with gold teeth who asks if you’d like to suck from his armpit and then offers you a sixth street card and you pay your wager in precious stones chipped from the eye of a man sleeping in your mother’s bed.
This is a call to all the poker playing writers out there. Send me your stories. The most unusual and/or well written one that still somehow pertains to poker will receive some prize or another or something.
Come on.
Tags: poker-fictionRelated Stories
POSTED IN: poker blog
6 opinions for Poker fiction
inthecards
Nov 16, 2007 at 2:51 pm
i am writing a poker fiction book for national novel writing month (www.nanowrimo.org). it involves historical fiction mixed with a bit of science fiction and just enough truth to (i hope) make it interesting to the reader.
my question is - how many poker players are avid readers? and…ultimately is there a publisher that will pick the book up when i finish it?
Blake
Nov 16, 2007 at 4:59 pm
i imagine there’d be a market for it. i don’t know how many poker players are AVID readers, but at least some might buy a poker-related novel. there’ve been a few i can think of.
good luck!
inthecards
Feb 19, 2008 at 4:17 pm
So i finished a draft of the novel, a whopping 550 pages. Here’s the synopsis:
The year is 1997 and Stu Ungar is on the verge of winning his third world series of poker main event championship, if the cocaine doesn’t kill him first. James Butler, a Las Vegas poker dealer and part-time wild west performer who is obsessed with Wild Bill Hickok, befriends a rock-bottom Stu. A spiritual and metaphysical journey ensues, including a trip through Tibet, where James obtains a relic that can be used to ‘bend time’. James goes back to meet Wild Bill and accidently ends up taking Hickok’s place in the famous “Dead Man’s Hand” shooting, sending Hickok forward to 1997 Las Vegas. Hickok and Stu meet and form an uneasy friendship; their personalities make for an interesting partnership where Stu helps Bill overcome his personal demons and the two of them work together to travel back in time and attempt to straighten out the past. Some great poker playing threads together a story of addiction and redemption through the eyes of two of the most famous card players in history.
Have a few copies out for feedback then will rewrite based on what I receive.
Blake
Feb 19, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I’d be glad to check it out.
inthecards
Feb 20, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Blake, shoot me an email (inthecards at gmail dot com) when you get a chance and we’ll discuss.
Alan
Neal Gersony
Oct 4, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I agree that poker fiction has a ton of potential. That is exactly why I wrote Poker Slam - a novel. I’d be very interested in feedback. At pokerslamU.com you can read or listen to the first 2 chapters for free.
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