Local poet Alan Catlin has published a novel, Chaos Management with Alien Buddha Press. The book details the misadventures of an unnamed bartender as he tries to survive the travails of working for an ever-changing host of characters running the national hotel chain where he was stuck in middle management and, later as bartender/manager at a local steak house/supper club that goes belly up. The novel is a fictional memoir based on actual life experiences and shows how not to succeed in hotel and restaurant management in graphic detail.
Chaos Management is a long night’s journey into days, the education of a reluctant barman, as he embarks on his unchosen career in the “hospitality industry.” Beginning as a young man who prides himself of being the night man, of being where the action, to finding himself being dragged down by the weight of his experiences and his substance abuse, finally to his jaded older self-reconsidering his life choices. He is assaulted, threatened, maligned, taken advantage of and abused but somehow perseveres. His experiences are kind of Fear and Loathing in Albany combining the wild antics of a Hunter S. Thompson wielding a shot glass with the insiders view of the behind the bar action of Cocktail. Based on a lifetime of experience in the trade the narrative has the immediacy of a late-night gab fest of professionals sharing strong drinks and trading stories of their life behind the stick, of their adventures in the Business of Bar Wars.
Alan Catlin has published in six decades. He had well over sixty chapbooks and full-length books to his credit including the Slipstream Chapbook Award-winning Blue Velvet in 2017, two from Night Ballet Press, Hollyweird and Beautiful Mutants, and full length books Wild Beauty and American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press, as well as, Last Man Standing from Lummox Press. He is the poetry and reviews editor of misfit magazine online.
Alan recently had three new books of poetry published – Memories Too (Dos Madres), Sunshine Superman (Cyberwit), and The Road to Perdition (Alien Buddha Press).
You can get our copy of Chaos Management right now on Amazon.
