A Room in Dodge City
Vol 2:
The Blut Branson Era
A Novel-in-Vignettes
by David Leo Rice
PAPERBACK $17.99
EBOOK $7.99
HARDCOVER $29.99
PDF (PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN)
Vol 2 of the Trilogy
A Bildungsroman couched in a tale of folk horror and cosmic paranoia. An elegy for the declining art of cinema.
The first book in the Room in Dodge City trilogy brought us a nameless drifter arriving in a bizarre Western town that might encompass all of reality. Now, our drifter considers what happens when drifting is no longer an option. Focusing on the mysterious workings of The Dodge City Film Industry and the personality cult surrounding Blut Branson, its most legendary director, Volume 2 asks hard questions about the nature of art, fame, competition, and, ultimately, the ongoing struggle to be born. A mystical inquiry into the sacred and the profane, it expands the universe of the first volume, while exploring yet-stranger territory and laying the foundation for the trilogy’s apocalyptic finale.
Illustrated throughout by artist Hosho McCreesh.
Content Warning: hanging, suicide, asphyxiation, masturbation, abortion, fetuses, animal cruelty, drug use, violence, murder, torture, pedophilia, mental instability, child murder, cannibalism, incest (all very satirical and bizarro)
Praise
“David Leo Rice’s Dodge City 2 is psychedelic, epistemological: it upholds and extends traditions as vital as Lynchian body horror and Barthelme-style slapstick, but its elegant and startling figurations are all its own. Does America contain Dodge City or vice versa? How many David Cronenbergs do we need? Rice fans out these—and other, subtler—questions with a master’s hand, and delivers a book that is at once hilarious and profound. He’s the real deal.”
—Matthew Specktor,
Author of American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound
“Dodge City 2 is the Künstlerroman on acid, a heady investigation of creation, originality, and collapse. At once a parody of and tribute to film culture, it reads like what might happen if William S. Burroughs got loaded and did a cut-up using issues of Cahiers du Cinéma from an alternate dimension.”
—Brian Evenson,
Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
“Reading David Leo Rice’s Dodge City 2 is like walking through the desert on peyote, a hallucinatory dream full of surprises and gifts. It’s as absurd and haunting and funny as anything I’ve read in a long time. Rice’s baroque style and voice is fantastic. You won’t be able to put it down.”
—Brandon Hobson,
National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed
“I am in a film-noir affair with David Leo Rice’s A Room in Dodge City Volume 2: I could go back to my normal life, I could embrace everything that is safe and bland and supposedly real, I could even watch a movie that bears no resemblance to any directed by Blut Branson (he of the vertiginous backstory). But why would I do that when I can have the glorious chaos, the darkly absurd humor, the mind-bending trippiness found in The Blut Branson Era. Maybe the banal’s for you; it ain’t for me. And anyway, if I have questions, I can always ask the Official Spokesperson for What’s Really Going On Here.”
—Andrew Farkas,
Author of The Big Red Herring, Sunsphere, and Self-Titled Debut
“Go deep enough into certain cinematic subcultures and the term ‘cult film’ begins to take on an unsettling new significance. In A Room in Dodge City, Volume 2: The Blut Branson Era, David Leo Rice ventures into the legacy of a filmmaker who may very well transcend the concept of identity itself. Add some memorably bizarre settings to the mix, plus a touch of body horror, and you have a narrative perfectly made to captivate cinephiles and devotees of the Weird in equal measure.”
—Tobias Carroll,
Author of Reel, Transitory, and Political Sign, and Editor of Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“At first Dodge City 2 is like a Donald Barthelme script for a Coen brothers movie; then it’s like a Pynchon script for a Lynch movie; then it’s like a script by a writer from another universe for a director from another universe. In any case, the imaginary movie will be playing inside your head long after you finish the book. Dodge City 2 could actually be infinite; its pages are but one dip into that other universe. This is an origin story that shirks all beginnings and all endings, serving instead an incredibly elegant assortment of crisp and cinematic scenes that add up to more than the sum of their parts. Reading it does something strange and beautiful to your experience of time. It’s a fascinating, funny, disturbing, and utterly worthwhile trip.”
—Elvia Wilk,
Author of Oval
Also by David Leo Rice
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• Bizarro Horror Fiction | Novel-in-Vignettes
• 5” x 8” Perfectbound Trade Paperback
• Cream Paper, 202 Pages
• Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-946580-21-4
• Paperback ISBN-10: 194658021X
• Hardcover ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Hardcover ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• LCCN: Not Registered
• First Edition: January 26, 2021
• Short URL: acpbook.link/dodge2
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• Download Press Release
• Book Club Reading & Discussion Guide
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• Get DRC on Edelweiss+
Cover design by Leah Angstman. Illustrated interior by Hosho McCreesh.
About the Author
DAVID LEO RICE is a writer and animator living in New York City. He’s also the author of the novels A Room in Dodge City, The PornME Trinity, and Angel House, one of Dennis Cooper’s favorite books of 2019. David’s debut short-story collection, Drifter, was released in mid-2021, and his novel The New House was released in 2022. He’s online at raviddice.com.
About the Illustrator
HOSHO McCREESH is currently writing and painting in the gypsum and caliche badlands of the American Southwest. His work has appeared widely in print, in audio, and online.
Media & Images
• Playlist at Largehearted Boy
• Interviewed by Brian Evenson on the Skylight Books Podcast Series
• Interviewed by Matthew Specktor on Los Angeles Review of Books
• Interviewed by Danny Elfenbaum on Vol. 1 Brooklyn
• Included in Vol. 1 Brooklyn’s “January 2021 Book Preview”
• Interviewed by Andrew Farkas on Heavy Feather Review
• Interviewed by Jonathan Perry on Selected Prose
Distribution & Sales
Booksellers can order this book through their Ingram ordering catalogs for 50% discount with free returns or through Asterism Books for 50% discount with no returns (we will accept free returns of Asterism purchases back to us directly; please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com if you need this return service option).
Booksellers ordering direct from us can get a 50% discount, no shipping costs, free returns accepted. Enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced or need to use a purchase order number, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
Booksellers who’d like shelf talkers, point-of-sale signage, bookmarks, or author signing/reading posters, you can download the book’s sales kit here.
Contributing authors ordering direct from us can enter quantity here. If you prefer to be invoiced, please email altcurrentpress @ gmail . com.
For reviewers, promotional outlets, or desk copies, please request a copy. Booksellers and book industry professionals can read or download a DRC at Edelweiss+.