False River (novel excerpt)
By Stinson Carter

The Cathedral bells knocked Cam out of dreamless sleep into a cold and dewy Sunday morning. As the clangs rattled his teeth, he crawled out from the hibiscus bushes to get a jump on the morning Mass crowd.

He hopped the fence onto Royal Street and drew stares from a horse-drawn carriage passing by with the day’s first batch of tourists. The driver was warming up his hangover voice with lies about ghosts and old battles––weaving a peculiar history in which Napoleon and Andrew Jackson were not only contemporaries, but even fought alongside one another in the Battle of New Orleans. It was clear to Cam that the twenty-dollars these Yankees paid wasn’t for the history lesson as much as for the sound of horse hooves clacking on the cobblestones.

As the carriage went off and left things quiet again, the silence of an empty Sunday morning street handed him the hard truth that sleeping in the St. Louis Cathedral prayer garden left him no less tired than he was when he collapsed there at 4am, and thanks to the fresh topsoil he was as dirty as he was stranded. He knew if he was going to have a fighting chance of somehow conning forty bucks by the day’s last Greyhound to Shreveport, he’d have to find a way to look presentable at best and trustworthy at least… click to read novel excerpt

The Good Life of Brian Van Holt
BlackBook Magazine, February 2008
by Stinson Carter

“I don’t really believe I’m the ‘Mayor of Venice.’ My friends just call me that,” says 38-year-old Brian Van holt, who recently showed both his acting and surfing skills in “John From Cincinnati,” the critically praised HBO series from “Deadwood” and “NYPD Blue” creator David Milch.

Whether or not Van Holt abides or suffers the “mayor” title, he doesn’t have to pay for his coffee at Stroh’s, the upscale Abbot Kinney deli around the corner from his loft. And when we stroll into the neighborhood French bistro after their posted lunch hours, the waiter lets it slide. Much later, at the chic tapas outpost Primitivo, he is greeted by name, and by primo back-porch table. Later still, the jam-packed Otheroom bar makes space for his sizable group. The bill is light.

Abbot Kinney runs from Washington to Main, between the yuppie-dom of Santa Monica and the sleaze of the Venice Beach boardwalk. And it’s a perfect middle ground between the two. here you can buy a wetsuit or a Paul Smith suit, a slice of pizza or a slice of foie gras. And it’s a place that Van holt had in his crosshairs years before he finally moved in and took up his post. click to continue reading…

Drop Dead Gorgeous
Interview by Stinson Carter
Maxim, March 2009

Jason has his meat hooks full with would-be victim vixens Willa Ford and Julianna Guill in this month’s bloody-good remake of Friday the 13th… click to read interview