Melanie Nissen was the co-founder and photographer of the legendary Los Angeles magazine, Slash.Between 1977-1980 she photographed the Los Angeles punk scene. Taking photos of the fans, the bands and the scene around her.Local heroes like Screamers, Bags, Germs, X, Go-Go's, Black Randy, Weirdos, Dils, Zeros, Alley Cats, Deadbeats, Fear along with local legends Brendan Mullen, Kim Fowley, Claude Bessy, Russ Meyer, Penelope Spheeris, northern neighbors The Nuns, Avengers, Crime, Dead Kennedys, The Offs and visitors including Pere Ubu, Magazine, Devo, Damned, Cramps, Dead Boys, Peter Tosh, Ramonesand Sex Pistols all form her body of work from this time. These images are from a box in the garage and are all that's left of a larger body of work.Hard + Fast is a photography book, some previously published in Slash Magazine and some never seen before.Hard + Fast is due for release second half of 2021 and is the first book to be published by new imprint, Blank Industries.

Take one good ol' country boy--trying his best to do right--toss in good-looking women along with a few crooks and what you get is another scrape for Rowdy Turnipseed. When he encounters two women in a nipple-pink Trans Am, his big red pick-up and his life take a right turn. He's infatuated by the woman who calls herself Yellow Feather but he can't pursue his new love because his missing cargo turns out to be a dead body and he's suspect number one. Rowdy's chased by Miami druggies, the cops and finally half-Indian FBI agent 'Cottonmouth' Cannon, a renegade for sure. To extricate himself, Rowdy tries fortune-telling, voodoo, soothsaying, country dancin' and beer drinking, all while on the run and coached by Truth, the little man who's always around reminding Rowdy right from wrong. Finally, Rowdy's old pal and former circus performer, Sooner Boone, helps pull a fast one on the crooks and cops. Rowdy survives again, but as usual, the most pressing question is: who gets the girl?

The sequel to Flat-Out Sexy, starring a bad boy race car driver hero who's met his match-from a hot USA Today bestselling author. Grad student Imogen Wilson realizes she's hit on the perfect thesis for her sociology degree. If she follows the so-called "rules" on how to get a man, can she steer her way into the world and hearts of stock race car drivers, and establish their dating- and mating-patterns? Although sexy and reckless racer Ty McCordle is the ideal test subject, Imogen knows that for the sake of science, she can't give in to her growing attraction for him. Yet he's the one who's chasing after her, and Imogen realizes that she actually wants to be caught. A southern gentleman like Ty will satisfy all her curiosity-and make all the risks worthwhile...

In the world of Formula 1, it's every man for himself. Corruption runs deep in the playground for billionaires and the world's most elite athletes. The stakes are high, everything is on the line, and sparks will fly when the lights go out. Lennox Gibbes is a disgraced Formula 1 World Champion, the Paddock Playboy. A tattooed bad boy with a reputation, he has a penchant for supermodels and supercars. His arrest records and frontpage headlines on gossip magazines precede his on-track accomplishments. It was my job to clean up the mess he made. But when I ran away from my problems in New York, I found all new ones on the F1 track. Six foot tall, muscle-bound, alpha racing driver problems that will stop at nothing to get me to quit. Secrets I was not supposed to know. Oh, and that sultry Scottish accent? Definitely not falling for it. I was his PR professional. I wasn't supposed to be his nanny. He has a smart mouth and a bad attitude, but I need this job. He has his demons on track and I have mine off. I have news for Lennox Gibbes, he's messed with the wrong woman this time. I know what I want, and I'm here to take it. Too bad in F1, nothing is what it seems. Fast & Hard is a standalone, enemies to lovers, steamy romance with a guaranteed HEA!

As one of the best-known honky tonkers to appear in the wake of Hank Williams’s death, Faron Young was a popular presence on Nashville’s music scene for more than four decades. The Singing Sheriff produced a string of Top Ten hits, placed over eighty songs on the country music charts, and founded the long-running country music periodical Music City News in 1963. Flamboyant, impulsive, and generous, he helped and encouraged a new generation of talented songwriter-performers that included Willie Nelson and Bill Anderson. In 2000, four years after his untimely death, Faron was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Presenting the first detailed portrayal of this lively and unpredictable country music star, Diane Diekman masterfully draws on extensive interviews with Young’s family, band members, and colleagues. Impeccably researched, Diekman’s narrative also weaves anecdotes from Louisiana Hayride and other old radio shows with ones from Young’s business associates, including Ralph Emery. Her unique insider’s look into Young’s career adds to an understanding of the burgeoning country music entertainment industry during the key years from 1950 to 1980, when the music expanded beyond its original rural roots and blossomed into a national (ultimately, international) enterprise. Echoing Young’s characteristic ability to entertain and surprise fans, Diekman combines an account of his public career with a revealing, intimate portrait of his personal life.

"In our leggings' pockets we'd each stashed guns. I'd packed a .357 magnum pistol, and Jose had a .22 pistol. When we got close to the wax camp, Jose said he thought they would have a trap set for us, and we'd be outnumbered. We both agreed that the best thing we could do was to keep our mouths shut under the circumstances. We rode into the camp, and Casus, the man I figured stole the cow, had a little fire going and had coffee ready and some tacos made. He invited us off our horses, and I noticed a .30-.30 rifle sitting pretty close to his hand." Apache Adams is somewhat of a living legend out in the Big Bend country of Texas. Born in 1937 and raised on the Rio Grande, he has lived the cowboy life most people believe ended in the 1800's. He has been inducted into the Big Bend Cowboy Hall of Fame, given the Working Cowboy Award by the National Cowboy Symposium, the Heritage Award by the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and won more buckles and saddles then he can count. But this book isn't about awards or buckles; it's about the life and adventures of a working cowboy. Ride along with Apache through the desolate canyons of the Big Bend and swim the Rio Grande horseback tracking cow thieves. Ride the river catching illegal Mexican cattle. Take a deep seat in your saddle when you rope a 2,000 pound maverick bull, get him to the ground, and tie his feet without any help. Tied Hard and Fast isn't a bunch of tall tales. It is the compilation of a lifetime of stories and adventures told in the voice of the man who lived them. "We followed the dogs up into a big rock slide, and they had about a 70- to 80-pound female mountain lion treed on a big rock. The dogs had her surrounded, but none of us had any kind of a gun. So I jerked my rope down and just kinda pitched it at the lion on that rock. She swatted at the rope, and I pulled it up tight around her front paw. The mule I was riding was pretty green and, when the cat started throwing a fit with the rope on her paw, decided to take off. I jerked the lion off the rock, and then the dogs all jumped on the lion. So I was dragging a lion around in circles with a bunch of dogs chewing on her, and she was putting up a pretty good fight with three legs." Along with living these stories, Apache has shared them with audiences at the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the Arizona Cowboy Poet's Gathering, the Ruidosa New Mexico Gathering, and other events across the west. Once you pick this book up, you'll say, "I'll just read one more story and then put it down for the night..".but you can't!

A gunman on the run, a seventeen-year-old girl on a family vacation, a jaded working girl, a guilt-stricken widower, an abandoned mistress. All heading fast down a route to sudden death. Then for one horrifying instant their lives are frozen in time, when a Cadillac drives at speed into oncoming traffic. Lives are lost, and those that survive must endure a violent sequence of events that ensure life will never be the same again - for any of them.