Excerpt from Quicksand by Steve Toltz, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Do I need it?"

Even back in high school he'd burden me with some unbelievable secret and beseech me to promise I wouldn't tell anyone, then when I betrayed his confidence to a mutual friend, I'd discover he'd already told them the exact same thing. In any case, the fact is I am not the only one intrigued enough about his existence to document it. I have copious rivals who've already depicted his protracted wince on canvas, daubed his dead-eyed, petulant expression in earthworm pink and Day-Glo yellow, drawn his convulsions like folds in fabric, sketched his legs to illustrate their significant loss of bone density, summoned his hunched form in glazed ceramic, in pastels and oils, in plaster and clay. I've viewed tidy little works in which can be seen the digitally animated collapse of his whole craniofacial complex, and murals of him face-planting into a quiver of arrows. My best friend has been cropped, doctored, photoshopped, bubble wrapped, and shipped. I've glimpsed his tired grimace on glossy variable contrast paper so many times I've felt sorry for my own naked eye.

"You going to stand there and watch?"

I go back upstairs to the bar and sit down. Clouds swim in a watery blue sky. It is loose, warm weather. I feel drowsy. The music is loud and I'm not sure I'll be able to hear Aldo calling me from inside the toilet. I look over my notes and think: I'll be annoyed if after writing a whole book, a photograph of his screaming face would have done just as well.

The bartender says, "You want something else?"

I sigh. "In 1929 Georges Simenon wrote forty-one novels."

"What?"

"A bourbon and Coke."

As the bartender pours, I light a cigarette.

"Go outside," he says.

I keep the cigarette going, sucking deeply.

"I'm calling the police."

I laugh and open my jacket just enough to show my gun.

The bartender leans forward. "So even writers carry guns these days?"

I go, "You have no idea."

Excerpted from Quicksand by Steve Toltz. Copyright © 2015 by Steve Toltz. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.