One of my literary heroes, Daniel Allen Cox, is featured in this week’s “Three Dollar Bill” column in the Hour. Daniel’s latest book is called Krakow Melt, and I’m eagerly awaiting my review copy from his publisher, having absolutely adored his previous book, Shuck (which I reviewed on Black Heart’s website).

Daniel Allen Cox (photo by Dallas Curow)

Daniel is someone whose career I’ve been fortunate enough to follow from its early beginnings: hawking his novella, Tattoo This Madness In, at Montreal’s Expozine; baking me delicious carrot-cake cupcakes (with cream cheese icing!) as a thank-you for reviewing his book in The Link back when I was their Literary Arts editor; shucking his pants at readings for Shuck, etc. He’s also someone whom I’d consider a mentor, as I’ve been quietly observing his success and thinking about how similar we really are.

For instance, we both:

• Posed nude for some skin mags to raise our profiles, though we ultimately aimed at writing careers (hey, it made sense back in the day!)
• Wrote columns for Canadian newspapers (his “Fingerprinted” column can be found in Xtra!; my “V for Vixen” has been put to rest, but is still archived at Hour‘s website)
• Created semi-autobiographical characters to describe our sexy experiences, in novel form

That last one is the reason I mention Daniel, because I’ve fictionalized him in Naked Montreal, and I just wanted to share a few words on the subject.

For the rest? You’ll just have to buy a copy of the book.