Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Die Laughing
    Die Laughing
    Die Laughing
    Ebook51 pages34 minutes

    Die Laughing

    By Vince Iuliano

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    New Crime Fiction from the Author of The Push-Over 

    Portrait of a Funny Man. Locked in a string of deadly dull appearances at places with names like Hoo Hah's and Guffaws. . Doomed to an existence of tiny, cramped dressing rooms and bare bulbs; of cheap laughter, liquor and women. A man at the end of his rope, trapped on a desert island alone with only a whoopie cushion for company. Wandering the empty rooms of his own mind as he travel's America's dusty roads. 

    This is a tale of a comic with leaden timing. 
    Nobody likes a bad comedian, especially the hecklers. This is the tale of a comic who runs halfway around the country to escape his severest critic. This is the endless borscht belt, the yuck-fest that never ends. Sometimes escaping your worst enemy can turn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse. 
    Read what critics have called a 'fast, dangerous' novel. 
    From the author of SONNY ROMAN'S RISE AND FALL, LAST WILL and TESTICLE, A HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR, THE PUSH-OVER , and the upcoming thriller REMAIN VIIGILANT comes a creepy novella that reads like a page-turner and handles like a rabid carnivore. Guess who's on the menu tonight?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVince Iuliano
    Release dateJun 19, 2017
    ISBN9781386051107
    Die Laughing
    Author

    Vince Iuliano

    Freelance writer. Staunch crusader for truth, justice and the American Way..(writes under various names. You could be reading me right now, and not know it!)

    Read more from Vince Iuliano

    Related to Die Laughing

    Related ebooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    • Article

      Prohibition

      Sep 10, 2021

      It had been ten days since my last fix. I knew what I was going to do was wrong, but unless you knew the yearning that your body exerts, the internal pull which strangles your very soul into submission, then you cannot judge me. Yes, it was wrong. Ye

      15 min read

    • Article

      A Substitution

      Jun 21, 2022

      A Substitution
      20 min read

    • Article

      Caught Out

      Oct 2, 2022

      Caught Out
      9 min read

    • Article

      Last Orders

      Jul 28, 2021

      Last Orders
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      I Live For The Night

      Sep 4, 2018

      I Live For The Night
      15 min read

    • Article

      ‘Sing to It’: Featured Fiction from Amy Hempel

      Mar 25, 2019

      If she was home at night in her husband’s bed, did he care what she did with her days? The post ‘Sing to It’: Featured Fiction from Amy Hempel appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Conversation

      Nov 1, 2023

      The Art Of Conversation
      4 min read

    • Article

      Joshua Mohr: The Time I Robbed a Liquor Store

      Mar 10, 2017

      Our alibi was a sandy blanket in the back of my truck, an acoustic guitar, a knockout brunette in the passenger seat. Our alibi was a night picnic at the beach. When we got pulled over—if we got pulled over—the cop would peer in the cab and he’d thin

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ladies’ Night

      Aug 15, 2023

      Ladies’ Night
      5 min read

    • Article

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      When Misfortune Strikes

      Apr 11, 2021

      When Misfortune Strikes
      2 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Lovett’s PIE SHOP

      Oct 19, 2023

      Mrs Lovett’s PIE SHOP
      4 min read

    • Article

      Never Meet YOUR HEROES?

      Apr 2, 2020

      Never Meet YOUR HEROES?
      7 min read

    • Article

      Robin Ince Is On The Road

      May 29, 2023

      I was under my favourite railway arch turned bar when the ghost of a stand-up comedian came and tapped my skull. It was not Tommy Cooper or Little Tich, it was a ghost of me. I spent much of my working life defined as a stand-up comedian, though I al

      3 min read

    • Article

      Nothing To Fear

      Jan 26, 2021

      Nothing To Fear
      8 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      They Got Their Show

      Aug 10, 2021

      It is midnight in Ponderosa and Nick Velasquez can’t sleep. The public doesn’t want him to sleep. It’s been like this ever since it hit all the big streaming platforms. The viewers stay up bingeing and he… well, he has been bingeing in his own way. W

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Royal Hotel, Mt Hope

      Nov 14, 2018

      Royal Hotel, Mt Hope
      6 min read

    • Article

      Anthem Of Our Crazy Age

      Nov 2, 2022

      MY old friend Ena planned every detail of her funeral. When she told me that she had written the eulogy to be delivered by her daughter, I said: ‘Don’t you think that’s cheating?’ ‘No!’ She snapped. ‘I want to set the record straight. I was a very go

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Die Laughing

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Die Laughing - Vince Iuliano

      What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

        Henny Youngman

      1.

      I played all the venues, twice over. Giggles, Ho-ho’s, Slappy’s. Walking the bare wooden stages limned with the flop sweat of a thousand comics before me.

      The ghosts of the greats and the ingrates washed down from the broken key lights like a layer of indolent silt. The laughs that trickled over these bruised stages were small compensation for the long, empty nights and endless hotels, but everyone has an axe to grind, right?

      Think up funny shit, say it on stage at night, get paid. It was a sweet gig and I’d be the last guy to complain.

      Over the years, I’d gotten some good advice. Leno taught me how to milk that last extra smile when you thought the joke was over. Seinfeld gave me some pointers on the effective use of the pause and on not bombarding the listener with too many words.

      Get in, stick him, pull the knife out slowly, one veteran on his way down told me.

      I soaked it all in like a sponge. I worked at my craft, honing a solid 10 minutes out of raw material. Expanding that to a respectable twenty-three minute killer set. Some comics made an entire career out of a good 10-minute set, I considered myself one of the fortunate few.

      And things were beginning to click for me. A few scouts from the Tonight Show had shown up to catch the show over the course of two nights in May. The scuttlebutt was that they’d come to watch my performance, but who knows? Another time someone who used to be involved with Everybody Loves Raymond turned up. Could CBS or NBC  be far behind?

      That’s when I had my first taste of the Fat Bastard. He may have been in the audience from the jump but I didn’t become aware of him until he began heckling me on the third night of my week-long gig at Skippy’s in Amangansett.

      It was a typical East Hampton crowd: well-heeled, good spirits, liked their liquor. Occasionally I’d get a heckler, nothing I couldn’t handle. This time, this third night, the guy got under my skin.

      I was telling my prospector joke. Usually I get a respectable laugh from the crowd for this one, thought it was by no means my best.

      Yukon prospector comes down from the mountains, I said. He’s been up there a few months, found a nice vein of gold, and now he’s ready to take care of another vein – don’t get ahead of me.

      There were a few chuckles. I’d gotten their attention.

      "So he ties up his donkey at the nearest bar, goes in to wet his whistles. Bartender says ‘Can I help you?.’ Guy says ‘Give me two beers and

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1