Blue Vegas

Channel 13 recently interviewed first-time author and proprietor of the local Double Down Saloon, P Moss, about his book Blue Vegas, featuring stories based on the author’s own experiences and encounters in Sin City.
Watch it here.

By John Mischief

Earlier this month at his World Famous Double Down Saloon owner/writer/entrepreneur/visionary, P Moss launched his first book, Blue Vegas.

Blue Vegas is a loose collection of 17 stories of life in Sin City. Stories that run the gamut of emotions; Lust, Fear, Anger, Desperation, and Hope. A desperate father who has to ask his daughter to borrow some money. A superstitious oriental business owner has a restless problem with retirement. And 15 more tales of the Naked City and surrounding areas…

The stories are as varied as each person that make up our beautiful town. Focusing on the citizens who live and experience life off the strip as most of us do, it paints a different side of life here in Vegas. Most people are familiar with the bright neon of the strip but know little of the burned out bulbs of life behind it.

Blue Vegas is the second book to be published by City Life Books, yes, the same people who bring you City Life each and every week.

Pick up Blue Vegas today at any area bookstore or head to [Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf] locations to have Moss sign the book for you. Either way get it. You won’t be disappointed and you just may recognize something in there.

View the article here.

By AMANDA LLEWELLYN

VIEW STAFF WRITER

There may be no one more qualified to write about life in Las Vegas, fictionalized or otherwise, than iconic Double Down Saloon and Frankie’s Tiki Room owner P Moss.

Moss, a downtown-area resident for nearly 20 years, has made a career of learning about people: how they think, what gets them going and the trials of human experience.

“Anybody who has an ability to watch other human beings and learn how they tick, well, that’s how you learn to run a successful business,” he said. “It’s also great for writing.”

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Author P Moss with members of the Swing Shift Side Show. Photo credit: Jesse Nabers

Man-about-town and current Vegas DeLuxe host, Robin Leach, did a write-up on the avant-garde debut of Blue Vegas on his Luxe Life blog complete with photos from this must-be-seen event.

Check it out here.

Author P Moss was recently a guest on KNPR’s State of Nevada to discuss his newly published book of “only in Las Vegas” short stories as well as talk about his less-than-usual night job for a writer – he owns a couple of unusual bars in town.

Listen here.

By Stacey Fott

If you couldn’t make it to the debut of Blue Vegas at the Double Down Saloon, you missed out on one of the wildest book debuts ever. This was not your wine and cheese and wait in line for hours to get an autograph gig. Oh no, this was an event complete with daring acts by SwingShift SideShow and an author P Moss who mingled with friends and bar patrons.

To see what you missed

P Moss divulges the real stories behind his short fiction collection Blue Vegas by TOD GOLDBERG

If there’s one question every author hates, it’s: Did that really happen? It’s a strange phenomenon, really, since it’s not as if people run up to Steven Spielberg to ask him how it was living with that adorable ET, as people can generally separate reality from fiction in just about all genres of entertainment except for fiction itself.

The temporal experience of reading lends itself to the belief that what you’re reading, what you’re experiencing on the page, must be true, or else why would you be feeling the emotions you’re having just on the basis of a typeface on a white page? The truth, of course, is that much fiction is rooted in at least some reality — authors do not exist in a vacuum — but reality may be a simple observation, a smell, a taste, a sentiment, memory or impression based on a fleeting moment of actual life.

Yet, in P Moss’s short story collection Blue Vegas, the first title from CityLife Books, it’s almost impossible not to see clear parallels between his fictional creations and the people who might sidle up to one of Moss’s two Las Vegas bars — the Double Down Saloon and Frankie’s Tiki Room — with a story to tell, a lie to sell, or a confession on their lips. But, of course, inspiration is a nebulous thing when it comes to telling an ostensibly “true” story — after all, truth and fact rarely are the same thing — so we’ve asked Moss to give us a little insight on a few of the stories that felt like the kind of apocryphal tales people tell late at night in bars they shouldn’t be in.

Read the full article here.

First-time author Moss recently sat down with dailyfiasco.com writer Jason Scavone to talk about the writing process, the trappings of  daily life, Old Vegas vs. the new, and being drawn to the ’seedier’ side of things …

2/26/10
Discontent. Discontent with change. Discontent with station and circumstance. Discontent with New Vegas. Seventeen times P Moss crawls into the venal, unlit corners of Vegas, and 17 times we come away with sordid, nasty stories of people trapped in their own lives, trapped by their own faults or trapped by forces well out of their control, desperate to break out.

“I think that’s how most people in life are. Whether you’re stuck in some kind of trouble or whether you’re just some schmuck who has to fight traffic every day to go to work. I think most people are trapped in their shit. A lot of them are aware of it. A lot of them are not aware of it. A lot of them are just resigned to the fact that that’s how it is. Whether you’re talking about murder or fucking chickens or whatever you’re doing, it’s really no different from the poor sap who has to fight traffic every morning just because if he doesn’t he’s going to lose his house and his wife and his dog,” Moss said.

Read the full interview here.

Richard Abowitz
Los Angeles Times ~ 2/28/10

“Despite getting frequent mentions in tourist guides and routinely topping out locals’ best-of polls, the Double Down Saloon is the Vegas institution that most appears to belong in another, cooler city than Las Vegas. With a scruffy pool table and a tiny stage, its character (and jukebox) is closer to New York’s late CBGB than an ultra lounge.

The décor reflects the owner, and few who know him will be surprised that P Moss has written a collection of short stories in his free time. With “Blue Vegas” in a new imprint from alternative weekly City Life, Moss is making his fiction debut at age 58…”

Read the full article here.

Las Vegas Books Examiner, Kimberly McGee recently reported on the much-anticipated launch party for Blue Vegas.
Excerpt from Examiner.com:

Gambler, world-renowned bar owner and all around local good guy/character P Moss has joined with CityLife Books to release his first book, a short story collection aptly titled “Blue Vegas.”

The man behind Double Down Saloon and the Asstini will celebrate the release of “Blue Vegas” with an avant-garde party at 8 p.m. March 2 at his famous anti-Vegas dive …

For the fête, Moss has booked a troupe of extreme circus freaks, the SwingShift SideShow, which … brings classic carnival entertainment screaming into the 21st century. Guests will witness ancient and deadly feats of skill along with jaw-dropping and eye-popping original stunts, including sword swallowing, fire performances, belly dancing and mind-over-body demonstrations. Spinning on the turntables is DJ Rex Dart of the Bargain DJ Collective.

Read the full article here.