Chelsea Horror Hotel

Book excerpt: The punk rocker, his wife, and their dog move into a haunted Manhattan hotel in this “darkly witty, macabre” novel (Scanner Zine). “The screaming voice of a punk Lovecraft.” —Joe Dante, from the Foreword Dee Dee Ramone doesn’t quite know what he’s getting himself into when he and his wife Barbara move into the Chelsea Hotel with their dog Banfield. The room he’s staying in might be the very room where his old friend Sid stabbed Nancy. Dee Dee spends most of his time trying to score drugs and walking Banfield, with whom he can magically communicate. Meanwhile, he can’t stand his neighbors and though he shies away from violence, he wishes everyone were six feet under. Dee Dee gets involved with the transvestite lover of one of his gay fellow addicts. When Barbara finds out, things get out of hand. All the while Dee Dee is tormented by the living and dead demons that plague the hotel, along with the ghosts of his old dead punk rock friends Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders, and Stiv Bators. And that’s when the Devil himself decides to join the party . . . “Dee Dee Ramone was the essence of rock ‘n’ roll, infantile and cute and crazy, and driven. He was also a supreme songwriter. He’s immortal.” —Richard Hell, author of I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp “I love Dee Dee Ramone. What a sense of humor! His acute ironic views made his lyrics for the Ramones characteristic of the band’s huge success around the world, from then right through to today.” —Debbie Harry