Diamond Head 2: Kimber's Cowboy Book

Not sure why, but this mildly engrossing story of "alternative" types in Kitty, Virginia, a small, slightly hip town complete with indie record stores and a happening café, sat unread on my bookshelf for years. Reading it now, almost twenty years after its first publication, Our Noise now functions as a period piece, a look into a time when two characters who create a zine need to cheat Kinko's to print their product, and a guy who starts a small record label struggles with physical inventory and mailing costs. It's so much cheaper to be creative these days. I liked Gomez's female characters more than the males, most especially Eileen, a drifter who ends up in town only because her car has broken down. As she settles in, she creates romantic chaos for two locals. One slightly weird thing I noticed: Gomez has an obsession, perhaps unconscious, with some unniceties of intimacy, especially bad breath.