"Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it." - Tom Waits Literary Mixology No. 8 features an original cocktail named after and inspired by Tom Waits. It is the creation of Joe at thepoisoncabinet a wonderful, dark, candlelit cocktail bar hidden in a basement in Newcastle city centre. 'The Waits', as I called it, is a combination of Pernod absinthe, gomme chartreuse, byrrh, and suze. I'm having a special preview of this new cocktail to celebrate my debut novel. Joe says maybe one day he'll create a 'Daniel James'... I remembered watching an excellent Tom Waits documentary on BBC Four called Tales from a Cracked Jukebox while I was working on the manuscript earlier in the year. Waits and his 'demon voice', plying his trade and writing his songs, amongst the 'night people' bled into sections of my novel, particular in my own journey into the city's darker corners to find #EzraMaas, who, even more so than ...