New site for interested authors

Friend of the book Matt over at skullring.org has started putting original fiction up on his site.

I'll let him explain it.

I'm planning on offering fiction on my all purpose weird/horror blog http://skullring.org/under the Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org/ ).

I'll be accepting fiction submissions for the site, which currently gets about 300 to 500 hits a day. Any fiction that is sent to me should be licensed under the CC license.

There won't be a bit of money involved, but if you've got any orphaned stories that deserve to see daylight, consider sending them along. I'll be considering the following material: fantasy, horror, slipstream, New Weird, sci fi. Basically anything creepy, dark, strange, or exotic. Material can range from flash fiction on up. I'll even take story fragments, as long as it's entertaining.

After a while, I'll offer an archive of the stories online. Any author that submits a story can have a link directed to their online website, or other contact information as they request. There won't be anywhere else I'll be publishing the stories; they're yours. I'm not interested in making money, and I'll be doing the same thing myself with some of my own stories.

Shoot your material over to mattormeg@gmail.com, if you're interested. Subject line: creative commons story: author/title .

Matt's a decent guy, so interested authors should keep him in mind.

Shelf Monkey - intercontinental blog review

Fellow Shelf Monkey and Paris resident Amy Ross (I'm now officially taking over Europe!) has posted a lovely review on her blog une nouvelle vie de boheme:

"Redekop has moments of real wit and he isn’t afraid to push his plot to entertainingly ludicrous extremes. If, ultimately, he winds up glossing over some finer philosophical points about censorship, elitism, taste, and judgement, he at least reminds us of the pleasure, joy, and even lunacy a true love of books can inspire."

Read the rest of the review here.

Shelf Monkey - Rabble.ca review

The cool website Rabble.ca has posted a glowing review by Melanie Redman:

"Redekop’s work could be read as a light satire or a savage condemnation of intellectual snobbery, but in either view the work explores the complexity of any group of people attempting to set the standards by which we understand and engage literature...The next time you’re sitting on an airplane haughtily surveying the titles propped before your fellow travellers, remember that, soothing as it may be to the little snob that lives in most of us, intellectual snobbery is not a monkey you want on your shelf."

Read the rest here.

Corey Redekop - the Simpsons character!

Watch out, J.K. Rowling!

At 7:57 am CST, Shelf Monkey hit its all-time sales high of #577 on Amazon.ca.

Somewhere, that idiot who wrote The Secret tosses, turns, and wonders why she has nightmares of gibbering apes rending her book to shreds.

Arrogant? Moi? [updated]

Well, the first ever amazon.ca review is up and, well, it's...I'll let busymom speak for herself:

"I read this book because of all the good reviews in magazines ect (plus I figured the author's arrogant attitude had to come from somewhere)but I had a really hard time getting past the first two chapters. Was a waste of my time."

*sob

Well, good reviews, she got that right. And Amazon seems to be upholding its high standard of reviews by people who admit to not reading the book, but whatever. What strikes me as odd is that I get the sense that this person knows me.

Huh.

I'll never say that a bad review doesn't hurt; I mean, the Globe and Mail review was by no means a rave, but at least some points were made. But "author's arrogant attitude," now, that hurts. But that's what the veil of anonymity allows.

Well, can't please 'em all. Hope she paid cash.

UPDATE: The review has been taken down. Strange, but gratifying. And a new 5-star review has taken its place. So, take that, anonymous reviewer!

Librarians - hipper than we ever thought

There's a great article in the NY Times about the new renaissance in hipster librarians.

On a Sunday night last month at Daddy’s, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, more than a dozen people in their 20s and 30s gathered at a professional soiree, drinking frozen margaritas and nibbling store-bought cookies. With their thrift-store inspired clothes and abundant tattoos, they looked as if they could be filmmakers, Web designers, coffee shop purveyors or artists.

When talk turned to a dance party the group had recently given at a nearby restaurant, their profession became clearer.

“Did you try the special drinks?” Sarah Gentile, 29, asked Jennifer Yao, 31, referring to the colorfully named cocktails.

“I got the Joy of Sex,” Ms. Yao replied. “I thought for sure it was French Women Don’t Get Fat.”

Ms. Yao could be forgiven for being confused: the drink was numbered and the guests had to guess the name. “613.96 C,” said Ms. Yao, cryptically, then apologized: “Sorry if I talk in Dewey.”

That would be the Dewey Decimal System. The groups’ members were librarians. Or, in some cases, guybrarians.

“He hates being called that,” said Sarah Murphy, one of the evening’s organizers and a founder of the Desk Set, a social group for librarians and library students.

Ms. Murphy was speaking of Jeff Buckley, a reference librarian at a law firm, who had a tattoo of the logo from the Federal Depository Library Program peeking out of his black T-shirt sleeve.

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”

Read the article in its entirety here.

Thanks to Morley Walker (arts editor for the Winnipeg Free Press, honourary shelf monkey, and all-around good dude) for the heads-up.

Shelf Monkey: Blogosphere review.

There's a new rave review by E. Ann Bardawill (of the blog Something Fell), containing this ready-made blurb:

"Shelf Monkey is great read. Funny and deeply light - it’s like Douglas Adams meets Rex Murphy, rents a hotel room for the weekend and indulges in wild, uninhibited cunning linguistics. After such a satisfying tale, do not be surprised by the urge to light up a cigarette even if you don’t actually smoke."

Nice. And I never knew that about Rex.

Read it here.

The Reviews Keep Coming In!

Well, the sales may not be causing James Patterson any sleepless nights, but the reviews are as stellar as ever!

"[H]owlingly funny debut novel...if you love books and really need a good laugh in your life, track it down, read it, and then shelve it next to some really serious books which will then automatically lighten up."
Andrew Armitage, Owen Sound Sun Times.

"With what can only be described as something different—and I do mean different—comes Corey Redekop, and his debut novel Shelf Monkey. Redekop’s manic work examines the fine line that separates bibliophiles (lovers of books) from bibliomaniacs (people afflicted with a legitimate psychological disorder that creates an obsession with the obtaining and possession of books). Sure, it sounds goofy—but for those of you with a hate-on for manner in which modern book sales are driven more by media circus than by authentically good work by talented writers, Redekop has answered your prayers."
Kelly Rowntree, Planet S.

"Shelf Monkey" is by turns hilarious and disturbing. It may generate a few uncomfortable squirms as well as giggles from readers who might have a few snobbish literary tendencies of their own. Still, it's a fun sort of squirmishness, and the nihilistic cheer that permeates throughout this book is going to make it a big hit among fans of Chuck Palahniuk. I really enjoyed "Shelf Monkey" and I think that this will be the start of a very promising career for Redekop, especially if the real-life shelf monkeys of our world embrace this book like I think that they will."
Matt Staggs, SkullRing.org.