Time for the publicity juggernaut to start up again

Well, it's been awhile, but after much, much, much laziness on my part (catching up on Lost turned out to be a real timesuck), I have finally got the second novel done somewhat to my liking. Which is fairly lucky, since it comes out in less than two months.

Husk final cover, designed by David Gee

Yes, Husk (click the link for description) is on its way to terrorize bookstores with its ridiculous tale of a zombie with glimmers of morality. Meaning that yes, he does eat a fair amount of people (a zombie novel without cannibalism is like a vegetarian who still eats fish; completely wrongheaded on the concept), but at least he feels conflicted about it.

I've decided to branch out and start an official author page, which you can find here. Already I've posted a few entries on my thoughts concerning zombies, and I'll continue to focus most of my energies on keeping the site filled with current information. Expect it to fill quite rapidly with reviews and events, and I'll be using it to promote further writings and projects down the road. I've also begun a public Facebook page for the novel, which I do hope you'll all check out and join (with the possibility of a free copy up for grabs to all members). I'll keep up my reviews here from time to time, but very likely in a reduced capacity for the foreseeable future.

Already, the buzz is building. Husk has been noted as a hot Fall release by Quill & Quire, and Russell Smith gave it a muted mention in one of his Globe and Mail columns (the title's not there, but I'm fairly certain I'm the only CanLit author with a zombie novel on the horizon, unless Alice Munro has decided to finally publish her long-awaited Lives of Undead Girls and Decomposing Women). I've also been lucky enough to cajole remarkable blurbs from some of my favourite authors (Andrew Pyper, Andrew Kaufman, and Peter Darbyshire, a trio that proves CanLit ain't all about  prairie winters and hardscrabble lives), which you can find on my author website.

I've been contacting bloggers and websites with a bent for the horrifically unusual or the unusually horrific to get some early review coverage. If you know of any that get a fairly wide readership, don't hesitate to contact me with the details. I've also been working on the launch in my current habitat in Fredericton, NB, and will get those details finalized ASAP.

Best of all, I've been accepted to two prestigious Canadian literary festivals for autumn 2012. In late September, I'll be travelling to Manitoba to participate in two events at the Thin Air Winnipeg International Writers Festival. One will be in Winnipeg proper (date and time TBA), and the other (on the evening of Sept. 21) will be a special event in Brandon, MB, where I'll be having a reading of Husk followed by the local premiere of the new Canadian horror comedy A Little Bit Zombie. This film was actually financed in large part through crowdsourcing, and has garnered a fair amount of good reviews as it travels the festival circuit. Needless to say, I'm quite stoked about pairing up my novel with this by-all-accounts very silly and very gory little slice of Canucksploitation. Should be a great evening, and a great overall time back in the prairies.

The highlight for me, however, is having two events (TBA) at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto, ON, near the end of October. I don't yet know who is on the bill with me (I'm not so deluded as to think I have a huge amount of drawing power), but just getting in the festival is a huge career highlight for me. Looking at the full list of participants, I can only assume I'll be paired up with Michael Chabon, Rohinton Mistry, and Gordon Pinsent. Only makes sense.

Finally, next week I shall be unveiling the spanking new book trailer, created and edited by yours truly, with invaluable help from a gaggle of nieces and a murder of nephews. I shall place it up on this site eventually, but I shall showcase it first on my author website and the Husk Facebook page. If you like the trailer, please distribute it on your own pages, tweets, and blogs accordingly.

It has been quite a ride for me so far, and there's still two months until I see it sitting atop the shelves. I hope you'll all enjoy my strange little monster, and perhaps we'll get a chance to meet when I'm on the road.

An octopod of reviews for your pleasure

Oh, woe is me, I am late again with reviews. So lax. So lazy. I humbly beseech thee, prithee, forgive me.

I have been rather busy, actually, what with the job, the second novel coming out, the book trailers I am working on, etc. But tonight, I am all yours, with one caveat; I have an abundance of novels already read this year, and simply cannot give the time I normally would to each title (worthy though many of them may be). So, here now, a whole slew of novels, each reviewed in three to four devastatingly incisive sentences.

The Last Hunt - Cliff Burns

• I'm not a big fan of western novels (my knowledge of such limited to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove quartet [yay!] and Chuck Norris' The Justice Riders [retching noise]). But I am a fan of Cliff Burns, here straying from his usual sci-fi/cyberpunk/fantasy-noir settings to attempt a serious old-fashioned horse opera. He doesn't reinvent the genre a la Patrick DeWitt (ah, I knew there was another western I've read), but The Last Hunt is a solid oater, with clean, spare prose, conflicted heroes, interesting characters and caricatures, and hefty dollops of gunplay. I'd say it's sure to please fans of Louis L'Amour, but I'm guessing at that.

The Complete Lockpick Pornography - Joey Comeau

• Comeau has become a favourite of late (check out his brilliantly strange One Bloody Thing After Another), and Lockpick Pornography continues along the same lines, delivering a pair of weird, odd, funny, and very original takes on homosexuality, relationships, thefts, public sex, abuse, vigilantism, kidnappings, and more. I wouldn't call the two novellas burdened with plot; these are shaggy, rambling tales that charm the reader even as their wincing at some of the graphic descriptions (the title does contain the word pornography, so I don't know what else I was expecting). As Comeau's protagonists amble through a world they aren't really a part of, we grow to understand the effortless alienation that the LGBT community faces, and the strong sense of humour that can help people survive such bigotry. It's also remarkably sweet-natured and giving.

Bedtime Story - Robert J. Wiersema

• Wiersema has always had a hint of the magical in his stories up until now, but Bedtime Story pushes him into epic new territory. A story about a boy trapped in a fantasy novel and the father seeking clues to free him, it treads a fine line between realism and the fantastic that would trip up lesser novelists. Weirsema keeps his story straight and his style clear, capturing the feel of Tolkien-like epics on one hand while delivering an affecting portrait of grief and loss on the other. Pair this one up with Lev Grossman's The Magicians.

Katja from the Punk Band - Simon Logan

• You want weird? Katja is Elmore Leonard via William Gibson, a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller that commands attention with great dialogue, twisted characters, and a fine sense of place. Set on an unnamed urban island and following a woman delivering an unnamed vial of something, Logan traipses back and forth through time and POVs, keeping the reader off-balance and filling in the blanks later with a precision that would do Christopher Nolan proud. This is a grimy, gritty, terribly unpleasant world, and I'd go back in a second.

Voluptuous Pleasure: The Truth About the Writing Life - Marianne Apostolides

• This unusual set of nonfiction stories is ostensibly drawn from the author's real life, yet Apostolides twists each tale to blur the lines, leaving the reader wondering what, if anything, is real. What is real is her gorgeous writing style, her command of detail, and her daring take on the flexibility of memory. Presenting stories of her father, her relationships, and a fascinating visit to a brothel, Apostolides is fearless in revealing herself and masterful in ability. If you want stories that leave you sated yet wanting more, Voluptuous Pleasure fits the bill.

Pirate Therapy and Other Cures - Mark A. Rayner

• In a collection of short stories, essays, and flash fiction, Rayner fits himself snugly into the eternally off-kilter worlds of Monty Python, The Goon Squad, and Douglas Adams. In Rayner's warped imagination, Jesus contends with dinosaurs, Batman reveals a bout of insecurity, an alien overlord mans an advice column, and Anne of Green Gables eventually destroys the world. If one story doesn't tickle your fancy, the next one will. As with Monty Python's television series, I advise reading only a few stories at a time, as the non-stop punnery can be overwhelming, and taking pauses to savour Rayner's sardonic wit is a pleasure.

In Plain Sight - Mike Knowles

• Sometimes, with crime novels in particular, you can tell when an author is 'faking' it, i.e. the author really doesn't have a clue about the realities of crime. Knowles has no such problem, and his increasingly dark and violent tales of former mob enforcer Wilson reek of someone who knows the game; if Knowles is faking it, he's better than I realized. Almost unremittingly bleak, utterly nasty, yet compulsively readable, Knowles' Wilson series is a dive into the depths of humanity's own hell. In Plain Sight is as harsh as sandpaper (think Andrew Vachss before his Burke series descended into self-parody), and unless you're the sort that enjoys gruesome vengeance against irredeemable people (and I am), stay clear away.

Osama - Lavie Tidhar

• Osama qualifies as one of the greatest mindjobs I've come across, a metaphysical detective story that loops in and around itself like a mobius strip. Set in an alternate reality where global terrorism does not exist, Osama follows a private detective hired to find an obscure pulp author who writes of a vigilante named Osama bin Laden. What follows, in one of the best meta-fiction narratives I've read since Paul Auster's City of Glass, is an atmospheric descent into multiple realities that fractures the sanity of the detective as he confronts the realities of war and chaos. I really enjoy Tidhar's Bookman series of steampunk novels, but I was truly unprepared for the genius of this.

And there you have it, eight reviews to sate your appetite. Get though all of them, and win a t-shirt!

What to expect in 2012 (before the endtimes commeth, of course)

There are two ways to go in 2012, as I see it.

1. Succumb to Fox News hysteria, dig myself a large hole in my backyard, line it with concrete, make a bulk run to Costco, and hole up with piles of Glenn Beck/Ron Paul literature to wait out the 2012 Mayan apocalypse, only venturing forth to meet our inevitable alien overlords when I can reasonably expect to assert my new position as king of the mole people (after I've battled and vanquished Pat Robertson for the title); or
2. as I've already survived two (2!) raptures in 2011 using nothing but cynicism and common sense, consider myself well-nigh argmageddon-proof, and soldier on.

As per usual, the answer lies somewhere in-between (although if we were scaling this on a horizontal line, I'd definitely fall far closer to option 2).

2011 was a busy year for me. I read voraciously, watched movies fanatically, finished and submitted a new manuscript, went to work every day, and even started working out on a semi-regular basis. Now, having surpassed 100 books read and achieving a personal best of 25 push-ups in a row without vomiting, I look at my 2012 prospects and get instantly fatigued.

First, I'm going to divide myself in two, Internetally-speaking. Shelf-monkey.blogspot.com was initially intended to promote the publications of my debut novel (coincidentally titled Shelf Monkey), but has somewhere along the line transformed itself into more of an all-purpose literary review site. Not that I'm complaining, the site has kept me sane for some time, and has fostered an unexpected ability to gain free books for review purposes. Yet now, with the impending release of my sophomore effort Husk, I have decided to create a new site devoted entirely to my personal efforts, and leave Shelf Monkey (the blog) open as a continuing review site for whatever books and occasional movies capture my fancy. The new site is still a work in progress, but it's a public one, and I hope that you'll bookmark www.coreyredekop.ca and visit regularly for news and events relating to Corey Redekop the professional author. I've already imported most of my blogposts from here that relate to me, me, me, and the site is only going to get bigger when I win the Giller (*not a guarantee).

So shelf-monkey.blogspot.com will now solely become a review site, one I maintain purely for personal reasons. I like books, I like talking about books, I like recommending books, and occasionally I like trashing books. I'll be streamlining this site somewhat, ridding the blog of certain posts, perhaps altering the look. But rest assured, the content will be of the same middling calibre you've come to expect and tolerate from a low-rent Canadian author such as yours truly. I'll make occasional cross-over posts, but I feel I need to separate the professional me from the blogger me. This new blogger-me will be known online as Tasha Chestnut (not really).

But what about reading in 2012, Corey? What will you read? What will you review? How can we be expected to live out our normal lives not knowing your every move?

I think I'll cut back. I went for broke last year, and while I don't regret it, I didn't stop and smell the pages enough. So while I'm going to still read new books and review them (hopefully more regularly than of late), I'm planning to go back to my stacks and luxuriate in some past favourites. Rereading a novel is always a treat, because while the book has not changed, the reader has. I've already gained new insights into Jim Dodge's Stone Junction. I was in my mid-twenties when I first read it (taken from a bargain bin on a whim, became one of my absolute favourites, don't you love it when that happens?), and while I fell in love instantly, I lacked the knowledge to judge it on more than surface grounds. Now, a lifetime later, I am catching the freewheeling seeds of its progenitors in the text, the styles of Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Brautigan that were unknown to me at the time, but have since served to evolve my personality.

After Stone Junction, I'm going to dance my fingers across the shelves and see what strikes my fancy. I've already put aside The World According to Garp (I estimate I've read this ten times already), The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (estimate: six times), Henderson the Rain King (four), and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (twelve). Perhaps I'll make a contest of it, a la my past Critical Monkey series devoted to the novels we were all avoiding. Haven't decided yet, although I will review them all here.

And beyond that, who knows? There's a cornucopia of awesomeness always on the horizon, some with buzz, some surprises. I've already read a few upcoming releases (a perk of the position), and while I won't review them yet, I will say keep a close eye out for Christopher Meades' The Last Hiccup and Scott Fotheringham's The Rest is Silence.

So bring it on, 2012! Ancient Mayans be damned! We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and the 2012 general U.S. election!

2011 in review, book-wise

Ah, 2011. It seems like you just ended yesterday.

First, I’d like to again apologize for not keeping up the reviews like I should. I’ve had a few personal projects on the go, and I hope to return to a more regular output in 2012. This site may alter itself somewhat, but the reviews will continue.

But now, in lieu of said incisive literary commentary, I’ve had a close gander at what I’ve read over the course of the past 365 days, and I thought it would be a good time to bring the whole thing out into the open for a year-end Best Of list (the reason the Internet was created!).

In 2011, I reached what is probably a personal milestone: 107 books read from cover to cover. I’m not sure when the last time I broke three digits was, but I was likely still in short pants. So, pre-2006. That’s a lot of books, and going over them, I’ve had quite a good year. In 2010 I was intentionally hurting myself through a masochistic desire to read books almost destined to grate on me like steel wool against bare flesh (I weirdly miss the nad-shrinking prose of Chuck Norris, James Patterson, and Stephanie Meyer; what does that say about me?). 2011, I went with what I wanted to read, which was not only more soothing to the soul, but also lent me quite a large list of recommendations today.

So below is a sizable list, divided into sections for easy consumption. I have not paid attention to year of publication, and I have ignored books I reread. I’ve bolded those I’ve reviewed.

Favourite books of the year: 

• The Sisters Brothers (2011), Patrick DeWitt 
• A Book of Tongues (2010), A Rope of Thorns (2011), Gemma Files
• Room (2010), Emma Donoghue 
• The Time We All Went Marching (2011), Arley McNeney
• City of Truth (1990), James Morrow 
• Idaho Winter (2011), Tony Burgess
• The Magician King (2011), Lev Grossman 
•  The Blue Light Project (2011), Timothy Taylor 
•  An Ordinary Decent Criminal (2005), Your Friendly Neighbourhood Criminal (2008), Michael Van Rooy

Novels I’d read again in a second: 

• Curiosity (2010), Joan Thomas 
• Drive-by Saviours (2010), Chris Benjamin 
• Kalila (2011), Rosemary Nixon 
• Tide Road (2011), Valerie Compton
• The Guardians (2011), Andrew Pyper
• Because I Have Loved and Hidden It (2009), Elise Moser
• Sarah Court (2010), Craig Davidson
• The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark (2010), Christopher Meades
• The Town that Drowned (2011), Riel Nason
• Major Karnage (2010), Gord Zajac
• Annabel (2010), Kathleen Winter
• One of Our Thursdays is Missing (2011), Jasper Fforde
• Low Town (2011), Daniel Polansky
• The Island of Doctor Moreau (1897), H.G. Wells 
• The Canterbury Trail (2011), Angie Abdou
• The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), Lavie Tidhar
• Beauty Plus Pity (2011), Kevin Chong 
• John Dies at the End (2009), David Wong 
• The Alchemists of Kush (2011), Minister Faust
• Butterfly Winter (2011), W.P. Kinsella 
• Chasing the Dragon (2009), Nicholas Kaufman
• American Desert (2004), Percival Everett 
• True Grit (1968), Charles Portis
• This Hidden Thing (2010), Dora Dueck
• Jesus and the Eightfold Path (2011), Lavie Tidhar

Spectacular short fiction:

• This Cake is for the Party (2010), Sarah Selecky 
•  Light Lifting (2010), Alexander McLeod 
•  Crisp (2010), R.W. Gray 
•  The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (2011), Ann & Jeff Vandermeer (eds.) 
•  The Hair Wreath and Other Stories (2010) - Halli Villegas 
•  Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded (2011), Ann & Jeff Vandermeer (eds.) 
•  The Urban Fantasy Anthology (2011), Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale (eds.)

Great titles:

• Jesus and the Eightfold Path (2011), Lavie Tidhar 
• John Dies at the End (2009), David Wong
• Squid Pulp Blues (2008), Jordan Krall 
• The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz (2009), Cameron Pierce 
• Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (2011), Patton Oswalt 
• Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus? (2010), A.G. Pasquella 
• Major Karnage (2010), Gord Zajac

Books that would make awesome movies:

• Sandman Slim (2009), Richard Kadrey 
• John Dies at the End (2009), David Wong (coming in 2012!) 
• Major Karnage (2010), Gord Zajac 
• The Sisters Brothers (2011), Patrick DeWitt 
• Chasing the Dragon (2009), Nicholas Kaufman
•  Brains (2010), Robin Becker 
•  Patient Zero (2009), Jonathan Mayberry

Disappointments (not the worst books, just personal disappointment):

• Damned (2011), Chuck Palahniuk - and that’s it for me, I can’t take another Palahniuk letdown
• Wet Work (1993), Philip Nutman - heard a lot about it, but it’s only okay
• The Fall (2011), Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan - it's a fun ride, but nowhere near as scary or suspenseful as some reviewers have said
• Amnesia Moon (1995), Jonathan Lethem - from Lethem, almost anything not a masterpiece is a disappointment
• Robopocalypse (2011), Daniel H. Wilson - killer robots should be fun, not boring