Husk - The pictures! They're coming...ALIVE!

In addition to being a stunningly successful author in my own mind, did you know I'm also a talented screenwriter/director?

Yet what I have in obvious greatness, I lack in resources. So instead of an AVID editing suite (oh, those were the days!), I have iMovie software on my laptop. Instead of John Williams to compose a score, I have Creative Commons.

BUT...I have a secret weapon at my disposal. Or rather, seven secret weapons; a volleyball team's (plus one alternate) worth of nieces and nephews who are willing to work for...well, not peanuts, one has an allergy. But they work for far below scale, needing only words and hugs to get the job done right.

And so, without further rambling preamble, I present for your entertainment the next best thing to owing my  book itself (out October 1, check your nearest independent bookseller for your orders) -

Husk: The Book Trailer!

Please enjoy!

Thank you, nieces DeGroot and niece and nephews Redekop, your weeks of toil have not gone in vain. Expect a nice new lolly in your stockings come xmas.

If you've enjoyed this trailer, you may do two things to repay me: 1) purchase the book, and 2) share it with friends via the usual social networks (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, MySpace [does that still exist?]). Please do not share via the unusual social networks. Those places are creepy!

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!

Monkey droppings - The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark by Christopher Meades: For the want of a plum. . .

The monkey's been doing some heavy reading lately.

Literary heavyweights. Thick tomes of grand themes and ambition.

The monkey needs a beer and something decidedly lighter, just to take the edge off.


The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark (ECW Press, 2010)
by Christopher Meades

He was neither young nor old, weak nor strong; not fat enough to be obese, but chubby enough that parts of his sides folded over onto the seat next to him on the bus. He smelled a little, but his musty odor - part mildew, part inside-of-a-reptile-cage - wasn't particularly malicious and rarely did it cause great offense. Henrik had no interesting stories to tell. He'd never run through the streets in the middle of the night in a desperate search for condoms or had a girlfriend force him into a sunflower costume for Halloween. In fact, he'd never had a romantic relationship of any kind. Henrik had lived his entire forty-two years in complete obscurity. He was the weed sprouting out of the wallflower; generic in his generality.

A good loser is hard to find. A great loser is a rare thing indeed.

To qualify that; loser's ain't hard to find, and even easier in literature. But a great loser - a hapless sort who somehow keeps you coming back for more, despite his or her countless faults and social inadequacies - that's a rare beast indeed. Off the top of my head, I would call out Ignatius J. Reilly, Holden Caulfield, the anonymous narrator of Fight Club, Lee Goodstone, and the nameless fact checker from Bright Lights Big City as being paragons of the species. You can't say that you'd enjoy being around them in person, but reading about them can be an exhilarating experience.

It's a fine line, however, maintaining interest and readability in a character that, in any normal situation, you would likely yawn in the face of, hide in the closet to avoid, or run screaming away from. Some clever wags have labelled this genre 'loser lit,' but you won't hear me call it that. James Patterson, now that's loser lit.

I'd be hard pressed, however, to come up with a bigger loser than Henrik Nordmark. A man of no means, no charisma, no distinguishing characteristics, no anything, Henrik is almost intolerably awful as a lead character.

Almost. Christopher Meades finds a way to combat Henrik's loathsome passivity with a breakneck approach to plotting that throws everything into the mix to see if it stick. And while the resulting novel The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark may not qualify as high literature, it certainly ranks as one of the goofier good times I've had with recent novels.

Three Fates is a novel of mistakes, accidents, and massive coincidence, all revolving around the black hole that is Henrik Nordmark. A forty-two year old security guard, Henrik has never in his entire life done anything remotely interesting. Yet on one fateful day, Henrik comes face-to-face with his own mortality. Dropping a plum during a grocery store visit, he chases the juicy orb outside and into the street, where his life is saved by a mysterious man in a full tuxedo. Recognizing how close he came to death, and how few people would be at his funeral, Henrik comes to a turning point in his life: "He would turn his life around. He would find something interesting about himself. He would become unique if it killed him."

As Henrik goes about trying to get himself recognized for something, anything - including very strange and whimsical slapstick forays into sexual deviance, drug use, unfocused rage, and clipping his toenails in public - other characters who have somehow fallen into his sphere of influence weave their own tales of misery. Roland is a business analyst who quits his job, mistakenly believing that he won the lottery. Bonnie and Clyde are a long-suffering married couple who each have been surreptitiously attempting to kill the other for months. And most oddly of all, a trio of extremely elderly assassins have been hired to kill Henrik, for reasons left obscure. In a way, the novel begins to resemble some of the early films of Jim Jarmusch and Richard Linklater, following characters as they criss-cross each other's paths, and Three Fates has a great deal of the shaggy charm of those low-budget gems.

This is not to imply that Three Fates is high art, but it is damned entertaining. Meades has a lovely bit of fun with dialogue, such as Henrik's meeting with an employment counsellor:

"I want to find a job that makes me unique."
"What's your previous occupation?"
"Security guard," Henrik said.
"Well that's not very unique at all. There are thousands of security guards out there."
"That's my point exactly. I need a job that, by definition, makes me unique."
The man in the green tie picked up the clipboard with the list of occupations. He scanned the sheet for the ones Henrik circled. "Let me see here. Aerospace Engineer. Professional Bodybuilder. Lactation Consultant. Do you have any expertise in these areas? Any aerospace training?"
"No, sir, I don't."
"Any weightlifting or bodybuilding skills?"
Henrik covered his pot belly with his arms. "No."
"What about this last one - Lactation Consultant? Do you have an actual proficiency in this area?"
"Actually," Henrik said, "I wasn't a hundred percent sure what that one was."

Meades keeps his many balls in the air, juggling from each plotline and back again, piling on the coincidences, keeping momentum even when the story veers into terrifically unbelievable proportions and the entire structure resembles a particularly intense game of Jenga. That the story begins to resemble the anarchic narratives of the Marx Brothers (by way of the Three Stooges) is a compliment. The three assassins and their escapades are certainly worthy of plaudits, and Roland's desperately silly dive into despair is marked with high style.

What keeps The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark from taking off and becoming more than a diversion (although an exceedingly funny one) is Henrik himself. Despite his top billing, Henrik is never more than caricature; he is clumsy when the plot calls for it, he is dense only to propel the plot forward, he is hapless beyond belief only because any believable character would have wised up far earlier than he. Henrik is a foil, a device, but he never becomes human. He's a good loser, not a great one. And Meades storytelling, as enjoyable as it is, isn't refined to the point where he can turn such an oblique character into something more substantial, nor is his style as relentlessly hilarious as the titans of comedic writing such as Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin.

But sometimes, all you want is silly, and The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark fits the bill. Meades shows definite talent, and I look forward to what his imagination unleashes next. The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark may not change your life, but sometimes that's not what I look for nor need. I don't want The English Patient all the time. Sometimes, I just want Happy Gilmore. And that's a compliment.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT

How to survive the holidays, with zombie hints

Just a quick one today, with zombies AND holiday cheer. A twofer!

Prepare yourself - the official book trailer for YOU comma Idiot, by Doug Harris

In my travels, I've come across many novels I've adored, and authors I've come to love with almost fearsome passion. My latest man-crush is on Doug Harris and his upcoming novel YOU comma Idiot - and before you say it, yes, I am his publicist, what of it? Does that negate my opinion entirely? It's a great book!

Either way, I had no control over the following book trailer, which is all Doug, and all spectacular. So many trailers seem to forget that they are centered around a book, which makes for a pretty presentation, but oftentimes I actually forget there's a book to be purchased. Doug has found a way around that.

So take a look, and please post this to your own sites, if you like it. The music is by Trevor Grigg and the Infamous Few, who you should really look up.



YOU comma Idiot comes out September 17, 2010. Your world will officially change the next day.

Monkey droppings - Solar by Ian McEwan

The monkey confronts the concept of aging.

The monkey gets depressed.

The monkey confronts the concept of a grilled cheese sandwich instead.


Solar
by Ian McEwan (2010)

He belonged to that class of men - vaguely unprepossessing, often bald, short, fat, clever - who were unaccountably attractive to certain beautiful women. Or so he believed he was, and thinking seemed to make it so.And it helped that some women believed he was a genius in need of rescue.

Michael Beard is in need of rescue, but not in the way he thinks. Michael needs rescue from his own shortcomings, and quickly; the world is hurtling toward the abyss, after all.

From the reading of the jacket copy, it would appear that Solar, Ian McEwan's newest, is a comedy about the end days, where one man may hold the key to humankind's survival, but only if his redemption is forthcoming. A Terry Pratchettesque comic romp through the apocalypse, as it were.

This being a McEwan novel, however, things are rarely as they appear. The author may indeed wield a narrative device ripe with comic intent - and, truly, he succeeds in some wonderfully absurd set pieces - but Solar is in actuality a paean to aging, and a novel as pungent and blissfully thick of wit as the best of John Updike and Saul Bellow.

Michael Beard is a smart man, no question. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist for his ground-breaking Beard-Einstein Conflation, Beard, now in his fifties, has been summarily side-tracked (rather unwillingly) by the scientific demands of climate change, a study in which he has little interest or patience. Finding himself surrounded by vigorous young scientists, Beard is very much unhappy:

After outlining what he expected to read next year in the third IPCC report, Aldous told Beard - and was the fiftieth person to do so in the past twelve months - that the last ten years of the twentieth century had been the warmest ten, or was it nine, on record. Then he was musing on climate sensitivity, the temperature rise associated with a doubling of CO2 above pre-industrial levels. As they entered London proper, it was radiative forcing, and after that the familiar litany of shrinking glaciers, encroaching deserts dissolving coral reefs, disappearing this and that, on and on, while Beard sank into a gloom of inattention, not because the planet was in peril - that moronic word again -but because someone was telling him it was with such enthusiasm. This is what he disliked about political people - injustice and calamity animated them, it was their milk, their lifeblood, it pleasured them.

Worse yet, Michael's wife Patrice is cheating on him. Despite the decades of indiscretions he has had throughout four previous marriages, this table-turning leaves Michael, "not yet a refugee from the near-silent endgame of his fifth marriage," decidedly lopsided of emotion. A trip to the Arctic with a boatload of flaky artists, followed by a surreptitious accident, appear to place Beard on more solid ground, but even so, the book's only one-third over. Starting in the year 2000, and then jumping ahead to 2005 and 2009, Solar evocatively captures the steady erosion of a man to the various elements of age, society, lust, and food, even as his career threatens to bring him to prominence yet again.

Solar finds McEwan neatly interplaying the precise, befuddling world of the abstract physicist - "Quantum mechanics. What a repository, a dump, of human aspiration it was, the borderland where mathematical rigour defeated common sense, and reason and fantasy irrationally merged." - with the world of the aging Lothario, as insane and irrational a world as has ever been discovered. The qualities that make Beard a genius at his work- the irrational leaps of logic, the ability to conceive the inconceivable - are the very same qualities that make him an utter failure as a human being. Beard can make sense of the most abstract qualities of light, yet cannot possibly be bothered to figure out the reasoning behind his latest tryst. Beard is a man "self-sufficient, self-absorbed, his mind a cluster of appetites and dreamy thoughts," and McEwan takes great delight in throwing whatever possible in Beard's path to throw off his equilibrium.

Despite the intensely comedic nature of Solar's construction (has anyone ever so lovingly crafted an ode to the common potato chip?), there is an indefinable but definite core of sadness at its core, the theory that, despite moments of unadulterated genius, man is as little able to control his base impulses as he is the natural world. How can we be expected to halt imminent catastrophe when even the best and brightest of us cannot comprehend nor control the simplest of impulses that drive ourselves?

I don't believe that Solar is perfect; I found my attention wandering from time to time, as Beard's inner meanderings can be somewhat exhausting. But the writing is gloriously smart (as per usual for McEwan), and Michael Beard is a magnificently flawed creation, an amalgamation of the best and worst of man's capabilities.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Monkey Laughs, episode one

As an object lesson in writers' block (yeah, this hits kind of close to the bone at the moment), I present for your entertainment a classic Kids in the Hall sketch sure to delight and amuse.

Enjoy, won't you?

Monkey droppings - And Another Thing... by Eion Colfer: "Get your towel, Arthur. We have to leave."

The monkey uses his mind to fold space in upon itself, and travels the space-time continuum in search of a new entry in a classic series long thought dead. Will it be a new awakening of classic pleasures, as enjoyable as Joe Gores recently revival of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in Spade and Archer? Or will it fester like the innumerable entries in the 'sequel to Pride & Prejudice or anything by Jane Austen' sweepstakes?

Let's find out.

And Another Thing...
by Eoin Colfer

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And another thing…" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.
- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I'll just start this little review with an aside: How could I possibly hate a novel that has the following conversation:

A huge anthropoid was seated uncomfortably in the interview room's office chair, its grotesque, scaled torso squirming in the confines of the small seat. tentacles dripped from its chin like fleeing slugs and hard black eyes glittered from the depths of its pulpy face.

Hillman Hunter shuffled the pages of the creature's résumé.

'So, Mr Cthulhu, is it?'

'Hmmm,' said the creature.

'Good,' said Hillman. 'A bit of the ineffable, I like that in a deity.' He winked conspiratorially. 'Still, it wouldn't be much of an in-depth interview if we couldn't get a few facts out of you, eh, Mr Cthulhu?'

Cthulhu shrugged and dreamed of days of wanton genocide.

How could I ever dislike a novel with the temerity to subject the Great Old One Cthulhu to a job interview to ascertain his possible suitability as a deity for a new colony of Earthlings? Hillman had high hopes for a more ethereal interview process, "engaging in philosophical conversations on the nature of happiness, or being wowed by awesome displays of godly power. Instead he had been forced to grind his way through a sludge of padded résumés in which demi-gods tried to make themselves sound a lot more significant than they actually were." As it turns out, Cthulhu is not at all what Hillman has in mind, being only a 'demi-god' and therefore not technically an immortal being. "It's more or less the same thing," Cthulhu protests. "I do all the same things: apparitions, impregnating, you name it. I have cards for the lounges in Asgard and Olympus. Gold cards." But as Hillman insists, "the advertisement did specify grade-A god."

Part of the genius of Douglas Adams was his ability (likely learned from the British masters of comedy Monty Python) to always make even the most fantastic of circumstances appear mundane through a morass of well-meaning bureaucracy. In Adams' worlds, the most awe-inspiring sunset could only be fully appreciated if the correct paperwork had been filed beforehand in triplicate.

Ever since Adams passed away in 2001—and in another aside, what does it say about me that the celebrity deaths that have affected me the most are invariably comedy related? Adams, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Candy, John Ritter, Phil Hartman (I will never get over Phil Hartman)—ever since, there has been a dearth of his uniquely weird brand of comedic literature. Yes, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin are cut from the same cloth, but Adams was an originator. His seminal work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (hereafter referred to as HG2G) is a masterwork of offbeat plotting and witty writing, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is, to my mind, even better.

But even Adams admitted that his later sequels to HG2G were lacking. The first two were of the same calibre, more or less, but the last two (particularly Mostly Harmless) showed us an artist running a little dry. They had their moments, but they can't be considered as worthy of 'classic' status.

So a new sequel to HG2G should be dismissed out of hand as a bad idea. But there is still the idea that one should not tamper with another's work. Let's be honest, no one wants to see the glory of Adams' legacy reduced to something on the scale of the still-ongoing literary tawdriness of V.C. Andrews, whose fairly ridiculous writings have continued for over two decades since her death.

So now, on the thirtieth anniversary of HG2G's initial publication, a new sequel has been released. Unfortunately, it was not written by Rankin, who I still feel was the best man for the job. But Irish writer Eion Colfer (who mainly writes fiction of the child/young adult variety) has pretty much pulled it off, creating a novel that honours Adams' sensibilities, yet doesn't come across as forced. Make no mistake, Colfer's sequel And Another Thing... is not up to Adams' best, but considering how wrong it could have gone, it is a fine accomplishment, and certainly better than Adams' last two sequels.

And Another Thing... takes up the plot immediately at the end point of Mostly Harmless, wherein Arthur Dent, Trillian, their daughter Random Dent, and Ford Prefect are about to be destroyed along with the Earth, or a plural reality version thereof. I'll stop here to note that a knowledge of the previous five books is essential to comprehension of And Another Thing...; I have read a few blogosphere comments complaining about this, but allow me to make the bold statement that no novel of Adams' HG2G trilogy-plus-two makes any sort of sense without full knowledge of the previous entries. If you're not up to that task, best walk away now.

After the quartet (spoiler alert!) survive the attack, they find themselves once again hooking up with Zaphod Beeblebrox (highly improbably, but if you know the series, imminently foreseeable), ex-president of the Galaxy and all-round froody guy, as well as with returning bit player (from Life, the Universe, and Everything) Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Together, in a plot that manages to weave in the mythical god Thor, a bizarre cult "who firmly believed in divination through the medium of semi-congealed cheese," and feral physical therapists, the group must defeat the Vogons from wiping out the last vestiges of humanity (currently living on a planet designed after the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man).

Quite obviously, Colfer has taken Adams' penchant for throwing everything into the mix to see what sticks to heart. The pages of And Another Thing... are teeming with the absurd asides that were the hallmark of HG2G's style, such as a quick explanation of the belief system of Folfangan slugs, "who judge a number's worth based on the artistic integrity of its shape. Folfangan supermarket receipts are beauteous ribbons, but their economy collapses at least once a week." Admittedly, such tangents can get tiresome, and Colfer arguably uses a few too many funny words and silly noises, but Adams was hardly above a bad pun or two himself.

Not a lot of Colfer's plot makes any sort of linear sense, but the series has always had a great deal of fun playing with notions of time and space anyway. And it's rather wonderful to be with old friends again, especially the terminally unlucky Arthur, pining for his lost love Fenchurch; as Random succinctly puts it, "I'm sure you'll bring doom down on us all presently. It's your destiny to be a cosmic Jonah." I also enjoyed Colfer's attempts to better humanize Trillian, a character Adams never fully explored and who came across initially as flighty and later as just plain unlikeable. Ford gets slighted, but there's more than enough Zaphod to make up for it. I would have liked a return of Marvin the paranoid android (surely there must have been a way), but as his ultimate exit in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was Adams as his most touching, I can live with it (If you must spoil it for yourself, visit the Marvin Wikipedia page). If there's a real fault with Colfer's attempt, it's in his trying to cram too much in; there's too many nods to past novels, too many inside references, too many bloody characters doing too much at once.

But the HG2G series has always had a shaggy dog aspect to it, an unkempt attitude; the novels sometimes behaved like ADD sufferers on a Red Bull binge. Colfer does his best, but And Another Thing... occasionally substitutes speed of delivery for wit, and quite often is plain too goofy even for a Douglas Adams piece.

But I'm okay with that. Colfer has crafted a strong companion piece to Adams' HG2G series that continues the mythos with the same anarchic glee and intelligence. If he must continue it further (and there is always more story out there), I look forward to the ride.

VERDICT: MONKEY THINKS IT'S ALL RATHER FROODY

Bulwer-Lytton winners announced!

Just too much of a joy for me to contain: this year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced.

For those unaware, Bulwer-Lytton (named after Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, the originator of the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night") is an annual contest to see who can come up with the worst opening sentence to the worst novel never written.

This year's winner, from the mind of David McKenzie, "a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer from Federal Way, Washington":

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

More winners and runner-ups can be found here.

This week in disturbing imagery

I present, the heroic Redekop:

and the deeply unsettling Redekop.

*shudder*

*NOTE: I'll have better posts soon, I promise. I'm having a bit of down time at the moment.

Finally, I can defeat Kirk in battle.

I always wanted to be a Romulan. I dig the big-shouldered look.

However, the Vulcans do have their charms.

And who didn't have a thing for Uhura? No one, that's who.

Monkey Droppings - Brock Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

I'm going to put a few quick book reviews up in the next few days, to make up for an appalling break on my part. They'll be quick, and hardly insightful, but I do hope you'll read the books anyway, and forgive my lackadaisical nature.

Also, I'm starting a new ratings system. I'm sick of As, Bs, Cs, etc. You'll find the new handy-dandy rating at the bottom of each review.

And now, to work! If twenty minutes of ill-conceived ramblings can be considered work. It can? Score!

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
by Brock Clarke

Sam Pulsifer has a problem, or rather, many problems. He was convicted of arson and inadvertent murder after a youthful escapade ended in the fiery destruction of Emily Dickinson's house, and the deaths of the two caretakers inside. Years later, after serving his sentence, Sam appears to have his life back on track; he has a wife, lovely kids, a degree in packaging science, and no contact with his parents or anything from his previous life. Until the son of the dead caretakers shows up for an apology, and the homes of other famous authors are mysteriously torched.

From such beginnings grows a novel of insanity and revenge that almost effortlessly achieves a strange and alluring grandeur. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a gratifyingly accomplished novel that puts author Brock Clarke on my watch list.

What makes Guide such a marvelous comedy, aside from Clarke's clear prose and sparking wit, is his treatment of his lead character. In the best tradition of classic comedic heroes, Sam is not so much an actor as a reactor, always one step behind and guided by forces beyond his control. There is quite a bit of the hapless Sam Lowry in Pulsifer, the befuddled hero of Terry Gilliam's satire Brazil. Pulsifer, like Lowry, is an immediately identifiable 'bumbler' (in the parlance of his father), trying to wend his way through life without causing ruckus or discord, yet constantly forced to act against his will. As he slowly tracks down the real arsonist - aided by letters written to him while in prison, pleading for him to burn down other the homes of other authors such as Mark Twain or Robert Frost - Pulsifer examines the effect stories have on people, and how people are desperate to have stories of their own.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a major accomplishment in comic misadventure, a softly endearing dissection of the love of good stories, and a treat of a novel.

MONKEY LIKES A LOT

People don't learn...

From Chapter 22 of the zen-like ode to incompetence that is James Patterson's online 'virus kidnap crap-o-rama' Airborne:

‘Don’t even think about trying that again, b*tch,’ he hissed in her ear.

‘Someone get the girl!’ Jones ordered from the floor through clenched teeth. ‘Somebody get that machete!’

‘F*ck!’ The biker restraining Lesley threw her behind him roughly and joined the circle closing in on Amanda.

Seriously? Still with the *s? What if I can't crack the code? Batch? Botch? Fick? I don't understand this idiomatic lingo! And what if they throw in a # or a %? I didn't do well in calculus, I can't solve for Y!

This entire exercise is like a slo-mo car crash, with another automobile adding to the pile every day. I have read articles in the Weekly World News that make more sense, and have a better grasp of pacing and characterization.

That said, like the movies of Uwe Boll, I cannot look away, and eagerly await Patterson's sure -to-be-awe-inspiring conclusion.

From the files of the prudish...

From Chapter 6 of James Patterson's mind-numbingly stupid online "chain thriller" Airborne:

Sh*t! Peter went over his plan again.

Yes, you read it right: Sh*t! In an adult novel about kidnapping and mysterious viruses, a character actually thinks to himself, Sh*t!, no doubt pausing afterward to genuflect and repent for daring to think up such a loathsome word.

Can we possibly hope to take any part of a novel seriously when an author is so much of a prude that they won't spell a curse word completely? What, expletive deleted was too subtle?

For the record, the 'novel' is written by 28 winners of an online writing contest. Each 'winner' submits a 750-note chapter, with James Patterson himself (ooh, thrilling!) penning the first and last chapters personally.

We're six chapters in, and it is as fantastically awful as feared, rife with hilarious exposition, howlingly bad inner monologues, and suprisingly enough, spelling errors. But if it might be true that a million monkeys can write for a million years and create a masterpiece, it is definitely true that 29 people can write for a few minutes each and create sh*t.

Apparently, she's a contortionist

From Chapter 3 of James Patterson's already depressingly awful online novel-by-committee "chain thriller" Airborne:

Amanda's throat felt hoarse from all the screaming, which must have lasted for at least 20 minutes – she couldn’t be certain because her watch was strapped to her left wrist, which was hogtied to her right one behind her back...She sighed and felt the perspiration drip from her temples down her face, and she wiped it away on her forearm – she needed to do something.

Her hands tied behind her back, but she somehow wipes her face on her forearm - go ahead, try it, I dare you. I'll wait.

If you aren't yet following this novel, you really should; it'll make you appreciate quality all the more.

In today's episode of wasting time online creatively...

And now, I am proud to present...

MYSELF IN SUPERHERO GUISE!


Yeah...buff. Tanned. That's me all right.

Courtesy of The Hero Factory.

The publishing process

For all those who wonder, the curtain has been drawn back - this is how novels are published. Everything is revealed, from the correspondence between author and editor (via Twitter), to the salary of a copy editor ($80,000), to the importance of Second Life avatars to publicity.



Priceless.

"You have really big glasses."

Ah, literalism, how I love you so. One of my favourite '80s videos, and it's in a library, hence the tenuous connection to the more literary aspects of this blog.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Thanks to Nikki Stafford for the link.

Cutting Costs by Cutting Tense

I can only imagine this will make writing a novel that much easier.

Underfunded Schools Forced To Cut Past Tense From Language Programs

WASHINGTON—Teaching students how to conjugate verbs so that they can describe events that have already occurred is a luxury many schools cannot afford.