But only if the author is very, very lucky.
Tag Archives | books
Writing novels … buying novels
Dear regular readers (and all you bunged-up readers too),
I won’t be posting tons of original stuff for the next couple of weeks as I finish work on my new novel. On a related note, did you know I write novels? (You may have missed the ad over there to the right.)
So if you’d like to read some more of my stuff that is, frankly, WAY better than the rantings and delirium I churn out here on a regular basis, you should check them out. And if you’re reading this on Monday, January 17, and you own a Kindle, you’re in luck! You can still get a copy of Marvellous Hairy for $1.99! Goodreads members can get the epub version there for $1.99.
Marvellous Hairy is about a surrealistic novelist being turned into a monkey-man by an unscrupulous biotech giganto-corp, and his circle of friends trying to set things right. Available in many places, but you can get $2 off if you sign up for my newsletter and purchase at Amazon.
My first novel, The Amadeus Net, is the story of an immortal Mozart, his dalliance with sex-change surgery, Czech (lesbian) nurses, and a sentient utopian city. You will make my editor’s day if you buy The Amadeus Net direct from ENC Press.
Now here is a cartoon about robots:
Alltop thinks all this crass commercialism is disgusting.
Worst. Dystopia. Ever.
I find this quite horrifying.
Alltop likes to unleash its inner Marlow.
Venn Diagrams of Publishing, Hypocrisy and Despair
Okay, this one isn’t entirely original, but I have tarted it up a bit. Made me laugh because of its truthiness, and lest you think I am judging, I fall into the “bloggers” category too!
I found the original at The Atlantic here.
You may also want to check out another older one, Economies of Despair:
The commentary is a hoot.
Now, please help me prove this second one wrong by going to my publisher’s website, and buying a copy of Marvellous Hairy. (Only $16.80 Canadian.) Let me know you did so in the comments, and I’ll send you a bookplate (with my signature if you want it, just say so!)
Then you will prove the diagram actually looks more like this, and I think we all want that:
Alltop and humor-blogs.com form a Venn Diagram of Funny.
Windows file copy dialog author visits some friends & Sunday O-Rama
Another classic xkcd: The author of the Windows file copy dialog visits some friends:
Sunday O-Rama
While I’m procrastinating, perhaps a few announcements are in order.
MARVELLOUS HAIRY is coming! That’s right, my second novel is on the way this fall, courtesy of Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink, a publisher for “The Enigmatic Polygeneration”. If you’d like to sign up for my newsletter, or facebook page, you can get the details as they’re available, though the book should have a pretty good distribution, and all the usual online stores for sure.
For now, check out the cover:
Review copies for influential readers are available. Just contact me.
Diesel, the zany mind behind Matress Police, and humor-blogs.com, is also a novelist. Go congratulate him for finishing his book, Mercury Falls, or better yet, sign up for his “interest list”. When it hits 500, he’s going to publish that puppy.
Another prolific friend, Ahmed Khan, is working putting together two anthologies right now, and one of my short stories, “Hounding Manny” has made the cut. You can check out the whole TOC for Fun Times in Strange Lands here. It’s a reprint of a story originally published by Oceans of the Mind, and it’s on the short fiction section of my site here: “Hounding Manny”.
If you are a little more ambitious in your reading habits, you may want to check out a contest being run by Corey Redekop, the author of delightfully demented Shelf Monkey. He has thrown down the gauntlet, and begun the Critical Monkey Contest. Here’s what Corey has to say about it:
I, as I assume most people who read this blog are, am somewhat of a book snob. I don’t pretend to read only the ‘classics’ of the Western canon, but there’s a lot of crap out there I go out of my way to avoid. See? Right there, snobbery. Bad monkey! Bad!
So I have decided to launch Critical Monkey, a little contest designed to make us confront our fears, and read those we otherwise actively ignore. These do not have to be authors who are typically derided in literary publications; choices can be books you simply have never wanted to read for whatever reason. Never read a Charles Dickens, but always felt bad? Now’s your chance to try him on for size. Have you avoided Margaret Laurence because a lousy teacher force-fed you The Stone Angel and squeezed everything good out of it (guilty!)? Time to make her acquaintance. Anything you like. Even Harlequin romance novels. I double-dog dare you to try.
You can read the rest of the rules, entry details and promise of prizes here. Essentially, you need to read seven books you wouldn’t normally read, and blog a review about them. The masochist has already inflicted Twilight upon himself. I’ve yet to decide what I will read first.
Alltop and humor-blogs.com are much more reliable.
MONKEY SEE (A Gorilla of a Review)
MONKEY SEE is a charming and satirical examination of the question: “what would happen if monkeys could talk, and they had their own 401(k)s?”
It is also a love story, an etiquette manual for talking apes, parenting help for said primates, and a demented “how-to” guide for the aspiring evil scientist.
You’ll notice I used the words “evil scientist”, not “mad scientist”, because really, you can’t explain anything to mad scientists. They spend most of their time frothing at the mouth or terrorizing the village after drinking/injecting/inserting/stepping into/ or otherwise using the newly minted insane formula/device they have created to solve the problem of “what should I do this afternoon after I’ve finished eating bugs?”
Evil scientists, on the other hand, have a plan.
So it is with Dr. Harold Cogitomni, who is hatching a diabolical (evil) plan, to turn a Spider Monkey (Gigi), into a 60-foot, poison-breathing (to be clear, breath that is poisonous to others), crystal-spike-tailed behemoth capable of crushing houses and tanks. (Always a useful ability in a behemoth, or even your run-of-the-mill leviathan.) Continue Reading →