New Reads and Old Standbys

Growing Pains

2010-09-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

New Reads is moving and incorporating itself into my official webpage, Defiled Curator.

Some content (Great Lines, a handful of reviews, any interviews that have not been posted elsewhere) will be moved to the new site, and all content will remain here as well.

Please join me as the site grows and changes. It's a bit cluttered at the moment, but it's looking better with each new update and bit of editing finesse.

Great Lines in Literature - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

2010-08-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

At my advanced age (/sarcasm), it's unusual for me to find a work that so completely returns me to my teenaged years. I've read books here and there that make me wistful for one aspect of my coming of age or another, but I rarely, if ever, find anything that captures that distilled sensation of being young, female and entirely unsure of oneself, reaching out to the rest of humanity in an attempt to analyze and define the self.

Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals (unabridged insofar as all remaining journals of her adulthood are included - two will never be published, as one was lost over time and Ted Hughes intentionally destroyed the "maroon-backed ledger" that contained the entries closest to Plath's suicide), despite chronicling her life from 1950 to 1962, feel in places that they could be detailing my own life in the mid-1990s. It's been years, but I can still remember what it felt like to be a virgin despite not wanting to be, feeling awkward around my male counterparts, and how I railed in private against common conventions and what I assumed was expected of me as a young woman. Reading someone else's stylistic interpretations of my deepest, most hidden thoughts feels exceptionally eerie and makes me quite angry I destroyed my own journals from my late teens. I would have liked to have made a side-by-side comparison, just to see how they would echo against each other.

From 1950, the summer before Plath entered Smith College:

- Yes, I was infatuated with you; I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those. -

- There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears. -

- If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time. -

- How complex and intricate are the workings of the nervous system. The electric shrill of the phone sends a tingle of expectancy along the uterine walls; the sound of his voice, rough, brash and intimate across the wire tightens the intestinal tract. If they substituted the word "Lust" for "Love" in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth. -

Reading Plath's journals, at least the earlier ones, remind me so much of myself that I feel myself reaching out almost subconsciously to say "Stop worrying, you'll be okay," before realizing that they are not my own words, and that Plath was never okay.

A Man for the Asking by Catherine Breillat

2010-08-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to do when I'm in the city is to plunder the shelves of our two local Half Price Books outlets. When I first began patronizing the stores, I took little notice of the racks near the registers that contained bagged, pocket-sized editions of books published decades ago. At the time I didn't feel I had any need for them, and breezed past without perusing their offerings to the more desired literature and lit criticism aisles. Recently, however, I've gone through each wire rack and found more gems than I can possibly carry home with me, all for two to five dollars apiece, and I feel a bit embarrassed that it took me so long to discover these out-in-the-open treasures.

I'm not sure where they come from - estate sales, perhaps, or maybe attic evictions. The books themselves are in general very well preserved, some of them over forty years old without a single crease in their spines. The titles range from much-lauded cult fiction (I've seen several editions of Vonnegut for offer, as well as Rand) to raunchy and un-PC Men's Adventure titles of an era long, long gone (one Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde, in particular had me chuckling), and even to smut. Yes, occasionally an erotically-charged, naked-woman-on-the-cover title sneaks its way in, and I'm always tempted to pick it up and run chortling to the registers with it so I can sit in my car like the dirty little dork I am and pretend I'm thirteen all over again while skimming the pages for the good stuff.

(An aside, to the librarians at my hometown Public Library - As an adult bibliophile, I am very and truly sorry for how my friends and I defaced all of your romance novels back in my junior high years. Please understand that despite our immaturity we meant well by underlining the sex scenes for any subsequent borrowers. I now do all of this utilizing notecards. Many apologies and a sincere thank you for stocking all that free sexiness for me back in the day.)

One of these porn-but-not-quite-porn novels, Catherine Breillat's A Man for the Asking/L'Homme Facile, called out to me with its cover. It wasn't so much the nude woman reclining with a silk sheet between her thighs and her arm masterfully obscuring her nipples that did it as it was the announcement above the picture, "BANNED IN EUROPE! The shocking novel by a 16-year-old French girl," that caught my eye and refused to let me go.

A teenager wrote this? Okay, let me scrounge around my pockets and fish out two bucks.

At a hundred and twenty-six pages, A Man for the Asking is a very quick read; however, its length is somewhat misleading as the text itself is dense, twisting and extremely challenging to follow. Rather than provide the reader with a straightforward, albeit dirty, narrative, Breillat shoves a speeding stream-of-consciousness down the reader's throat and expects them to keep up as the pace works itself into a fever pitch at roughly the halfway mark, the end delivering them teetering over the edge of what-the-hell-did-I-just-read territory.

D.P. (go ahead and giggle - I did) is a promiscuous young man whose every thought, eventually, turns to sex. Amongst his countless conquests, he has an on-again-off-again mistress, the equally promiscuous Playboy model Françoise, though he lusts after L., a young woman of seventeen or eighteen that he spots on the street one evening. He immediately begins to fantasize about sleeping with her, but she disappears and he returns home to prepare for his nightly bacchanalia, which usually consists of drinking in a nightclub that reminds him of a "red vagina" and taking a scantily-clad woman back to his home in the early morning.

Eventually, however, after meeting Françoise at the club and indeed bringing her home (and engaging in an encounter that involves the use of Vaseline), he receives a phone call at five in the morning from L., who has discovered a note card left on her car that D.P had written his number on. She wants to meet for breakfast. Françoise is angered, but he manages to convince her to leave, allowing him to embark on his newest erotic pursuit.

This is where things become quite strange.

Throughout the narrative, it is quite clear that most of the action is internal. The prose is comprised mostly of D.P.'s thoughts, interspersed with snippets of dialogue or real movement, though the bulk of it is only in his head - memories, fantasies, idle thoughts, word plays, etc. It is difficult to discern fact from fiction, what he perceives and what is actually taking place. In places, it feels as if reality and the events in D.P.'s head have melted and oozed together into some incredibly vivid sexual collage.

Breillat (or her translator - I wish I could read French to see if this tactic was employed in the original manuscript) tosses fake vocabulary into the narrative, tucked neatly inside the long, winding sentences full of parenthesis and breaks in focus. These words, all vividly sexual in nature, are highly reminiscent of the "Twat did you say? I cunt hear you, I have an ear infuction and forgot to take my peniscillin" game every school kid in America plays at one point or another. For example:

And the purples and the blues
but especially the pink of an indecent lubricious sexcitement down to the tips of the fingers designed to bring the blood bursting out of his sides or even better the fragile tautened skin of his sex.

[in the context of watching World Cup games on television] it is to make a profession of this:
running after a round ball, a balloon about to burst, the painful abortions of pussy-willyous who came up against a grown man and got caught on the prickle that holds the roll of hundred-franc notes at the end of the evening.

-when the world turns upside down and his mistress has only one hand to service him with (not that she is one-armed; on the contrary: she is manyhanded in the interweaving of her wellmade handmade Puy lace for a handjob on the thigh. Her wellmade vaginal well, a natural well, a geyser from her throat spewing back the lukewarm sperm while a reciprocal discharge is taking place at her crotch that throbs to the selfsame stroke of the hand;
he is losing his head: a hand with the properties of a mouth: or is it all his ivagination).

Chinese puzzle: how many times does the cast bread multiply and how many times can the Penix rise again from its ashes after taking flight like an arrow, poised then broken.

It is confusing and incredibly entertaining to read through these passages, chugging along as efficiently as can be expected given the nature of the text, only to stumble across a dirty made-up word. There is one every few pages, and as the coherence of the plot drops away and the narrative becomes ever denser the new words that crop up become more and more vivid.

D.P. meets L., they eat onion soup (at five in the morning?) and, despite the fact that she asserts that she does not want to sleep with anyone who will not love her unto death, L. accompanies him home. She then proceeds to accept his offer of a bath, puts on his robe, allows him to strip naked and they drift off into an odd sleeping-but-not-sleeping state (she especially; he appears more awake, as the story belongs to him and he continues lusting over her to the point of pain).

I normally do not spoil reviews but, seeing as how this book is no longer in print and has been out in America since 1969, I'm making an exception. Brace yourself:

D.P. is so in love with L. that he kills himself. He commits seppuku with his own penis.

But the reason for all this,
the sole superb gesture is accomplished by his penis as it plows slowly through his belly in the traditional rite of the Samurais. It goes in first from the top, just under the breastbone, it has to make several tries before the flesh makes an opening, but he puts up with it without understanding why by tearing off his lips so as not to scream and struggle,
nor to swoon away
which would make his tool soft and useless,
when the flesh is opened, it goes slowly down right to its root then comes back up to make a horizontal gash toward the left where the heart is.
Then he drags himself over to L. and gets down on his knees
and his hands that had gone down to his belly shove his guts back and make him a soft unctuous mattress and cauterize his wounds
that is the solemn difficult moment when his hands take out his heart
during the infinite shortness he has left to die in he places it slowly and with devotion between her legs the last throbbings in her organ make sumptuous delicate love to it that becomes violent when the final jerks become synchronized with his own:
then everything grows calm again and his heart takes its place for ever in her vagina which itself has found its final place after having experienced the most marvelous of orgasms.

I... I don't even know what the fuck anymore. The neophyte critic in me sees something remarkable here, something profound beyond the thick veil of textual trickery and mind-bending narrative. The eternal thirteen-year-old in me, pen hand exhausted from all of the underlining, is giggling her ass off. At this time, I'm not sure which viewpoint is dominant.

There is definitely something quite strong in this text, be it insight or stupidity. The fact that I am unable to clearly determine its nature leads me to believe it must be insight, as art, for me at least, with my short attention span and desire to see and know everything simultaneously, is a slippery and tricky thing to keep hold on for long. Regardless, this is perhaps the best way I've ever spent two dollars out of my pocket and two hours of my life.

Great Lines in Literature - Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

2010-08-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

I love pulling quotes from books I read. I've got notecards filled with scribbled musings and page numbers tracking lines that captivate me, whole paragraphs in books highlighted in Noodler's Atlantic Salmon ink, asides tapped by hand straight into the text of my Kindle (for iPad - my god, for a compulsive note-taker the application is genius).

Occasionally, I find a quote that is so thought-provoking, so introspective or so hilarious that I feel the need to share. Usually I read the passage to whomever is sitting or standing beside me at the time, or belt it out during a Skype chat, but seeing as how I have this handy-dandy blog at my disposal I may as well stick it here for posterity and distribution.

Right now I'm reading Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell, an offbeat mafioso novel that's a curious blend of goomba-speak, medical terminology and fake academia. Bazell's clever usage of footnotes for anything from historical references to hospital jargon clarification to pop-culture tidbits has been enough to quicken my nerdy pulse and keep me turning pages, but one bit of New York historical drama had me cracking up and howling with laughter.

In a passage detailing the rise of the mafia in New York and the activities that sustained them:

Eventually, though, Rudy Giuliani decided enough was enough and brought in Waste Management, a multinational corporation so scary it made the mafia look like little girls in those competitions JonBenet Ramsey used to enter. Waste Management's own crimes were severe enough to ultimately force changes in the SEC, among other things, but its appearance on the New York garbage scene inspired another round of funeral announcements for the mafia.

Oh, my god. That is hilarious.

Anyone care to guess where I spent the worst five years of my life and what company issued my paychecks up until my layoff?

A Quick Update

2010-07-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

It seems like this little blog has stagnated a bit. While I’ve kept myself quite busy, I’ve somehow failed to keep New Reads updated on my goings-on. Here, in brief review, are the book-related details of my life since February’s update.

For Horror News:

Nevermore by Harold Schechter, a phenomenal first-person “biography” penned by Edgar Allan Poe.
The Rage Plague by Anthony Giangregorio (new review).
Morning is Dead by Andersen Prunty, which was one of the stranger reads I’ve had in a while.

I even took a stab at film reviews with Daybreakers, which I enjoyed enough to snag a Type B+ blood (water, unfortunately) bottle off eBay.

For Dark Markets:

Reprints:
Nightlight by the Harvard Lampoon.
John Dies at the End by David Wong

New Reviews:
Eleven Twenty-Three by Jason S. Hornsby (which also features a quote from my review on the back cover). The novel will be available for purchase in August, and we will be running an interview with him when the street date approaches.
Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman by Jim Bernheimer.
The Tale of the Vampire Bride by Rhiannon Frater.
Necrophilia Variations by SUPERVERT (interview with the author forthcoming).

Interviews:
David Dunwoody, author of Empire.
Greg Hall of Choate Road and host of The Funky Werepig podcast.
D.L. Snell, editor and author of Demon Days (interview originally posted here).
Jacob Kier, owner of Permuted Press.

I’ve read a handful of books recently that were not slated for review anywhere and were bought by me, out of pocket, simply for reading pleasure. Whether or not I get around to reviewing them is up in the air at this point.

Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda
I (Heart) Lord Buddha by Hillary Raphael (second readthrough)
Ximena by Hillary Raphael

In other news, I’ve been a bit busy on the writing front as well. I’ve appeared in a few anthologies with several more in the works. I’m the editor of Kody Boye’s upcoming rerelease of Amorous Things, a collection of short pieces focusing on the many facets of love and my first novel, In the Teahouse, is slated for release through Library of Horror Press.

I even have, believe it or not, an honest-to-goodness Goodreads author page now.

All in all, not bad for a five month stretch, wouldn’t you say?

A Bit of News on the Review/Interview Front

2010-02-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

I haven’t really announced it properly yet, but as of a few weeks ago I’ve been brought onto the Dark Markets staff as chief reviewer/interviewer. This is in addition to my Horror News position, so I’m doubling up on work for the time being.

I never really expected the review thing to take off. I started this little blog as a way to keep myself accountable and track my 50 Books Challenge progress, and it kind of erupted into something bigger than I’d ever thought possible. The idea of authors actually wanting my opinion and giving me free books to review blows my mind, but I’ve got a stack of them right here to prove it’s actually happened.

I’m a full-time college student as well, and in addition to that I’ve just taken a part-time job to pay the bills. My time is extremely limited, and I’m a known scatterbrain despite my near compulsion to micromanage my life. I’m not always successful, but I try. I just want to let everyone who’s sent me review copies or interview requests know that I’ve got them all in the queue. I’m trying to get through them all as quickly as possible, but it may be a bit slower than some would like. I’m working on it. I haven’t forgotten anyone and I will get to every single thing that’s sent my way.

Thank you all for your kindness, your generosity and your interest in my opinion. It’s an awesome honor to receive so many requests. The path to my heart, despite the assumption that it may lie in my stomach, truly is through free books.

The Order of the Bull by Jason Brannon

2010-02-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

Chapbooks are awesome and will always hold a special place in my perpetually teenaged heart. The Order of the Bull is a quick and entertaining read, and I’m somewhat saddened to know that only twenty-six copies of it exist in print. I’ve got #5.

You can read my whole review over at Dark Markets.

Every Sigh, the End by Jason S. Hornsby

2010-01-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

I read this over the last few weeks of Fall semester and kept telling myself I’d collect my thoughts enough to write a coherent review of it eventually. Well, that day has come and the review is now up at DarkMarkets.com.

This a really, really unique read, one I probably wouldn’t have gotten to for quite some time were it not for placing in Permuted Press’s flash contest at this past year’s Horror Realm convention. It was one of my prizes (along with Derek Gunn’s The Estuary, which I will get to as soon as my review copies have been read and reviewed).

Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett

2010-01-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

Sonchai Jitplecheep, one of the most sympathetic and complex police detectives in present day crime fiction, returns for a third round of heartache and murder in Bangkok Haunts. First there was a dead US Army officer inside a locked vehicle teeming with snakes. Then there was the brutal disembowling and castration of a lonely CIA agent in a rented hotel room. This time, Burdett has upped the stakes (and the brutality) by starting his novel off on the very first page with depictions of the cruelest violence imaginable.

Damrong, prostitute turned porn starlet, is murdered on screen by her costar during an erotic film shoot. Having been at one time, very briefly, one of her lovers, Sonchai is horrified to find footage of the act sent to him anonymously on an unmarked DVD. Along with friend and occasional partner Kimberly Jones of the FBI, Sonchai sets out to find out who killed Damrong and just how far the web of perversion reaches.

Like any other Burdett novel, Bangkok Haunts teems with violence, sexual depravity and Buddhist observation. Just as in the novels that came before, what should be a fairly easy case to solve (following the money trail is never too difficult in Sonchai’s world) becomes more and more complex by the page, until readers are overloaded with subplots, double-crosses, broken hearts and motives so imaginative and disturbing that in another author’s care would come across as incredibly hokey. Like any other Burdett novel, the twisting plot and improbable complications work like a charm, only this time around the dealings are way more spiritual (some would even say magical) than they were before.

Half incredibly violent crime noir, half exotic pornography, Bangkok Haunts almost left me wishing I had a ghost creeping up on my bed at night. Almost.

The fourth Sonchai Jitpleecheep novel, The Godfather of Kathmandu, came out two days ago, and already it’s at the top of my must-read list. Burdett is an exceptionally adept storyteller, and has an amazing talent for creating meaningfulness out of depravity.

8/10

HorrorNews Review of Derek J. Goodman's Apocalypse Shift

2010-01-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

My first review for HorrorNews is now up. I reviewed The Apocalypse Shift once before, several months ago, but it’s a damn fine book and needs more publicity than it’s receiving at the moment.

THE APOCALYPSE SHIFT|Written by Derek J. Goodman| Book review|HorrorNews.net

Horror Reviews Going Elsewhere

2010-01-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

While I fully intend for this little blog to keep chugging along, I’m now writing my horror reviews for HorrorNews.net. Interviews within the horror genre will also be more than likely posted there as well.

Any books or persons already covered on that site will be covered here instead. Several books in my TBR queue have already been covered by other reviewers.

I’m very excited to be a part of HorrorNews, even in a very minor capacity. I expect my first review to be up shortly, and we’ll see how it goes from there.

The Year in Review and What's to Come in 2010

2009-12-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

Everyone else on the Internet is making lists of favorite moments, so I might as well too.

2009 was supposed to be the year that I tackled all of those “Oh my god, you have to read this!” books on my to-be-read list. I was going to read Stephenson, Danielewski, Pynchon, DeLillo, etc.

Remember this list?

Give me a moment to stop laughing and catch my breath before I continue.

There we go. I think the giggles are subsiding. In the end, I managed to read two of those, White Noise and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Obviously, my New Year’s resolution for 2009 fell flat on its face.

I have a new resolution for the upcoming year. I resolve to read what I want to, when I want to, and not plan anything ahead. My tastes have a tendency to come and go in phases, and trying to stick to some sort of grand literary plan is an exercise in setting myself up for failure down the road. The next twelve months will be dedicated to reading whatever my book fever throws at me, be they nonfiction volumes about eating seasonal produce (I still need to finish How to Pick a Peach) or Young Adult titles I first read nearly twenty years ago (I need to tear through all those yellowed Christopher Pike novels I picked up for eighty cents apiece during Half Price Books’ 20% off sale this weekend).

To hell with lists.

Another thing that will be different next year is the rating system I use. I’ve noticed recently that I have a tendency to give out a lot of fives, which should be reserved for books that really blow me away and refuse to leave me for days after finishing them. Either I read a lot of mind blowing stuff (which is a possibility, I suppose) or I’m using a rating system that’s a bit too vague for my needs. I think the latter is more realistic, especially since I’m not a paid reviewer and tend to read what I’m already interested in. Of course these books are going to be rated higher by me than a completely objective, experienced critic. I’m already expecting to enjoy them when I pick them up, which means I’m more inclined to give them high scores when I’m done.

Next year, I’ll be using a scale of ten instead of five, reserving those perfect scores for books that really steamroll me. Most of what I gave fives to this year should really have been nines, I think. Too many fives are starting to make this little blog look lazy and, perhaps, biased. Starting with the next review, I’ll be implementing the new system. We’ll see how that works out. I’m thinking it will be a lot better than what I’ve been doing.

Also starting with the next review, the tags at the bottom of each write-up will be expanded. Author and title will still be included, of course, but genre, year of review and any other important key words (non-spoiler plot or theme words, awards won, etc) will also be included. I’ve noticed recently that the Labels column on the right-hand side of the blog is underutilized, so either I start adding more tags or I get rid of the feature altogether.

That’s about it for new things. I’m fairly fond of the XML theme I used to replace the boring old default I started off with, so that should be staying the same. Any other changes will be put in place if and when they’re needed.

With that out of the way, on to the 2009 year in review. As I said earlier, I didn’t get to the books I’d promised myself I would be reading this year. I also didn’t read the volume of books I had hope for, either. By the time the year is over, I will be at either thirty-two or thirty-three books, assuming I finish the fascinating Nevermore by Harold Schechter in the next day or two. There were a few things I posted this year that have had a lasting effect on me that I’d like to say one or two more things about before the ball drops and the books tally resets to zero.

Spook Country - Back in the late 90s, while attending college, I had a friend named Andy Fisher who loved telling a joke called, if I remember it correctly, “A Thousand White Ping-Pong Balls.” It was a joke with a hilarious punchline that took at least twenty minutes to set up. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten most of the details of the joke, but William Gibson’s novel works much in the same way. The book spends most of its time setting up a hilarious scene at the very end that had me rolling with laughter. Comedy isn’t something that i would normally associate with a Gibson work, but this was absolutely amazing. I keep a pristine copy on my shelf and another with a battered dust jacket in my car in case I find myself somewhere without reading material. I go back to it again and again in tiny increments because it’s just that good. Nerds with a fascination for technology and a slightly skewed sense of humor cannot go wrong with this novel.

JPod - Video games, dysfunctional families, crazy coworkers and the longest-running in-joke I’ve ever employed. I cannot walk down the candy aisle of a grocery store and spot a Toblerone bar without saying, out loud, “Steve turned Toblerone around in two years!”

Machine Man - Max Barry’s experimental, online novel was great fun to read every weekday morning. Sometimes it was the first thing I laid eyes on after waking up, still nestled under my covers. It was an awesome, wacky novel with a completely original plot that I can’t wait to pick up in revised, paperback format.

Microserfs - Coupland’s early 1990s cubicle drone comedy (a predecessor to JPod, which retains a lot of the same spirit, only in an updated form) gripped me with an iron fist of nostalgia that had me laughing and remembering fondly the years of my life I wasted and will never get back. I kind of miss that ugly Geo Metro.

Liquor - This book taught me that Poppy Z. Brite will always be awesome, even if she’s left horror behind. It also taught me that reading lengthy, indulgent passages about food will cause me to drool all over myself. Brite’s husband, chef Chris DeBarr, opened up a new restaurant this year called Green Goddess that is an absolute must-visit for me once I finally make the trip down to New Orleans.

White Noise - Reading White Noise made me realize that perhaps I’m stupider than I originally thought I was. Being one of those people who “just don’t get it” stings a bit, but I’ll have to deal with it somehow. Maybe someday I’ll be up to the intellectual challenge.

Interviews. I absolutely love being able to pick the brains of the people behind the books, especially those books I’ve read and enjoyed. This year I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Wayne Simmons, Derek Goodman, and D.L. Snell, all really awesome guys (I’ve met Derek in person and can especially vouch for his coolness) involved in one way or another (two authors, one editor) with books I highly enjoyed reading this year.

I’m looking forward to an equally awesome 2010, only with a higher count of books read by this time next year. No more slacking. Now, back to reading.

#31 of 2009: Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon

2009-12-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you’ve got to hate something to appreciate the jokes about it.

I was late to the Twilight party. I didn’t get caught up in it until the fourth book was about to be released, picking up a softcover copy of the first book and reading up to Eclipse. I bought Breaking Dawn but there is no way in Hell I’m ever going to read it. By the time I made my way through the first three books, I was so thoroughly irritated by Meyer’s writing style, her horrible handling of both vampire and native lore and her hideous, insulting character development that I doubt I’ll ever read another sentence written by her again.

I have a tendency to get suckered into something out of sheer curiosity, which is the only reason I read beyond the first book in the first place. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. On a related note, anyone who wants my hardback copies better lay claim to them before I render them into booksafes. I’ll get more use out of them that way.

There are a million different reasons to hate the Twilight series, and I’m not going to go into them all. If you want to read some very well thought out, well written responses to Meyer’s work, check out Stoney321’s dissection of the series on Livejournal or Mark Reads Twilight So You Don’t Have To. You’ll save money, save time and retain your sanity while still being able to laugh at Twilight’s unintended hilarity.

For the few people who’ve read and enjoyed the Twilight series and have a sense of humor about it, and for those who’ve read it and hate it, there’s no better rip on the series than The Harvard Lampoon’s new book, Nightlight.

Belle Goose, a girl so clumsy and unable to control her limbs that she can’t walk through a door without self-injury, leaves Phoenix and moves to Switchblade, Oregon to be with her father, the town’s greatest (and possibly only) window-washer. Once there, she realizes that everyone in town adores her, including the mailman, the school secretary and all of her classmates. Only one person, the mysterious computer nerd Edwart Mullen, seems impervious to her blazing charm. There has to be a reason for this. He must be a vampire. Despite having little to no evidence to support her theory, Belle falls head over heels in love with him in record time, even though they’ve had almost no contact with each other outside of a few glances in each other’s direction during classes.

Thus begins the romance of a lifetime.

Nightlight is incredibly stupid, but it’s a calculating, mocking stupid. Every ridiculous line is crafted to mimic Twilight’s unintended hilarity:

He frowned and looked down at the tablecloth. “Actually, you’re the one person I can’t read. I’ve always considered myself good at looking at people’s expressions and making wild guesses as to how they feel, but you - I look at your face and try to guess what you are thinking, and all I hear is ‘BEEEEEEEEEEEEP.’ Just this giant beeping sound - the sound a medical monitor makes when you die and everything goes blank. ‘BEEEEEEEEEEEP.’ Like that.”

“Gosh, Belle. When someone asks you, ‘What’s new?’ the correct answer is, ‘not much.’ Besides, isn’t it a little soon to cut yourself off from the rest of your peers, depending on a boyfriend to satisfy your social needs as opposed to making friends? Imagine what would happen if something forced that boy to leave! I’m imagining pages and pages would happen - with nothing but the names of the month on them.”

One nice thing about my dad is, as an old person, his hearing isn’t too great. So when I closed the door to my room, unpacked, cried uncontrollably, slammed the door, and threw my clothes around my room in a fit of dejected rage, he didn’t notice. it was a relief to let some of my steam out, but I wasn’t ready to let all of it out yet. That would come later, when my dad was asleep and I was lying awake thinking about how ordinary kids my age are. If only one of them were extraordinary, then I’d be rid of this insomnia.

I could not put this book down once I'd started reading, and in the two hours it took me (including breaks for dinner and moments to breathe deeply and control my laughter) I must have burst out into at least twenty separate fits of giggling.

It takes genius to mimic stupidity, and I find it hilarious that a bunch of college kids half-assing it managed to so superbly imitate Meyer and her cast of inane, vapid characters. Nightlight is absolutely fantastic in its mockery, doing in a mere one hundred and fifty-four pages what took Meyer five hundred and forty-four to accomplish, and she was taking the endeavor seriously.

5/5

#30 of 2009: Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett

2009-12-26T17:34:00.000-08:00

Sonchai Jitpleecheep is back to narrate another heinous murder in Bangkok to an unnamed Western audience in Bangkok Tattoo, the second in John Burdett’s exotic crime fiction series.

This time, the top earner at The Old Man’s club (a prostitution joint owned by Sonchai’s mother Nong and his boss, Royal Thai Police Colonel Vikorn) has returned to the bar after taking a client back to his hotel room, her once silver dress now covered in blood. The john, an American CIA operative named Mitch Turner, has been castrated and nearly eviscerated atop his hotel bed. Whatever the reason for killing him, his murderer has gone to great lengths to harm him, leaving his severed penis on the bedside table in a position seemingly, considering the circumstances, oddly respectful.

Before retiring to an unoccupied room on the upstairs floor of the Old Man’s Club, Chanya admits she murdered Turner, shouting “I’ve done him in!” before stripping off her underwear and curling up with enough opium to render a woman her size blissfully stoned for hours on end.

Nothing in a Burdett novel is quite as simple as it initially seems. Vikorn concocts a fake statement to hold onto in case the CIA find out Turner has been murdered, a document that claims Chanya was sexually assaulted and killed the man in self defense. The victim’s identification is disposed of and the body scheduled to be cremated. The Old Man’s Club is finally seeing a profit and their star whore cannot be detained in prison. So it is in Sonchai’s world, where he is the only one who refuses bribes and desperately tries to keep in the Buddha's graces while the world around him falls apart.

Sonchai and Vikorn, however, soon find that they missed one crucial piece of physical evidence on the corpse. And so begins the unraveling of Vikorn’s little cover story.

The initial coverup barely scratches the surface of Bangkok Tattoo’s twisting plot, which despite all of its detailed intrigue takes a backseat to the inner lives of its core characters. Like its predecessor Bangkok 8, the second novel revolves around the lives and loves of several people, with healthy doses of Buddhism, Islam and Western culture clash blended into the narrative. Nothing is as it seems, and what should be a simple crime is anything but.

Also included in the novel are several subtle and not so subtle subplots that are either left entirely open for the third novel, Bangkok Haunts, or are tied up in such a tenuous way that readers will assume them to be primed for further exploration at a later time. Sonchai's American GI father is mentioned in passing, and Vikorn's rivalries with other crooked officials rise to the surface here and there, hinting at further exploration in other volumes.

Once again, Burdett has written a novel that is part detective fiction, part East vs. West comparison. There have been several negative reviews for Bangkok Tattoo, mostly by Western readers, claiming that the story is a hard slam against Western culture. This reviewer, though, feels that perhaps they should lighten up a bit. It’s fiction, and obviously exaggerated for the purposes of entertainment and for bolstering an already scandalous (and somewhat controversial, in our post-9/11 culture) plot. In most fiction, though, there is a grain of truth, and perhaps readers have a slight something to gain by taking the story in with an open mind and a desire for a damn good murder story. Behind Sonchai’s “You’re deprived of X because of your culture, farang" lecturing (which is entertaining and enlightening in an “I kind of see what you mean” sort of way) is a bloody, perverse and altogether engrossing story that deserves to be read cover to cover.

5/5

Burdett’s fourth novel in the series, The Godfather of Kathmandu, hits stores in hardcover on January 12th.

#29 of 2009: The Devil You Know by Poppy Z. Brite

2009-12-26T09:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, as a reader, there will be times when I want to drop myself into an immersive world full of well-written characters with a long story that will keep me occupied for days. Other times, feeling less interested in universes and plot intricacies, I find myself looking for a good short story collection to keep me entertained in smaller, much more manageable bites.

Poppy Z. Brite has been, for me, a literary mainstay for fifteen years or more. I read her novels Lost Souls and Drawing Blood for the first time back in middle school, falling completely head-over-heels in love with both her writing style and subject matter during a period in my life where I was beginning to take my own attempts at storytelling somewhat seriously. She became for me, over the next few years, a source of both inspiration and heavy-handed imitation, before I found my own style and voice and moved on to penning things that were a bit less of a rip-off of better writers’ plots.

I never did forget her stories or stop admiring her as an author. As I grew older, I branched out into other genres and styles, and I didn’t go back to her fiction as often as I used to. Some of her smaller books, the ones not released by mainstream publishers, were a bit out of my price range as well. However, she popped back into my mind every now and then, and over the last year or so I have been both revisiting the works I read as an impressionable teen and finally getting to read the books I missed between that time and now. I reviewed Drawing Blood in late 2008 and Liquor this past summer, and I have to say the magic is still there, with both the older works and the newer ones.

There’s something about a well-rounded, well-written set of short stories that suckers me in and refuses to let me go, and the collection The Devil You Know is an amazing mix of old Brite creepiness and new Brite food fetishism, with the usual strong characters and mundane-yet-bewildering settings longtime fans have come to love. Published by Subterranean Press in 2003, The Devil You Know is more “average New Orleanians in odd situations” type of stuff than it is the old horror works of Lost Souls, Drawing Blood and Wormwood (her first short story collection, which is also worth reading and is still in print), but it is still the smirkingly unsettling stuff I craved as a youth and still have the urge to read to this day. To say I was not disappointed would be a serious understatement.

A good single-author collection should have an interesting foreword to rocket the reader in the proper direction, and, like Wormwood before it, this one contains a classic. Unlike the foreword to Wormwood, which was written by Dan Simmons, The Devil You Know’s introductory section was penned by Brite herself. In these brief few pages, titled “Dispatches from Tanganyika,” Brite gives readers some background information about her writing process, her departure from the horror genre and explanations of each story and how they came to be. Before I’d even read any of the fiction between the covers, I was in a comfortable place, feeling as if I’d just returned to a home I’d never meant to stray from.

The stories in this collection run the gamut from creepy to humorous, terrifying to bittersweet. Some are meant to elicit chuckles and disbelieving shakes of the head (especially those that feature alter ego New Orleans coroner Dr. Brite and her ruminations on death and food), while others are small illuminations on the subjects of human nature and love. At times I found myself laughing, while other times I felt only bitterness or soft optimism by a story’s end. Brite is a magnificent writer who has not in any way lost her touch.

The Devil You Know also contains two short stories written using copyrighted characters for projects Brite has been involved in. “Burn, Baby, Burn,” a story that takes place during Liz Sherman’s teenage years, was written for a Hellboy anthology. “System Freeze,” taking place in the world of The Matrix, was written as a promotional piece for the now-downsized whatisthematrix site.

I’ve heard complaints from readers on various Internet forums about Brite’s common use of homosexual characters in her fiction recently, and though it honestly shouldn’t matter I feel it deserves a least a moment’s attention in this review. Yes, she prefers writing about gay men, often explicitly, and it’s certainly not going to please everyone. No, this collection isn’t any different than anything else she’s written in that regard and there’s quite a bit of none too subtle male-on-male eroticism going on. If that’s not your cup of tea, or if it bothers you to the point of distraction, look elsewhere. Mostly these comments are found in conjunction with criticisms about her so-called “Goth phase,” which is long over and really only spanned one novel (and a handful of short stories), which was also her first work of long fiction and was published while she was in her early twenties. One of the comments that still stands out in my mind went something like “She writes about underaged gay Goth kids having sex all over the place (and in great detail), and writing ‘fuck’ on their shoes as if she wants everyone to know just how cool and weird she is.” This irritated me to no end because the individual who wrote it obviously only read Lost Souls and then stopped, because that is the only book where Goth kids have a huge presence. Only one kid writes “fuck” on his shoes (Lane), and it is mentioned only briefly.

Still, the Brite-hater had a point. There’s a lot of gay sex going on in her fiction, and there always will be. Nothing wrong with that.

Readers who don’t mind (or enjoy) homoeroticism, and are looking for an eclectic collection that spans a whole array of moods and themes, should check out The Devil You Know, if they haven’t already.

5/5

#28 of 2009: John Dies at the End by David Wong

2009-12-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you hear about a book through word of mouth, not through reviews or advertisements, and it seems so interesting that you immediately go out and pick up a copy to find out for yourself just what this work is all about.

For many people, that’s exactly how they were exposed to David Wong’s John Dies at the End, a novel that began as a free online serial. I missed the boat the first two times around, both when it was online and when the print edition was first published by Permuted Press, but I recently had the opportunity to pick up the new St. Martin’s Press edition and was pleasantly surprised by what I read.

I remember, years ago while JDatE was still an online novel, people ranting and raving about how terrifying and absolutely mind blowing the story was. I have a tendency to take online opinions, especially those of people on generalized message boards, with a grain of salt, so it’s no surprise that I missed the novel in its first few iterations. However, earlier this year I found out that it was being rereleased in a gorgeous new hardcover format and, and usual, the cover caught my eye and refused to be ignored.

I bought my copy with a Barnes and Noble gift card I’d received for my birthday, slipped the cover off and tossed it into my bag, taking it everywhere with me for several weeks while I spent most of my time on campus focusing on my coursework. I’d read a chapter here and there, before classes, after classes, sitting in my car between classes when classes were cancelled. It was sporadic reading, forced to fit into the slots that my academic life allowed, and because of that I was much slower in finishing the novel than I normally would be.

So, did it stand up to the hype I’d seen lavished on it years ago? Yes and no. I didn’t find the novel to be so much terrifying as I found it to be crude, immature and utterly hilarious, with healthy doses of creepy and unsettling thrown into the mix. It didn’t feel to me like the kind of book that would keep a reader up all night fearing the movement of shadows, which for me is the very definition of terrifying. It certainly would, however, keep a reader up all night snickering at the very bizarre mental images running through their head the whole time they left the book open, which is exactly what happened with me. On more than one occasion I found myself, long after retiring the book for the night, remembering the outrageous things I'd read just a few hours before and giggling like a kid that's stayed up past their bedtime to catch something inappropriate on Cinemax.

One of the strongest points to the novel is just how convincing the two main characters, Dave and John, are. They’re far from unique individuals, and there’s a strong chance that people who read the novel will either be just like one of them or know someone who is. These are the guys who work at video stores and look down on the people renting stupid movies, the guys who when not at work drink beer, play video games and make jokes amongst each other about the impossibly massive size of their genitals. Don't lie and pretend you don't know the guys I'm talking about here, because we all know you do.

John Dies at the End is, essentially, the story of impending cataclysm with only two slackers standing in the way of utter destruction. Dave, the narrator, buys a mysterious drug (referred to as “Soy Sauce”) off of a fake Jamaican, which turns out to have both mystical properties and a malignant origin, bestowing users with extrasensory abilities before causing their very visceral deaths. At the same party, Dave finds a dog that he realizes belongs to a guy he knows named Jim Sullivan, and when he returns Molly (after reading her tag and learning her name) to her proper home, Jim’s sister Amy tells Dave that she’s worried her brother may be dead.

Things get weirder from here on in. Evil entities make appearances, and time and space shifts somewhat. The story becomes slightly hard to follow in places, but the humor keeps it afloat as more and more characters are brought in and the stakes are raised. There are excerpts of other works within the narrative, including a book by paranormal lecturer Dr. Albert Marconi and Jim Sullivan’s amateurish short story writing, which caused the loudest and longest bout of laughter to erupt from me throughout the whole book.

There's a lot more to this book, but it has to be read to be understood and appreciated. Suffice it to say, though, that it's nearly four hundred pages of penis jokes, pop culture humor and hilarious one-liners (usually uttered by John, who manages to be both moronic and strangely endearing as he charges through the story, Dave in tow) interspersed with an intricate parallel world plot that almost needs a chart to track its complexity. It's an unusual combination of cheap laughs and plot twists that manages to work where the effort of a lesser writer would have easily fallen flat.

While it may not have lived up to the “Oh my god, you guys, this is the scariest thing I’ve ever read in my life” hype for me, as a lover of crude humor and off-the-wall storytelling it hit the bullseye perfectly.

John Dies at the End still has quite the web presence despite its numerous printings, and its page is still active and updated.

4/5

What follows is a conversation between myself and D.L. Snell, editor of the Permuted edition of John Dies at the End, on the editing process and finding balance between writing and editing the work of others. Enjoy.

__________

BIO
D.L. Snell is a writer and freelance editor at Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. He has also edited Permuted’s Undead series. Snell’s second novel DEMON DAYS, co-authored with screenwriter/producer Richard Finney, deals with demonic possession, near-death experiences, and Armageddon. Snell’s websites are exit66.net and finneyandsnell.com.

First of all, thank you for agreeing to this interview. I haven't been given the opportunity to pick an editor's brain yet. This is very exciting for me.

No problem, Jessica! My pleasure.

How did you get into editing? What's your background like? How did you come to work with Permuted?

I started off as a writing tutor at my community college. I learned a lot about grammar, mechanics, proofreading and clarity, and more than I ever wanted to know about MLA citation. Also, I learned how to convey, both in person and online, the concepts of revision and clarity.

As an editor, I started at Permuted Press working on its first anthology The Undead. Jacob Kier liked my submission to the antho and thought I’d make a good editor--even though in my own story, the protagonist’s name changes on the second page! Anyway, my background in tutoring gives me a special edge as an editor, because I approach the job more as a teacher. I make the writer fix things. And if I fix stuff, I explain why.

I recommend tutoring to any writer or editor: you can never really know something until you’ve taught it.

How does your editing process work?

Usually to start, I read the editing project and make overall comments using Microsoft Word’s Review tools. This first round I reserve for big-picture suggestions, such as critiques on plot and characterization. (No sense in tackling grammar and mechanics on material that we’ll change, you know?) If the writer doesn’t agree with my big-picture advice, we discuss compromises until we’re both satisfied. Then the author revises. It’s important to let writers control these types of edits, so they can maintain their style and sense of ownership.

The next few stages involve line edits and proofreading. I document all of my revisions using a Review tool in Word, called Track Changes. Using this technology, the writer can quickly sort through and reject or accept my changes. If I think some revisions might be difficult for the writer to understand, I use Comments to explain my reasoning; I’ve found a higher rate of acceptance using this method.

(Here is a little demo I created on how to use Track Changes.)

Throughout the various stages of revision, I keep a copy of every round of edits, as well as the original manuscript. I even use a numbering system in the filenames to track lineage. These types of records are crucial if an author ever accuses me of a mistake or any wrongdoing. For example, if someone accuses me of adding too many urine scenes to her book, I can present the original manuscript and prove the contrary.

Am I crazy for noticing them mostly in books you've edited, or are you actually fond of semicolons? I don't often see them elsewhere these days.

Ah, you have the keen colonoscope of a proctologist! I admit I abuse semicolons. And em dashes. And urine. The writers I edit have the right to argue any semicolons I insert in their work.

Personally, I use whatever punctuation sounds best when I read something aloud. In my opinion, periods create an entirely different rhythm than semicolons.

How do you balance editing with the original work an author gives you?

My plan differs for each project, depending on my estimated volume of revisions. I always task the writer with the big-picture edits, as described earlier, but as for line edits… I have worked on books so rife with errors that by the end I could be considered a co-author. Thanks to Track Changes, all of my work is fully transparent. If the author doesn’t like a change I made, we work it out. Ninety-eight percent of the time, negotiations remain peaceful and resolve satisfactorily, whether or not I prevail.

The other two percent saddens me, because I work extremely hard to help authors improve their writing in what I believe to be a reasonable, empathetic manner--sometimes only to have it thrown back in my face. In the end, it’s my responsibility to honor an author’s wishes, and if those wishes go against Permuted’s standards, it’s better to cut ties with the author and let her do what she wants with her work. Or his. It’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way.

Do you edit anything other than horror?

Haven’t yet. I do write in other genres, such as fantasy and sci-fi. Or I at least blend those two (and more) into my horror.

How do your personal tastes as a reader run, and does editing alter how or what you read for pleasure?

My reading tastes are eclectic: fantasy, horror, sci-fi, thrillers, mysteries, poetry.... Sometimes I only have time to read whatever I’m editing; thankfully, I’ve enjoyed almost every project.

From the editing end of the business, what do you make of the popularity of zombie fiction right now? Is this a trend, or am I just suddenly noticing what's always been there?

As with every staple of the horror genre, some new book or movie on the subject will spark interest in both readers and writers. And now more than ever, writers have more avenues to reach an audience, whether it’s through self-publishing, the small press, or podcasts; therefore, the saturation is more widespread--and the more widespread something is, the more interest it’s likely to accumulate. Up to a point, of course.

Is there anybody you haven't worked with that you'd particularly enjoy editing?

Uh, Stephen King? Kidding… sort of. Since I edit for Permuted, I’ll answer with Permuted names: I wouldn’t mind working with someone like David Dunwoody or Wayne Simmons, and the late Z.A. Recht would have been great to edit; I met Dunwoody and Recht at Horror Realm, and they both seemed like stand-up guys--and they’re great writers to boot.

I know you're also a writer. What have you written, and how long have you been involved in both writing and editing?

I’ve been writing longer than I’ve been editing. But I’ve edited more than I’ve written--it’s so much faster! However, I’ve been slowly shifting that ratio. My work appears in just about half of Permuted’s anthology line-up, and I also sold a story to Pocket Books’ Blood Lite (alongside bestsellers such as Jim Butcher and Charlaine Harris). I have two novels out as well. The first one I mock, yet cherish. The second one we’ll discuss in a minute...

Does your experience on both sides of publishing makes it easier for you as a writer?

In many ways writing is problem solving, whether it’s at the plot level or at the scope of an individual sentence. When a writer hasn’t communicated clearly and provocatively, the work needs repair. Editing has taught me to recognize problems and to observe them objectively from different angles; this makes solving the issues easier because I’ve learned to think up multiple fixes, and to predict how those fixes will affect the interlocking pieces of the story. This ability has vastly improved my own writing; my work wouldn’t be at the same level had I never edited.

Also, editing allows me to network with a variety of authors. For some of the anthologies I’ve worked on, my co-editors and I received submissions from the likes of Kevin Anderson and Simon Clark. It builds great rapport--especially when you reject them.

Tell me about this Demon Days project I keep seeing the trailer for. What was that like, collaborating with another author on a full-length project?

DEMON DAYS is my second novel, a supernatural thriller co-authored with screenwriter/producer Richard Finney. The story mixes the classic theme of demonic possession with the phenomenon of near-death experiences--and then twists them into a plot about preventing Armageddon. An extended synopsis and a sample chapter are available at finneyandsnell.com.

Collaborating with Richard Finney on DEMON DAYS was awesome. Richard’s got a great sense of business and story, and he couldn’t be a nicer, more flexible guy. We got along well throughout the process of writing the book, and we hope to do it again soon.

Do you have anything else in the works that you're able to discuss?

Yeah, a sequel to DEMON DAYS subtitled ANGEL OF LIGHT. We expect to finish it in 2010.

Thanks for the interview. This was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to picking up more works both authored and edited by you.

Thank you--I appreciate your time!

#27 of 2009: The Rage Plague by Anthony Giangregorio

2009-12-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

I picked up my copy of The Rage Plague at Permuted Press’ table a few months ago during the Horror Realm convention here in Pittsburgh. I had some extra money to burn and was about to take off for the day, and I was a bit indiscriminate in my choices. I wanted new books to read and didn’t take much time choosing them, picking titles willy-nilly and hoping my usual luck with finding good reads would hold out.

To be perfectly honest, one of the reasons why I picked The Rage Plague was its cover. I’m a sucker for well-done, minimalist covers, especially when the fonts catch my eye. I’ve been deceived by attractive covers before (by a whole series, once, whose red and white stylings in no way held up to my expectations of its actual contents), but The Rage Plague’s simplistic bloody hammer against a white background called out to me in a way I couldn’t ignore.

What I found, after cracking the book open, didn’t exactly delight me but it certainly wasn’t a bad choice on my part.

The Rage Plague is a story most horror aficionados have witnessed before. A group of survivors find themselves stranded in a city that’s been reduced to rubble and uninhabitable structures, overrun with creatures that attack and devour the living. There are many places a fanatic can go on the Internet to argue whether or not fast-moving, psychotic people who’ve mindlessly abandoned their former lives truly are zombies, but this is not one of them. For the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to refer to them as Infected.

The Infected are incredibly violent, swift-footed and ravenous, suffering from a tunnel vision that prevents them from doing much besides assaulting, murdering and devouring the living. At the start of the novel, hero and main focal point Bill is stuck on the roof of a local school with a handful of other uninfected survivors. They’re trapped there, with the sun beating down and the mad Infected surrounding the building. Among the other survivors are a kindly woman a few years Bill’s senior, some random women, a man who’s barely able to hold it together after the death of his wife and a young hothead ready to take Bill on for control of the group.

Elsewhere, one Infected, who has managed to retain most of his sanity despite the virus’ effects, rises to control the horde, while the military fortifies Chicago’s now-abandoned airport as their new de facto base.

It’s an interesting premise, though as has been stated before it is by no means fresh or unique. The characters feel like cliches that have been fleshed out a bit more in an attempt to appear original, but they still resemble their former selves. You have Middle Aged Man Who Rises to the Challenge, Young Tough Who Challenges Our Hero, Cigar-Chomping Army Man Who Yells At Everyone, Kindly Older Woman Who Teaches Patience, Moron Who Does the Wrong Thing For Love and, of course, Evil Villain Who Was Invisible in His Former Life and Now Wants the World to Pay.

Just because the characters are familiar doesn’t mean they don’t work. They do, for the most part. The story’s enjoyable, and the plot moves at a decent pace. It’s just that the novel doesn’t do anything anyone hasn’t seen before. Sometimes we pick up books to be exposed to new ideas or ways of thinking, and sometimes we pick up books to be entertained. The Rage Plague has loads of entertainment value. It’s packed with action, snappy dialogue and tense situations. However, most readers will have an idea of where the story is headed, and how it will end, after reading the first chapter or two.

The Rage Plague is, at its core, the zombie equivalent of the Summer Beach Read, a piece of exciting, entertaining fluff that feels as familiar as it does thrilling, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

3/5

Jason Brannon's "Order of the Bull" Available for Preorder

2009-12-07T14:14:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of small press horror publishers. When I was much younger, during my "raid the used bookstores and buy everything with creepy covers" phase, the Internet was just beginning its journey to become what it is today. Webzines and small, nearly nonprofit print outfits were the first places to show my work, and I still seek them out to this day. There's something beautiful and inspiring about people involved in horror (and indie fiction of all kinds) for the sheer love of it.

I just found out about another small press venture, Corpulent Insanity Press, today, and I'm passing along the info not only because there's a publicity contest going on (the way to my heart truly is through free books), but because these kinds of businesses never can get enough exposure. After having worked with so many extremely cool, dedicated people over the years, I like to pay it forward as much as I possibly can.

Jason Brannon's new chapbook, The Order of the Bull, will be out on December 10th. It's a very limited run, so make sure you snag a copy before they're gone. Copies are ten dollars and signed by the author.

________

This holiday season, check out The Order of the Bull by Jason Brannon. It’s a tale of courage, redemption and trailer park terror. But don’t wait. There are only 26 copies available. Go to www.corpulentinsanitypress.com now to order your copy.

“In Order of the Bull, Jason Brannon paints a picture of nightmarish terror and cruel sacrifice. Jason shades and textures his work with the skill of a Renaissance master using a pallet of very real human frailties, sins, fears, and anxieties.”
–Bowie Ibarra, author of Down the Road and Pit Fighters

“An engrossing, terrifying read that forces you to ask how far you are willing to go in chasing the promise of a better life, who you are willing to sacrifice, and whether or not you are willing to face the consequences of the choices you’ve made. A five star read.”
–Trish Ramirez, the Horror and Fantasy Book Review

All Good Things Must Come to an End

2009-12-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

The last chapter of Max Barry’s Machine Man came out this morning.

For anyone not already acquainted with the novel, it’s an internet serial that ran for the better part of a year, updating in short microchapters Monday through Friday, that dealt with the themes of love, transhumanism, corporate greed and self-mutilation in the name of science. Typical Barry craziness, really.

It was excellent.

Access to the entire novel cost me approximately seven bucks, with new chapters delivered to my inbox every morning before I was even awake. What an awesome thing to read during breakfast.

The beginning chapters are still available for free (and the feed is still active for any new readers who want to buy the whole thing), and it’s coming to print, but for anyone who hasn’t experienced it yet, seeing it in raw form is amazing. I can’t wait to be able to compare it with the hardcopy edition.

Thanks for the daily goodness, Max. I loved every page.

Love Poppy Z. Brite? Check This Out.

2009-11-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

Poppy Z. Brite was a huge influence on me as a teenager back in the 90s. Once I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life writing horror, her novels became shining examples of everything I wanted to achieve with my own prose. While other girls my age were reading Seventeen magazine and YA titles, I was devouring Poppy’s stories of vampires, gay men in haunted houses and necrophilia.

I turned out a bit odd, but I don’t blame her entirely. There had to be some sort of inborn element present to start things off. She was just the amazingly brilliant (and absolutely creepy) catalyst that set everything in motion. I wouldn’t have it any other way, either.

Over the last several years, Brite’s changed her focus from horror to restaurant-themed fiction, and the woman’s still after my heart. Next to vampires, ghosts and zombies, nothing captures my attention quite like food. Brite’s Liquor series, as I’ve stated before in my review of the first novel, is pure food-porn bliss. Her writing style hasn’t changed nearly as much as her choice of topics, and the stories are superb. Ricky and G-Man are every bit as lovable as Zach and Trevor or Steve and Ghost, and their stories are hilarious and heartwarming in that weird, warped Brite way.

Hurricane Katrina hit Brite and her world hard, and I didn’t think we’d be seeing any new Liquor novels for quite some time. While that may still be the case (Ricky and G-Man’s restaurant is fictionally located in a section of the city that was rather brutalized), her two related novellas The Value of X and D*U*C*K are available now as a softcover collection titled Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans. These were originally available only as hard to find hardcovers, and while they’d been on my radar for quite some time any copies I managed to track down remained firmly out of my price range.

No longer. The collection has an MSRP of sixteen bucks, and is currently on sale at Amazon for $10.88. Very cool.

#26 of 2009: Drop Dead Gorgeous by Wayne Simmons

2009-10-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on a real indie book bender lately. There’s something refreshing about small press novels that I really enjoy, be it the DIY spirit of the venture in general or the groundbreaking ideas that the books themselves contain. I think one of the things that grabs me the most about the small press world is the sheer amount of heart and dedication that go into the production, a feeling that’s miles and miles away from the cold, corporate feel that sometimes radiates from Big Publishing.

Don’t get me wrong, corporate entities have their place, I suppose, but small presses give me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, even when they’re printing things that shouldn’t generate that kind of response.

Drop Dead Gorgeous, published by Permuted Press, is one such book. I loved it, every page and every minute spent with my nose buried in it, but damn is this one of the most heartbreaking books I’ve ever read. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite so bleak before, despite having read literally hundreds of horror novels from my teen years to this day.

DDG is, essentially, the story of a zombie outbreak in and around Belfast, Northern Ireland, but what makes it so unique (and, in my opinion, chillingly effective) is that the focus throughout remains squarely on the characters. Two high school kids, a tattooist, a radio DJ, an aging Loyalist soldier, an IRA supporter, a retired college professor, a twenty-something slacker and several others have found themselves alone, the rest of the citizenry suddenly dead for reasons unknown. People have fallen in their homes, keeled over at the wheel of their cars and dropped dead on the streets, all for little to no reason. Bodies are left to rot where they lay as the city’s infrastructure shuts down, and the survivors hole up in enclaves scattered throughout the country.

Some of the bodies, however, defy the rotting process, and become more and more beautiful with each passing day...

I don’t think I read the word ‘zombie’ once during the whole novel, though I could be wrong about that. My point to this is, though, that the reanimated dead are never treated as the shamblers found so often in Romero-style zombie stories. Nor are they swift-footed zombies, tearing after human survivors while screaming and clawing at the air. They’re dangerous, to be sure, and sometimes form mobs, but the reanimated women are wholly original creatures. Inside their non-living brains reside memories, albeit seemingly hidden ones, and when they return to life their former emotions come very much into play.

DDG is a very slow burn. The horror doesn’t come into play for quite some time, instead focusing on the people who’ve found themselves thrown into chaos and the things they must do to ensure their own survival. These are people who have lost loved ones, sometimes their entire families, and must now make do with a life without camaraderie or the comforts they once took for granted. Simmons handles this heartbreakingly well. Several times I found myself feeling real pity for his characters, wanting them to somehow find their way to happiness. There were times, as well, when I almost didn’t want to turn the page, knowing fully well that in horror novels those that die often outweigh those that survive to see The End.

DDG is a wild, highly emotional ride that I’m very glad to have taken. Its sequel, DOLL PARTS, is forthcoming, and I’ll be picking it up the moment it hits Amazon.

5/5

Once again, this review comes with an interview as well. This is another area where indie publishing tends to trump its corporate brethren - small press people are way more accessible, in general, and several have been kind enough to grant interviews. The following is a conversation I had with Wayne Simmons on the topics of writing techniques, DDG, tattoos and future projects.

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First of all, thank you for giving me the opportunity to pick your brains like this. This is very cool.

Not at all. In fact, the pleasure’s mine! Thanks to you for taking such an interest in DDG!

I'd also like you to know that I couldn't put this amazing book down all day and neglected college coursework to finish it, so when I get lackluster grades it's going to be your fault.

Hahah! I’ll write a letter to your tutor, explaining everything. Weirdly, I’ve done a bit of tutoring, myself. I’m a fully trained teacher, as it happens!

What's your writing process like? Do you work off notecards, outlines, write organically, etc?

It’s chaotic… I use a lot of free-writing to develop the characters. Just scribbling, randomly, to conjure up scenarios and fill out their personalities. I’m very much into writing solid, believable, likable or hateful characters, and allowing them to drive the story. That’s what I like to see in a book, myself.

I’ll have a basic outline of where I want to go, with a project, but I’m always willing to adapt that according to where the characters decide to take me. Writing in this way keeps the story fresh for me, and I hope that transfers across to the experience of the reader, too.

How long did it take you from concept to rough draft, and from rough draft to finished manuscript?

It took about a year to actually write, then self-edit DDG. With this being my debut novel, much of this process involved finding my own voice as a writer, and then feeling confident with using it. Once the completed manuscript was passed to Permuted, it took about another year to get everything in place, from their end, including assigning an editor to the book (the very talented Travis Adkins). I have enjoyed working with Permuted – they have treated me very well, making my first splash into the horror market very enjoyable and enlightening.

How many ideas did you go through? Did you nail the story on the first try, or did you switch things around a bit?

The ending was changed, according to the wishes of Permuted. They found the original conclusion a little vague, and unsatisfying. I was going for subtle, but it obviously wasn’t working! It was at that stage, I introduced the character of Herbert Matthews to the story – the agoraphobic professor. He’s become one of the book’s favourite characters for a lot of readers, so it was clearly a good move in bringing his story into the final cut. He also helped to bring a more satisfying sense of closure to the first part of the story, as well as setting up a clear direction and purpose for the sequel…

This is a very, very unconventional zombie tale. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anything even remotely similar. How did you come to this story idea?

Thank you! To be honest, the story idea came about because I’m an awkward bugger! I wanted to make things difficult for myself, as a writer, to try and create a fearsome creature out of a breed of undead who were not ugly and repulsive looking, but instead outrageously beautiful…

I guess I didn’t want to write a traditional zombie tale, much as I love to read such. I wanted to do something different, something bizarro in its feel. I was watching (and reading) a lot of Asian horror, at the time of writing DDG, and I’m quite sure the likes of Sadako from Ringu inspired the kind of ‘zombie’ I wanted in my book.

Ultimately, though, the undead are more of a backdrop to this part of the story. We see them move more into the forefront in the sequel. DDG, however, is more about the characters – how these every day, flawed anti-heroes react towards each other, within a broken, confusing and brutally silent world.

When I write, I generally write characters with attributes of people I've met or been close to in real life (disgruntled office workers, everyday women, men who love porn and PC games, etc). Did you know people like Roy, Mairead, Sean and Star in Belfast?

Sub-consciously, I’m quite sure I do know people like them. However, none of the characters were based on any one person in particular. When I write, I try to get right into the personality of the character, myself. In fact, I almost take on their personality, much like I would imagine is achieved through method-acting. It’s a draining way to write, but one I find very effective in achieving fully fleshed out, three-dimensional people to drive the story. Of course, the hard part is often in saying goodbye to these people you’ve created, and shared a journey with. Killing off characters you’ve breathed so much life into can be a bitch.

You've got, amongst others, a Republican IRA supporter, a Loyalist soldier, a retired Engineering professor, a disc jockey and a tattooist for main characters. How much research did you need to do to get inside the characters' heads?

I did a little research into the political side of the book, just to remind myself how things were playing out, here in Belfast, during the time the novel was set (Summer 2005). Apart from that, I did some research into the technical side of Herbert’s savvy with radios, and in particular HAM radios. With the tattoo artist character, I was very careful to make sure the scenes involving her profession were written with integrity. Thankfully, I’ve quite a number of friends who are tattoo artists, and so was able to run the technical detail of the tattooing scenes past them before signing the manuscript off. I owe people like Dan Henk, Jan Moat and Chris O a lot for that very specialist input.

Seeing as how horror is (usually) very male-oriented, I was struck by how many strong female characters you had in Drop Dead Gorgeous. How did these badasses come about?

I’ve no idea! It wasn’t intentional, really. I suppose, what I would say, is that I’ve always enjoyed the work of people like Joss Whedon, who is well renowned for writing strong female characters, and writing them well. Also, the Asian Horror industry hosts a lot of strong female leads, and it’s a sub-genre I particularly enjoy.

You write female characters very well. I always worry when writing male characters that I'm somehow screwing up and making them a bit cartoonish, though I'm not sure if that's true or not. How difficult was that for you?

Thank you, Jessica – coming from a female, that means a lot to me! I guess I just try to put myself into the position of the character, and have them act accordingly (male/ female/ otherwise). If it doesn’t feel real to me, I go another direction. Within DDG, of course, some of the strongest characters are neither female nor male. The Rain and The Silence are personified and play pivotal roles within the book.

Horror stories are full of bloodshed and death. Did you have any difficulties killing any of your characters?

Absolutely! To the point where some of the characters, originally billed for the scrap yard, actually ended up crawling across the finishing line in DDG…

Of course, as a writer you can often see potential in someone that goes beyond what their initial role within the story had been, especially when the story gives birth to a potential sequel. Take Spike from Buffy, for example. Joss Whedon had originally intended him to be a one season bad guy, to be killed off in the middle of season 2, as I recall. And look how much of a pivotal role he ended up having…

Where did the jewelry line idea come from?

I interviewed Gracie from TORTURE COUTURE for Pretty Scary a few years ago. She was introduced to me by the editor of Pretty Scary, who wanted me to chase up a feature with her. Gracie was such a delight to interview. She was very kind to send my girlfriend some free gifts from her range, so we just ended up keeping in touch after the interview. When DDG was accepted by Permuted, I thought that it would be cool to introduce a range of clothing and accessories, inspired by the book. I basically asked Gracie if she would be keen to work with me on it, and she loved the idea. And, so, we went from there!

I'm less of a tattoo person and more of a piercing fanatic, though I plan on getting inked at some point in this life. How much of your own experience with tattoos bled into the story? How many tattoos do you actually have?

I guess, as an author, I will write about the things I enjoy – and I love getting tattooed! It’s difficult to count my tattoos. They all join into each other! At present, I have almost covered my upper torso, with the exception of my back. My most recent tattoo – ongoing work on my chest piece – has lapped onto my neck. I’ve also got a tattoo on my calf. And I’ve no plans of stopping any time soon! Most of my tattoos are inspired by my love of horror. So, I not only live, breathe, read and write horror – I also (literally) cover myself with it! Ain’t that dedication!?!

Where did you get the idea to go to tattoo magazines for reviews? Have they all been receptive?

I knew that the tattoo and alternative scene would be interested in the book because of its lead character, Star, being both punk and tattoo artist. So, I approached all of the major tattoo magazines that you see on the newsstands and drummed up a bit of interest. Magazines like Total Tattoo, Skin Deep, Skin & Ink and Pinstriping and Kustom Graphics have featured reviews and previews on the book – all of which have been very positive. I was also very fortunate to host a book signing at the recent Liverpool Tattoo Convention and hope to return there next year. I’m really pleased at how welcoming the scene has been to DDG and am delighted tattoo artists and enthusiasts, alike, are enjoying the book.

Please tell me there's more where this came from. You can't leave me hanging like this, damn it.

Yep! I’m almost finished the final draft of DOLL PARTS (DDG 2). It should be released by Permuted Press sometime in 2010. For further details, keep an eye on my interactive website.

#25 of 2009: The Apocalypse Shift by Derek J. Goodman

2009-10-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

I have an appreciation for all things indie. Since my middle school days, I’ve had a fondness for DIY publishing ventures, from photocopied zines to chapbooks to local music tapes. For a while, once the Internet really took of, it seemed to me like sources of homebrew goodness were drying up.

This year, ironically due to the Internet, I found several small press publishing ventures that are not only alive but thriving. Permuted Press and Library of the Living Dead put out some very awesome books, and I’ve recently had the awesome opportunity of meeting in person or talking online with several of these very cool authors.

I picked up a copy of Derek J. Goodman’s horror-comedy novel The Apocalypse Shift at Horror Realm, a local zombie-themed convention here in Pittsburgh. It’s out under Library of the Living Dead’s Library of Horror imprint, a section of the catalog dedicated to all things non-zombie in horror literature.

Caleb works the night shift at the local OneStop convenience store in the middle of a section of the city called the Hill. On the Hill, some (hell, most) of the residents are a bit unusual. Most of them aren’t even human. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, tentacled demons and others roam the streets at night, sometimes as regular residents and OneStop customers and sometimes as something a bit more sinister. The night shift is always full of supernatural mayhem, but when Caleb’s penchant for keeping “trophies” from their battles backfires, the crap hits the fan in such a way that life on the Hill may never be the same again. Now it’s up to Caleb, his zombie-loving coworker Phil and their former-coworker-turned-stripper Gloria to track the trophies down before they’re used to nefarious ends. All this, and Caleb has to keep from annoying Gloria enough to get a second date.

It’s a shame that horror and comedy aren’t blended together more often. When done right, it’s absolutely amazing, and that’s exactly what The Apocalypse Shift is. Imagine what Clerks would be like with an extended cast of supernatural freaks and weirdos, minus the donkey sex and sodomy jokes, and this is what you would end up with. It’s a wild, hilarious ride that grabbed me from the first page and kept me from putting it down until I was finished. There were places in the book where I could not stop giggling, and anyone around me while I was reading it probably assumed I’d gone a bit off my rocker.

Like most indie/DIY publishing efforts, The Apocalypse Shift has a grittier appearance than your run-of-the-mill corporate publishing venture. Library of Horror uses a font that’s slightly larger than I’m used to, and there are the occasional issues with spacing between words and subtle word choices that caught my eye. However, this did little if anything to detract from the overall experience, and anyone with a love of indie publishing knows their appeal is in the innovative storytelling and not the overall polishing of the package. Hell, some of my own best short stories have been published in magazines employing little more than a Xerox machine and a brightly-colored sheaf of heavy stock paper for a cover, and I still cherish them to this day. Typesetting aside, Library of Horror goes all out with the size of their books. Apocalypse Shift (and all of the other Library titles that I’ve seen) are published in a nice trade size, with high quality paper and attractive, glossy covers.

Copies of all Library titles can be found on Amazon, as well as some on shelves locally at Joseph Beth Booksellers.

For anyone with a love of horror and humor, I can’t recommend The Apocalypse Shift enough.

5/5

On top of the awesomeness that is The Apocalypse Shift, the author is a damn nice guy. One of the great things about indie and small-press writers is that they’re usually cool enough to grant interviews, and what follows is a conversation he and I recently had about his book, his love of horror and comedy and the weirdness that is the service industry.

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First of all, thank you for the interview. This is really cool.

No problem whatsoever. I'm excited for this, too.

I met you this year at Horror Realm. How did you like the convention?

I loved it. I've been to a few conventions before, but this was the first time I was ever at one in any sort of "guest" capacity. I got to meet a lot of other authors face to face for the first time. All the other Library of the Living Dead authors especially were amazing. As this was my first non-self-published novel, I was very nervous and kind of felt like the new kid. But the Library authors and editors and such all feel like one big family, and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it. I also got to meet and talk with some of the people from Permuted Press, as well as S. G. Browne and Jonathan Maberry. Of course, one of the biggest highlights for me was how many copies of the book sold.

Apocalypse Shift sold completely out! How many copies were there at the con? Did you expect that kind of response?

No, I really didn't. I'm not sure of the exact amount of copies Dr. Pus had there, although he said it was somewhere around fifteen. I probably had fewer books than others because it was so new and untested yet, but I figured I might be able to move most of them by the end of the con. Instead I sold the last one somewhere around 4 p.m. on the second day. I was shocked and very happy. I'm not really sure how that happened, but I think it might be because the premise of the book was so different.

Why the mix of horror and comedy? You don't often see the two together, though when they're done right they're almost like peanut butter and jelly. It's a shame it's so difficult to pull off.

Well, for me, it feels more difficult to write straight-up horror. I can sometimes be kind of a quiet person, especially when I don't know the people around me very well, and even though I usually break out of my shell eventually I still bottle up a lot of my inner sarcasm and humor. So it has to go somewhere, and it comes out in my writing. Also, too, when I spend a lot of time working on a few more serious stories I eventually need to just bust loose. All my Apocalypse Shift stories were sort of designed specifically to be a place where I could do that. The novel has a few places where it takes serious turns, but mostly I'm using it to joke about horror clichés. It's me writing a love letter to horror and urban fantasy while at the same time giving it a firm jab in the ribs.

How did you meet Dr. Pus and come to have your book put out by Library of Horror?

That kind of happened in a round-about way. The first Apocalypse Shift story I ever wrote, a novelette called "The All-Night, One-Stop Apocalypse Shop," was accepted for Permuted Press's reprint anthology Best New Tales of the Apocalypse. That was my first real introduction to Permuted, and I started hanging out on their forums. From there I saw a call for stories for one of Dr. Pus's anthologies for Library of the Living Dead- this would have been for Zombology II- and I figured I'd send something in, a story I'd had sitting around forever that I just couldn't sell. It was called "Ashes to Ashes, Pixie Dust to Pixie Dust," and it was about zombie fairies. It was the sort of bizarro thing I didn't think anyone but myself would actually like, but Dr. Pus loved it. He started do a lot more anthologies after that, and I submitted something to almost every one. Then he decided to start up the Library of Horror imprint for horror that wasn't specifically about zombies, and I thought that since he liked everything else I'd sent him so far it wouldn't hurt to see if he was interested in The Apocalypse Shift. He apparently loved that, too.

How long did it take you to write The Apocalypse Shift?

Depends on how you think of it. I originally came up with the idea in 2003, but at that point I wasn't thinking of it as a novel. It was just the novelette. When I wrote it I had a blast, and I thought there was a lot more I could do with it. So I started tinkering with the idea of making it a series of short stories. I wrote another one, "The Power Pastry," and that one ended up selling before "The All-Night, One-Stop Apocalypse Shop" did. After those two I set it aside for a while, but the idea of making a novel had crept into my head. I jotted down a good portion of the first chapter in… I'm not sure, maybe 2005? But it got pushed aside again in favor of other things. Still, I absolutely loved the idea and always intended to go back to it. Finally, in 2008, I decided that if I wanted to eventually make a living at writing then I was going to need a new novel. I'd written some more experimental novels at that time, but I wanted one that people could jump right into. I remembered how much I loved The Apocalypse Shift and go back into it. I did maybe two or three chapters and then got sidetracked again. When I picked it back up and finally got serious about it, the rest of the book came together in less than two months. A very herky-jerky way to write, I guess, but that's just how it works with me. I get distracted easily.

How do you write? Do you use outlines, notecards, wing it, employ some other technique? How many drafts did you go through?

Most of the time I'm completely a "wing it" sort of author. I start out with a basic idea, maybe some simple thoughts on the characters, and then I just start going. I never know how it's going to turn out before I start. For me that's part of the fun with writing, that I get to find out what's happening at only a slightly faster pace than the reader. The deeper I get into my Apocalypse Shift universe, however, the more I find that approach not working so well anymore. I've started to keep a detailed "bible" of the universe so I can get all the details right, and it included everything from timelines to the characters' eye colors to maps of the Hill. And I've got a very rough outline of where I intend to go with the stories, as the geek in me wants it all to add up in the end with lots of clues along the way. So I think my writing style is evolving.

When I was in college I worked at a convenience store called the Cozy Corner. We had some interesting characters come in, but they mostly were obsessed with lottery tickets. Have you ever worked in a place like OneStop?

Absolutely. The entire series is based around a year I spent working the graveyard shift at a 7-11 in a rough section of a major city. It's the worst job I've ever had, but as time went on I looked back at it with a certain fondness simply because it was so damned interesting. This was a part of the city that was so bad that the store never ever got robbed, simply because the cops were already there busting somebody nearby for something or other. On the south side of the store was a crack house. On the east and west sides there were a pair of bars called the Snake Pit and the Netherworld. A few blocks to the north was the major street you went to if you were looking for drugs or prostitutes. The city was trying to clean the neighborhood up when I left, but while I was there it was crazy. I could tell a lot of stories about that place. I eventually thought to myself that it was so nuts that things like vampires or werewolves or zombies could have walked in and they would have been no more strange than anything else that happened there. And that's where the whole idea for the Apocalypse Shift came into being.

How did you come up with some of your more outrageous minor characters? Flying armadillo demons, rats with tentacled faces, biker mad scientists and violent gangs of were-rabbits aren't very common.

In the very first Apocalypse Shift story, a lot of the minor characters, and even one or two of the major ones, were based on actual people I remembered from the real store. Some of them still are, and I also base some on other customers from other places I've worked, as I've worked in the service industry for a long time. With my more recent stuff like the novel, though, the minor characters come more from a combination of customer archetypes- I mean, anyone who has worked in the service industry long enough has run into that one person who always comes in and pays with fricking pennies- with a lot of the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy I read. I guess I just run into a point where I say, "Okay, I need something here. What archetypes can I mash together in a combination I haven't seen before?" If the idea makes me laugh out loud as soon as I think of it, then it might just work.

How did you manage to keep track of all the weirdness while you were writing?

It did get tough. That's part of the reason I had to create that aforementioned "bible." The twelve artifacts that everyone chases after through the whole book were a pain in the butt all by themselves, and there's a whole section in the bible about where exactly each artifact is at every single moment of the final battle in the novel. I had to revise certain sections over and over when I realized that, for example, a naked mad scientist running barefoot through the city streets would need a little more time to get from the bar to the OneStop. The details became very important, because I'm a nerd like that. I know that if I were reading this I would latch on to all the bizarre little details that make up the world, so I would have to assume that others would do that, too.

Some of your other characters seem very familiar, two in particular. I take it you were influenced as a kid by Sesame Street and the miniseries of Stephen King's It?

My mom has a funny story about me and Sesame Street. She says that one night when I was very small she was walking past my room and heard a strange noise from inside. She peeked her head in and found me doing an impression of the Count in my sleep. So yeah, Sesame Street was a big one for me. I don't really want to give that part away to anyone who hasn't read the book yet, as it seems to be the part so far that most people get the biggest laugh from, but I do love the Count. It occurred to me that, being a vampire, someone like him could definitely have a home on the Hill but would be looked at very differently thanks to his, um, "idiosyncrasies."

As for It, I'm a gigantic fan of Stephen King. If not for him I wouldn't be a writer. I started reading him when I was twelve and more than any other writer he has been the one that drove my imagination. The character you are talking about in The Apocalypse Shift wasn't originally intended to be a parody of anything from It. That character was first introduced as a completely separate joke in "The Power Pastry." When I got to this scene you are talking about, however, I needed for the young character watching to see something just incredibly bizarre, something that would warp him for the rest of his life. A clown demon and an elven hooker seemed like they would work just fine. And I since I had a clown here, I simply couldn't help throwing in an It joke. I guess it was sort of a way of saying "I love you, Stephen, and thank you!"

You have to be a fan of Clerks. Dante or Randal?

I think there's a part of every service industry employee that wishes they could be Randal, that guy who says what he really thinks about the people around him no matter how inappropriate it might be. But I've always identified much closer with Dante. I suppose that's not really a good thing, since he lets everyone walk all over him, but it's like he's trying to suffer all the crap around him with dignity. He fails miserably, but at least he tries.

Is the Hill based on any real section of city you've been in?

Yep, but you're not going to get me to tell you which city or section. I've put a lot of clues in, though. The names of most major locations and places have been changed, mostly so I don't have anyone eventually trying to sue me or something, but the layout of my fictional Hill is almost exactly like the real one. If someone were to discover which city and neighborhood it's based on, they could go there and find Leechman and Senator Parks exactly where I described them. They might even find the OneStop, although I hear that the 7-11 I based it on is closed down now. All the street names are even the same. I only took a few liberties with geography when the story called for it.

Have you ever managed to solve a Rubik's Cube?

I don't think so, but the big Rubik's Cube craze was when I was pretty small. I was more fascinated with how the things worked than I was with solving them. I've recently seen them in stores again, and I've been tempted to pick one up just because of the importance of the one in the novel, but those things are going for like ten dollars now. I just can't make myself pay that much for a multi-colored cube that doesn't even change reality. If it did change reality when you solved it, then I might put up the cash.

Whore yourself out like an elven hooker. What are you working on now?

This year has been really productive for me, so I've got a lot of things coming out. I've got a lot of stories coming out in various anthologies for Library of the Living Dead/Library of Horror, including Horrorology, Zombology III, and Scroll of Anubis to name just a few. I've also got a story coming up in the anthology Things We Are Not, which should be available any day now. This is an antho of GLBT themed sci-fi stories, and from what I've seen of it so far I think it is going to be phenomenal. I really suggest that people check it out. As far as novels, I've got several I'm working on at the same time in my short-attention-span fashion. One I hope to have out early next year is The Reanimation of Edward Schuett, which is my attempt at a more serious novel. It takes place fifty years after the zombie apocalypse and chronicles the story of a man who came back from being a zombie, and what philosophical implications that would have on the world. Also, in January 2011 the Crucible, an industrial arts group based in Oakland, will be doing an opera based on my short story "Dea Ex Machina." It will be part of their Fire Opera series, which from what I've seen of clips on YouTube, are truly fantastic spectacles. I'm really excited about this one, and with any luck I'll have the original story available in a new edition before the opera is performed.

Any plans on another Apocalypse Shift book?

Definitely. As I wrote this one I saw very clearly several events that would happen in the future of these characters. And for every funny detail I put in, I came up with a whole backstory in my head to explain why it was there. So there will not only be more books but also more stories. The books will bring these characters forward, and over time expose a larger story arc that I hinted at a few times in this book. I intend for the series to be maybe five or six books, because I have a very definite plan for the last two books. The stories will then fill in background, and possibly give us more information on many of the side characters. I've already written two of them, and they will be appearing soon in a pair of Library anthologies. The anthology Zombie Feary Tales will feature my story "Abomination in Bootz," which focuses on the second shift clerk Kelly and shows where Caleb got one of the artifacts. The other story "And the Streets Will Run Red With the Blood of Bunnies," will appear in War Wolves, and it will show both how Gloria originally met the Senator Park Lunatics and just why everyone is so damned scared of were-bunnies. After that, who knows. I've created a giant playground with the Apocalypse Shift, and I have every intention on continuing to play in it.

#24 of 2009: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

2009-10-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest things about reviewing Murakami’s work after reading it is finding a way to quantify and categorize the story into something coherent.

Let me just say this - I read it, all six hundred plus pages, and I liked it quite a bit. Still, I came off with the impression that I missed some things, which isn’t all that unusual seeing as that’s how every one of my post-read reactions has gone down with him.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is about, amongst other things, a missing cat, a missing wife, a story-within-a-story about Japan’s creation of and involvement in Manchukuo, psychics, psychic prostitutes, morbid high school girls, a vaguely creepy scholar-cum-politician and a bird (species unknown) that has a call that sounds much like the winding of a spring.

There are also multiple references to Cutty Sark Scotch whisky, for really no reason I could fathom.

A fan of Murakami’s other works will find a lot to love in this giant whopper of a novel. Those put off by the sheer vagueness of his plots, though, will be driven up the wall. There’s a lot going on in this novel, but much of it feels separate from its other parts. There’s a slight feeling of interconnectedness between the characters and settings, even over large spans of chronological time, but there isn’t much in the narrative to back this up. The end result is a feeling of pieces of story floating alongside each other, nearly touching but never quite able. Which isn’t to say this is a bad book, or a book not worth reading. Really, quite the contrary. It’s a great book, a lot of fun to read, and the pages go by quickly without bogging readers down.

The trick to enjoying Murakami lies in the old adage “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” That really is the key to picking up and getting the most out of his books. There’s nothing ever concrete about them. Most of his plots can be boiled down to this short summary - A man, a completely average, somewhat slackerish man, meets some other people, goes some places, a ton of weird things happen and he comes back home. The end. Oh, and there will be references to jazz music, women’s ears (don’t ask) and brands of alcohol.

Don’t expect a plot that defines and explains everything and you should be all right. The Wind-Up Bird isn’t any different in structure than any of his other books (with the exception of South of the Border, West of the sun, which I loathed and blogged about elsewhere when I first read it last year or the year before), and isn’t about to go off giving readers concrete explanations about why things happen the way they do. They just happen. It’s all very organic and arty, I suppose, but for those who enjoy tangible stories with dramatic conclusions it’s going to be annoying.

It worked well enough for me.

3/5

And now on to a complete change of pace. I’ve managed to amass quite a pile of horror novels (focusing on zombies in particular), and I’ll be taking a run at those now that I’ve got two Must Reads out of the way. It’s been too long since I read a brand new horror novel and I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in them.

#23 of 2009: White Noise by Don DeLillo

2009-09-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

There exists, in my mind at least, a list of Must Read Novels that I’ve been attempting to whittle my way through. Perhaps I have mentioned this before.

The List is comprised of much-talked-about books from several countries, spanning several genres. Most of them, however, are planted squarely in the “literary fiction” category. Pynchon. Wallace. DeLillo. These are the names I have seen repeated on book lists all over the internet, interspersed with Murakami, Danieliewski and Stephenson.

This year I decided I would attempt to tackle as many as I could.

I just finished White Noise and I’m not even sure what to say about it. I’m not even sure what I read, or more precisely, what I took away from it. There’s so much to digest and at the same time it feels to me like I read three hundred plus pages of nearly nothing.

Let me get a few things out of the way. There were some points to the book that I just did not like. First and most important of these was the lack of individual voice. Everyone in this novel is a philosopher, despite most of them not fitting the type. Jack, our narrator, is a university professor, the Dean of Hitler Studies, which makes his long-winded musings somewhat believable. Murray, a colleague, is likewise understandably deep. However, even Jack’s children, some of whom are very young, have paragraph upon paragraph of musings on all manner of subjects. So does his fourth wife, and even his three ex-wives (when they make their cameos) are members of the Deep Thoughts Club.

What is the meaning of that? Is there a meaning at all? Are these people all, by chance, exceptional human beings?

My second point is slightly related to the first. What is the purpose of all of the ex-wives and ex-husbands, the children of confusing parentage and the now-you-see-them, now-they’re-gone appearances by loves from the past? Was there a point to cobbling together such a motley and difficult to remember family tree? Why all the former wives in the intelligence community? Does Jack have a spy fetish? Does he secretly harbor sexual fantasies of female James Bonds? Does this mean anything at all, or are they just minor red herrings thrown in the middle of the story to throw less worthy readers off the trail of the Real Underlying Message?

I don’t know, and I guess that’s the whole point of my having read White Noise. I’m not the target audience for this book. I honestly, truly and without sarcasm, don’t believe I’m intelligent enough for this book. If there’s a bigger picture at work here, it sailed straight over my head, which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the book at all. It was interesting, but in the end all I took from it was confusion.

2/5, possibly because of my own intellectual bankruptcy.

It Appears I've Become Sidetracked

2009-08-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

I’d been meaning to write full blog posts for every book I read this past month, but between registering for classes, buying supplies, joining groups and writing critiques I fell behind somewhat. Here is the rundown of the last five books I read.

#18 of 2009: On Writing by Stephen King

Famous, famous book. Half biography and half a loose writing how-to, I found this very engaging but of little use to someone wanting to learn the craft. Like Bird by Bird and Forest for the Trees, it was more a piece of nonfiction on the lives and expectations of writers (with one writer in particular) than a book on the mechanics of plot, pacing or characterization. I liked it that way, though, as I’m fond of seeing things in the viewpoint of other writers.

4/5

#19 of 2009: Thirsty by M.T. Anderson

A YA vampire story with no glitter? A teenaged male protagonist? Seriously, you jest. Thirst is an delightfully unconventional book, set in a version of our world where vampires are known to the general public and are reviled as monsters. When Christopher begins mysteriously changing, he needs to find out the hows and whys fast, before his friends and family catch on and it’s too late.

4/5

#20 of 2009: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

There is something about Bradbury’s sentence structure that always throws me off, messes with my reading pace and sends me rereading lines and scratching my head. Despite the extra effort needed to read him, it’s always worth it. Zen is a collection of previously-published essays, some of which I had already read before (one in a genre writing book edited by J.N. Williamson, the other in the updated edition of Fahrenheit 451). The essays were written during different periods of Bradbury’s life and chronicle his growth as a writer. Again, a book that’s more bio than how-to, but if you absolutely require instructive writing with your memoirs, check out the chapter where he talks about his single-word list-making. It’s excellent advice.

4/5

#21 of 2009: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

I’ve been on a writing book bender, and Writing Down the Bones had been on my TBR pile for much too long. One of the most often-suggested writing books, Writing is yet another mix of bio and craft, this time with a spiritual slant. Goldberg is a Jewish convert to Buddhism, though she treats all religions with equal heft and importance. Focus on yourself and the potential in you, Goldberg says over and over, and you will have words and stories and poems flowing out of you so fast you can barely catch them all. Recommended for the inspiring tone and Goldberg’s hippie recollective passages. Very interesting.

4/5

#22 of 2009: Prodigal by Melanie Tem

Once upon a time the writer of this blog was an impressionable young girl. This time period happened to be the early Nineties, when Dell was publishing bizarre horror novels with their Abyss imprint. Blog author grew up, nearly drowned under a wave of nostalgia and bought a handful of Abyss books at used shops and off Amazon. Prodigal is the first one to be reread after a dozen plus years. Tem is an excellent author but Prodigal feels like a first effort. Not surprising, because it was Tem’s first novel. A bit rough around the edges, it still packs a punch. Enjoyed.

3/5

Coming up now on the second half of Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I just started the Dylarama section this morning. A review will be up as soon as the book is finished, but with the semester starting and my own projects taking up more of my time (a rough draft to rewrite, another book going online) the pace will be understandably slower.

#17 of 2009: How to Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan

2009-07-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot to like in this little book put out by Writers Digest Books in 1990. Part of the Genre Writing Series, Nolan (writer of the acclaimed Logan’s Run series, amongst other things) brings to the table the concepts of theme, dialogue, setting, mood and imagery in the writing of both short and long form horror tales.

The book is written in a friendly, personable style, full of quotes from the author’s own works and those of other famous tales. One chapter is devoted to opening paragraphs meant to hook readers and keep them from putting a novel down, and Nolan uses four full pages of examples to illustrate his points.

In yet another chapter, Nolan reprints his short story “The Pool,” a tale about a young woman and her new boyfriend who find themselves facing an evil entity that resides underwater. In between paragraphs, Nolan deconstructs the story into its individual points, illustrating what techniques he uses and why they work so well.

At a hundred and forty pages, this is a quick read, though remaining chock full of valuable information and advice that has and will continue to stand the test of time. The basic concepts of polished writing will never change, though the markets and players involved continue to flip and rotate as time moves on. For this reason, the listings of publishers may prove to be useless (especially for the small press magazines, which tend to appear and go under at short intervals over the years), but the essential reading lists and appendix of anthologies are still worth looking into.

How to Write Horror Fiction has sadly been out of print for many years, though there are still used copies to be had at decent prices through Amazon’s affiliate merchants.

4/5

#16 of 2009: Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui

2009-07-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

I have to preface this review by admitting something very important - I am a fan of anime auteur Satoshi Kon. I have been since first seeing his feature film Perfect Blue ten or more years ago. Millennium Actress is quite possibly one of my favorite films ever. I’ve seen all of his films, every episode of his television series Paranoia Agent and even the omnibus film Memories, of which one episode, Magnetic Rose, was scripted by Kon.

I am also a fan of Japanese literature. If I can find it affordably, I’ll add any piece of Japanese fiction to my growing library. Some of my favorite authors, Kirino, Miyabe, Yamada, Takahashi, I found through blind Amazon searches and “If you’re a fan of X, try Y” promotions.

Lately I’ve been on a reading kick that could be boiled down to “the stranger, the better.” Metafiction, epistolary narratives, retellings of classic tales, hazily defined science fiction. I like to believe that by broadening my choices in pleasure reading I may also be able to broaden my intellect. Who knows if this is true or not, but I follow the concept like it’s my own personal religion. Expand your ideas, expand your brain.

When I found out, several months ago, that the novel Satoshi Kon based his most recent film on was finally going to be published in English, a mere sixteen years after its original Japanese debut, I was beyond ecstatic. It’s not often that both a literary-based film and its inspiration are translated from Japanese into English. A lot of books are left out of the loop, and the ones that do end up published more often than not take forever to be translated.

Then something not completely unusual, but always infuriating, happened. The book was being published in Europe only, by a UK publisher. I’m not sure why this happens so frequently, but often a book that is translated from Japanese into English will only come out in Europe. It seems that some publishing houses operate on one side of the Atlantic only, and occasionally when the rights are snatched up on one side the publishers on the other all give it a pass. Taichi Yamada, for example, is an author whose works are generally more available in Europe. Only one of his novels, Strangers, was published in the United States. It was picked up by Vertical, a niche publisher of Japanese novels, comics and nonfiction. His other two books were published only by London publisher Faber & Faber.

Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel Paprika seems to have suffered the same fate. Published only by UK publisher Alma Books, Paprika is not an easy book to come by. I spent twenty dollars buying it from an eBay merchant with a book warehouse in the UK. It took some time for it to get here, but the money and the wait was well worth it.

Paprika is a hard novel to describe, seeing that it splits its time between rigid Japanese social constructs and the anything goes logic of dreams. Set in an indiscriminate present day, the novel, though written in the third person, focuses mainly on Atusko Chiba, psychiatrist and clinician for the Institute for Psychiatric Research. Chiba uses new technological developments, made possible by the mechanical genius of coworker Kosaku Tokita, to enter patients’ dreams and interact with them in the realm where their psychological issues manifest and grow stronger. In analyzing and manipulating dreams, Chiba and her patients (who see her as her alter ego Paprika, a younger, freckled version of herself) are able to work through the issues that cause such things as depression, schizophrenia and nervous breakdowns. This must be done in extreme secrecy, however, because using the new devices outside of the Institute is not exactly legal, and Paprika’s clientele are loath to be found out by the public. Hence, the use of Chiba’s second identity is of the utmost importance.

When Tokita creates a newer, stronger wireless device called the DC Mini, meant to more effectively plumb the depths of patients’ dreams, neither he nor Chiba, nor any of their colleagues or the members of high society Paprika has been secretly treating, are prepared for the consequences. Prolonged exposure to these devices, which were not engineered with any protective measures in place, can cause dream and reality to begin merging, and one person’s dreams can bleed into another.

And now, someone has stolen the DC Minis.

Having seen the film before reading the novel, I have to say I was quite surprised by how faithfully in places the book was recreated. There were the usual blendings of characters and unfortunate omitting of others, but the soul of the narrative remained completely intact. Reading the book felt like experiencing an enhanced version of the film, a Director’s Cut with hours of extra footage. It rounded out the story and made it feel more complete, and explained the difficult mapping of character relationships, office politics and dream objects much better than a film ever could. Reading the novel, with all of its graphic sexuality and fierce emotion, was like being privy to the scenes between scenes.

I can’t focus on the plot for fear that I’ll accidentally give something away, but suffice it to say that Paprika is amazing, just as fresh and impressive in book form as it was as an animated film, and every penny spent tracking down a copy is worth it.

5/5

#15 of 2009: Fangland by John Marks

2009-07-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has been following me on Twitter or Facebook is already well aware of my relationship with John Marks' novel Fangland. They already know about how I picked it up and put it back down four or more times, moving on to read something more my style before dutifully returning and slogging through another fifty pages only to put it back down and repeat the entire process.

In the time it took me to read Fangland I also read Liquor, The Gum Thief, In Search of a Distant Voice and I LOVE LORD BUDDHA.

This isn’t to say that Fangland is without merit. It just means that it continuously failed to capture my attention long enough to complete it, and at just under four hundred pages that’s a bit strange.

But first, a run down of the plot. Fangland is a Dracula analog, a modern day retelling of the classic story in which England has been replaced by paranoid, skittish post -9/11 New York City and where the heroes are no longer solicitors and other members of British high society but the cast and crew of The Hour, yet another analog, this time of the news program 60 Minutes. Many of these characters are based in part or wholly off of Stoker’s characters, though their ages, genders and origins are different.

Evangeline Harker (a more heavy-handed nod to the original) is an associate producer for The Hour, and is charged with traveling the world to scout out locations and subjects well-suited for the show. If she decides, while on location, that what she has seen will make a nice segment for the show, her green-lighting brings crews, equipment and newscaster to the scene for filming. If not, the segment is squashed and forgotten.

On one such occasion, Harker is sent to Romania to interview Ion Torgu, an old-world mob boss whose name has been whispered throughout eastern Europe but whose face has never been seen. While there, she runs into a young, blond woman named Clementine Spence, a religious missionary under a cloud of mystery, who, like Harker, was born in Texas. The women build a fragile travelling relationship, higher-rent versions of European backpackers, until Harker has found Torgu.

Something goes very, very wrong during the interview with her subject. Torgu, who appears well-mannered and civil, at least in the face of his reputation, is not what he appears to be. Harker goes missing after this exchange and is not seen from again for months, when she is found hiding amongst nuns in a country monastery, her personality very obviously changed.

In her absence, someone has been writing convincing emails from her accounts and has shipped back several tapes of nothing but an empty chair, the audio track garbled with what sounds like the whisperings of city names, some of which, like Nanking, are immediately recognizable due to the human atrocity they will forever be linked with.

There are several reasons, I believe, that I took so long to finish this novel. First, let me point out that this is, indeed, a vampire novel, though in comparison to many other works of this genre its emphasis is rather subdued. Most horror novels are printed by horror-friendly publishers, like Tor, DAW, Del Rey, etc. This is published by Penguin.

If you are not familiar with Penguin, let me explain briefly. This is a publisher that began in Europe in the 1930s with a vision of bringing quality writing to the masses for a low cost, to actually furnish literature at the price of a pack of cigarettes. It has come a long way in the ensuing decades, and now publishes mostly literary fiction. People whose works are put out by Penguin are generally already well-known and have been the recipients of critical or institutional acclaim.

In short, Penguin is known for being mostly high (read: literary) fiction. I’m sure there are exceptions, but for a work of horror to emerge with their orange and white logo on the spine it has to be something completely different than the glut of vampire-related works of other imprints sitting on bookstore shelves.

Different it is, in spades. Between the pacing and choice of vocabulary the book struck me as quite pretentious, and being the kind of person I am it, honestly, put me off a bit. Often I will use a blank, ruled notecard as a bookmark so I can take notes while I am reading. Some of the notes I jotted for Fangland include “This book screams ‘Not genre fiction - REAL LITERATURE!’ so loudly and so often it ends up becoming rather distracting,” “Lay off the five-dollar words, already,” and “I wish the plot would pick up a bit!”

Perhaps it’s me, but after seeing the word “paternoster” in reference to an old-style elevator (accurate as it may have been) and “gabardines” for trousers (still accurate), I rolled my eyes a bit. It’s not that these words, or any other, were inappropriately used. It just dawned on me, more and more, as I read that most, if not all, of the characters in Fangland live in a world of wealth and privilege and education that I do not share.

I am squarely middle-class, and these people absolutely are not. It’s a bit hard for me to get in their heads and see the world as they do, and if my past book reviews are to be believed (hint: they are), I have a very hard time visualizing as I read to begin with. Throw in a bunch of high-earning New Yorkers and my brain hits the brakes hard enough to leave skids.

Another problem I have with Fangland is its format. It is, like Dracula before it, an epistolary work, my third for the summer. This time, the narrative is woven by Evangeline Harker’s personal notes, Austen Trotta’s (a Mike Wallace/Abraham Van Helsing analog) journal, as pressed upon him to write by his therapist, emails between Stimson Beevers, production assistant (and handy Renfield clone) first to someone he believes to be Harker and later to Torgu, and the very opening and ending of the novel are penned by James O’Malley, senior VP for Business Affairs for Omni News and Entertainment, The Hour’s parent company. All of these are written in separate fonts for easy recognition.

However, there is another narrative in the novel that I do not understand. Julia Barnes, former Weather Underground explosives agent turned video editor and Sally Benchborn, producer and Civil War re-enactor, are the focal point of several chapters that are written in the third-person by author unknown. I suppose we can attribute it to James O’Malley, though how he manages to get into Julia’s head and describe her thoughts is impossible and both confused and irritated me throughout her chapters. Marks makes no effort to explain how James O’Malley, if Julia and Sally’s chapters truly are from his detached point of view, could come to know Julia’s past history or the goings on of her mind.

Fangland is a slow burn of a book, the first third of the work being the setup and initial horror of Harker’s Romanian excursion and transformation. It’s not easy to read if you’re used to the racing-out-of-the-gates feel of most horror genre works. That is the main problem with Fangland. It’s not a horror novel but a piece of literary fiction, aiming to work on multiple levels, that has shrouded itself in a vampire’s high-collared cloak. Vying with the horror of the supernatural are multiple references to September 11, terrorism, the nature of human atrocities and the cut-throat (sometimes literally) business of working in television news.

I found myself picking up this book and marveling at its amazing paperback cover (a New York skyline underneath an enormous full moon, accented with bats in flight and one drop of spattered blood), only to find myself slightly disappointed that the vampire element, when touched upon, was strange and distorted. Somewhere in this narrative of backbiting and paranoia is a most unusual vampire, with a set of bizarre physical circumstances, that fails to bring much fear once on American soil.

2/5

#14 of 2009: I LOVE LORD BUDDHA by Hilllary Raphael

2009-07-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you combine sex, drugs, techno, bar hostessing, manga and a warped, perverted revisioning of Buddhism?

Apparently you get I LOVE LORD BUDDHA, Hillary Raphael’s avant-garde, postmodernist first novel.

Heather Peterson, a native of New York, using her adopted name HIYOKO, leads a group of foreign-born bar hostesses in Tokyo to murder their clients and commit suicide en masse, all in the name of enlightenment. But how did she get to that point, and how did she amass so many followers?

Short answer, by being a whore. Long answer? It takes nearly 200 pages to get there, but all signs point to being a charismatic whore. There’s a difference, you see.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, though.

Heather Peterson, A.K.A. Tiffany (her hostess name), Spiky (due to her short, theatrical blonde hair) and HIYOKO (her Neo-Geisha name), starts off as a somewhat subpar hostess. She doesn’t empty ashtrays, take drink orders or wear a skirt. But she’s an excellent conversationalist, very seductive and gorgeous in a plastic-and-comic-book way. Because of this, she never loses her job, and winds up one of Tokyo’s best foreign-born hostesses, with lovers and admirers in all facets of Japanese society.

“Tiffany” changes her name, at least outside of the bar in Neo-Geisha capacity, to HIYOKO, and begins reworking Buddhist philosophy into what she deems a “new-new religion,” one of vehement anti-consumerism, the use of sex and narcotics a straight path to what are called “Limit” experiences. The Neo-Geisha are all beautiful women, courtesans of foreign birth, who entertain and arouse the gentlemen that come to their bars. And now they will save the world through their manga, proselytizing, homicidal actions and deaths.

I LOVE LORD BUDDHA is the second epistolary novel I have read this summer. The events depicted take place in late 1996 and early 1997, though the narrative does not begin until after the mass murder and suicide have been in the news and the bodies buried. Because of this, news articles, eye witness accounts, personal letters and haiku are used to shed light on the Organization, as well as the main narrative thread created by one of HIYOKO’s cousins, gathering information in order to publish an academic paper on the massacre.

Stylistically, the novel is very strange. There are few, if any, capitalizations in the narrative. All sentences begin with the lowercase, though punctuation is used. Because of this, I sometimes had difficulty differentiating between a long sentence and a new sentence while reading at a fast clip. Dialogue is also atypical, with several different styles being utilized. In places, dialogue will be denoted with quotations for one character and greater-than and less-than symbols for another, usually HIYOKO. In other instances, dialogue will be listed with a name or alphabetic character followed by a colon in a list style not unlike interrogation records.

I’ll come out and admit it. I love bizarre fiction, either in subject matter or format. I LOVE LORD BUDDHA was both, a strange tale part AUM, part techno, part comic book, all pornographic, with the look and feel of something I’d never seen before. It was an interesting read, for sure, and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in Japan, if only for the bizarro characters living and dying within its pages.

4/5

#13 of 2009: In Search of a Distant Voice by Yamada Taichi

2009-06-24T21:06:00.000-07:00

Nobody does crushing loneliness and uncertainty like the Japanese, and of those novelists one of the very best is Yamada Taichi. It’s a real shame his body of work has gone largely untranslated, and an even bigger shame that only one of his three novels in English has received a wide release.

Like his previous works, In Search of a Distant voice is about the loneliness that inhabits even the busiest city-dweller, the emptiness at the bottom of the soul that exists possibly in greater quantities when the bearer is entrenched firmly in city life. There’s a combination of hopelessness and nonchalance about the whole thing that is decidedly Japanese. This mix of emotions and reactions could quite possibly exist nowhere else on the planet.

Kasama Tsuneo is twenty-nine and about to get married to a woman he met through his boss. It’s an arranged marriage, loveless and sexless and as formal as formality gets. As an immigrations officer, Tsuneo spends most of his time at work and doesn’t have much opportunity to meet women, so having his boss set him up seems a stroke of luck.

In the predawn hours of what would normally be an average morning, Tsuneo participates in a raid on a residence full of illegal Indonesian residents. One man slips out a window and into a neighboring graveyard. Tsuneo corners the man and is about to arrest him when he is suddenly struck by a wave of emotion that culminates in a body-shaking orgasm. Humiliated and terrified, Tsuneo lets the man escape.

In the days that follow Tsuneo is haunted by a feminine voice asking who and where he is. He responds, sometimes audibly, sometimes internally, until the stress of it all threatens a complete nervous breakdown. Finally, in exchange for an arrangement to meet face-to-face, Tsuneo tells the woman about his time in America in his early twenties, and about a man he once knew named Eric.

Anyone who’s read either of Yamada’s previous works, Strangers and I Haven’t Dreamed of Flying For a While, will know what they’re getting into. I won’t spoil the plot any further, but if you’ve read one Yamada ending you will definitely have a heads up on what’s coming. For anyone else, rid yourself of expectations and you may enjoy it. Perhaps even reading Strangers first would be advisable, as it’s his strongest English work to date.

Yamada’s not for everyone, but his books are incredibly quick, accessible reads. A few hours spent with his characters are easily worth the less than two hundred pages that encompass In Search of a Distant Voice.

3/5

#12 of 2009: The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

2009-06-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

I never thought I’d appreciate so much a novel that reminds me of the hellish year I spent working at Staples. I’d just dropped out of college, I had a somewhat older and incredibly controlling loser boyfriend and most of my ambitions around this time seem to have dropped off like the acquaintances of someone bound for the Witness Relocation Program. It wasn’t the best of times for me.

Having read The Gum Thief, I’m only now starting to suspect that it’s never the best of times for anybody, so long as they’re clothed in that red button-down, slaving away at a Staples somewhere.

Roger is a loser. He’s blown it big time, even before coming to work at Staples. While on his lunch breaks, he writes in a notebook, alternating between his own thoughts and pretending to be Bethany, his younger, Goth-obsessed coworker. What Roger really wants is to write Glove Pond, the novel that’s been circulating inside his mind for years, but he satiates his need to write by pretending to be a girl he sees daily but has never spoken to.

The Gum Thief is an epistolary novel, a narrative written completely in the style of personal or interpersonal communications. It joins the ranks of such books as Dracula, Fangland, The Feverhead and The Color Purple.

What starts out as just Roger’s eccentricity becomes more complex as Bethany finds the notebook and writes her own entries. From there, Roger is given the push he needs to begin putting his novel on paper, and Bethany’s mother Dee Dee, a high school classmate of Roger’s, begins writing letters as well. What started as the releasing of one strange man’s pressure valve takes on a life and gravity of its own as other Staples employees and even Roger’s ex wife begin to communicate, though not always in the notebook. There are letters, FedExes and notes slipped through mail slots galore, not to mention communications in the form of emails and manuscript critiques.

Quirky, interesting and definitely worth a read for anyone who’s ever worked a shitty job.

4/5

#11 of 2009: Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite

2009-06-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of Poppy growing up. Back then, it was all extremely visceral horror that was sometimes referred to as “splatterpunk.” Vampires, ghosts, cannibals and serial killers with HIV, it was all rather grotesque and very, very dark.

I loved it. It influenced me quite a bit, and what pieces remain from my early writing portfolio show this rather shamelessly and explicitly. During my teenage years and through my vampire fiction phase, nobody influenced me more than she did, including Anne Rice and all the bizarre, fucked up authors who penned books in the Dell Abyss line. Nobody.

Somewhere along the line, young, cult horror phenom Poppy Z. Brite grew up. And, eventually, so did I. As I grew older, I became a bit of a gourmand, and I also lost some of my interest in horror. Not all of it, mind you. I’d like to think my horizons just broadened a bit, allowing me to include all manner of fiction (even “serious literature,” to my initial chagrin) on my reading lists.

It was with a bit of surprise that I found out a few years ago that Poppy Z. Brite had been writing books about New Orleans chefs. The New Orleans part didn’t shock me, nor did the sexual orientation of her characters, but leaving horror behind? I didn’t really want to believe it at first, and for several years I put off her Liquor novels, reading her older works or books by other authors. I wanted to go back and see if I was affected by the earlier horror novels as much as I was the first time I read them.

One thing I’ve found out over the past year is that nostalgia is an exceptionally powerful emotion, and that most things are stronger when viewed through the smoky looking-glass of time. Nothing I’ve gone back and reread has been as joyous a read for me as the first time I picked it up as a teen. Nothing. Some have come close and still stand up as powerful stories, but as I’ve aged the things that grip my heart and move me have changed a bit. I’ve come to accept this as a hard fact, and despite knowing that the magic won’t be as powerful or may not even be there at all, I’m still going to go back and reread some of the things I loved that influenced me. I’m just not going to have lofty ideas about reconnecting with the books in the way I had before.

Sometimes, though, you just need to move forward. Pick up new books you haven’t read, give new authors a chance. In this case, give an old friend a shot at something new. And I did.

Liquor is a tribute to food that borders on sexual fetishism. I love it. I read most of it in one day, unwilling to put it down before I got to the last page.

Rickey and G-man are lovers, have been best friends since they were in the fourth grade and have been working in the kitchens of New Orleans restaurants since they were fifteen. Bouncing around from employer to employer (not always due to their own planning), they grow tired of working for other people. They want freedom, control over their own culinary creations and a bit of money. Being poor and working sixteen hours a day six days a week for some rich asshole is no fun indeed.

Rickey is struck with an idea while drinking in the park. Dishes made with alcohol. A whole restaurant based on the concept of alcohol in food. In a city like New Orleans, where natives and tourists alike cruise the margarita stands, where people are encouraged to drink all they can, an idea like this could be their golden ticket.

But first, Rickey and G-man have to straighten out their own issues, shake off the people dragging them down and find the capital to make their dream come true, and it won’t be easy.

I will be tracking down the two sequels, Prime and Soul Kitchen, this summer. A previously published prequel of sorts, The Value of X, is a bit pricier and harder to obtain, but I will be tracking that down at some point as well.

5/5

#10 of 2009: Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland

2009-06-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

The best thing about Douglas Coupland is his ability to bring the mundane facets of pop culture, the brand names and logos and catchy jingles, to the forefront of our consciousnesses. How many people actually think about hair care products, plastic toys, pet food or clothes? I mean, how many think about them in great detail, trying to figure out where these things fit into the great mosaic of North American life?

Not many, I would imagine. That’s part of advertising and pop culture’s success, the ability to worm their way into life and stand stock-still in the background like Scooby and Shaggy in rickety suits of armor. There, but not visible, at least not to the people with so much going on in their lives already.

Tyler is ambitious, the son of an aging hippy, a Regan youth with a bathroom full of incredibly specific hair-care products and a collection of globes in his bedroom. It is the early Nineties, and he and his girlfriend spend their days either at school or hanging out in a diner in their Pacific Northwest town, a semi-rural area known for its chemical-processing plants (contracted out to the government, no less) and half-dead shopping mall.

Lancaster, Tyler’s hometown, is where yuppies lay down to die.

Tyler wants to work for Bechtol. Tyler sells imitations of name brand items in order to save up enough money to buy a car and go backpacking across Europe. It is right after his return from his vacation that our story begins.

Watch Tyler interact with his Mother and siblings, deal with his drunken lout of an ex-stepfather, screw up his personal dealings, reconnect with his ambition, experience loneliness for the first time in his adult life and attempt to salvage his future, all against the backdrop of the hyper-comsumptive pre-Y2K years! It’s like gazing upon a psychedelic ant farm blown up into human-sized proportions.

I’ll be honest. To me, this was not as endearing as Microserfs, nor as slick and funny as JPod. I just didn’t find myself as emotionally involved in the characters’ lives. I didn’t have as clear a mental picture of them. They were interesting, but in the same way the characters from 1990s night-time television were interesting. Watching them flirt and stir up drama and grow older and wiser was entertaining, but after an hour, after the credits for the episode came up, I didn’t spend much time thinking about them. At least, not until the next episode.

Not Coupland’s best work, but being Coupland still better than 90% of the books you’ll find in Barnes. A great way to spend a few days sprawled out on the couch, for sure, and the cover art is a minimalist feast for the eyes.

3/5

Max Barry's Machine Man

2009-06-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

I am a huge Max Barry fan. Completely unapologetic, too. The man’s got a wit so sharp it could slice diamonds, a knack for creating unique characters without crossing over to the side of ridiculous caricatures and nobody, seriously nobody, does love triangles and nerd romances quite like him.

I think it’s official now, after fifty-some installments, that we can now add “drives the experimental novel like he stole it” to a list of Barry’s accomplishments.

Barry’s no stranger to more typical means of literary promotion. He has a blog. He has a Twitter. Hell, he even links to NationStates, the international simulation game based off his novel Jennifer Government, on his website. Standard stuff, really, especially for an author in the twenty-first century with global appeal and readership.

What he’s gone and done now, though, is a bit different. Machine Man is a take on the Japanese cell phone novel, a work of (usually) short fiction published online in small bursts, generally written on and designed for the displays of handheld devices. They are immensely popular in the Land of the Rising Sun, and some have made the lucrative transition from digital copy to print edition.

Max Barry has done something similar, though not through cellular technology. He’s writing a page a day and publishing each one on his website. He writes the pages one at a time and they appear on the site and in subscribers’ email boxes in the early morning (at least where I am, in US Eastern). While the feed was still in its free beta stage you could also get your pages via Twitter, but after #43 (which is an amazing section of the novel, by the way) you have to be a paid subscriber in order to view the daily updates.

Machine Man is about one Dr. Charlie Neumann, research scientist for a shadowy company called Better Future. Charlie has an accident. Charlie loses a limb. Charlie becomes a prosthesis addict. That’s all I’m going to say, but rest assured the plot is standard Barry goodness. Don’t believe me? Scribe, Barry’s domestic publisher, bought print rights while the project was still in infancy.

Six ninety-five may seem like a steep price to pay for electronic media, especially of the non-music variety, but there’s no email I receive that’s as welcome as my morning Machine Man fix.

#9 of 2009: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

2009-06-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

I read for a variety of reasons. I read to enlighten myself, to pass the time, to be entertained, to fill up with ideas I would never ordinarily expose myself to with only my imagination at the helm. I read because each book has a fundamental idea behind it, an idea I can uncover page by page, an idea that reveals itself to me in a style particular to the author who penned it.

Sometimes I come away from a book feeling like I have not fully absorbed the concept behind it, or even worse, that the book had nothing but an empty core behind its story. Most of the time these are books that are written in a style that I really do not like, or they are books that I just downright hated but forced myself to finish. Tea From an Empty Cup is one such example.

Slaughterhouse-Five is very much a book that feels incomplete to me, though strangely enough it still worked. I didn’t hate it - to the contrary, I found it extremely enjoyable and rather delightful with its early postmodern eccentricity. It just felt extremely open-ended, as if someone came along and cracked a reasonably straightforward narrative open out in the weightlessness of space and let its contents lazily float away in all directions, drifting into nothingness.

I felt like I’d managed to retrieve some of those fragments, though without any idea of how they once fit together. It was as if they were randomly stacked into a sheaf of paper, bound and mailed to me in the guise of a complete novel.

I knew it wasn’t a complete story, and the author knew it too. But, since the rest of the words and pages were lost in a vast dark nothingness, we decided to pretend it’s all that was ever written, and we each pretended that we were none the wiser, though the other party may have had their suspicions.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Slaughterhouse-Five lacks what we might normally expect from a novel-length work of fiction, which is another nice way of saying that climax and denouement are completely absent. It is ultimately perfectly fine, though, because this is a novel that operates and succeeds on several levels. The only one it does not succeed on is the level of the standard format novel, which would require much more action and closure than Vonnegut ever delivers. It works as a piece of science fiction, and as an example of metafiction (oh, how it shines) and even as a piece of magical realist literature.

Either it doesn’t work as a plain novel, or I’ve failed my duty as a reader, which has been and always will be to comprehend a work on all intended levels. I’ve done that before, and I’m sure I’ll do it again, but with Slaughterhouse-Five I’m not sure if I did or not. The book is quick and written in a very simple but dated language. It’s impossible not to know immediately what time period in which it was written, which instantaneously endeared it to me. Unlike reading Gibson or Wallace, I didn’t need to make any mad grabs for my dictionary. Everything was right there on the page in quirky, lovable, easy to digest chunks.

But, aside from “War is ugly and pointless,” were there any other concrete ideas to be taken away? I don’t know. It could be possible that the only thing left after that were the stories of different ordinary people, their mostly mundane lives and slightly tragic deaths, and the moments they played out that could have easily gone on forever.

4/5

#8 of 2009: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins

2009-05-30T03:20:00.000-07:00

I initially bought this book at the urging of a friend of mine who swore up and down that it was the best book he’d read “in forever, it’s sick, seriously, go out and read this now.” Before I go any further, let me point out that he uses the word “sick” as a synonym for “awesome,“ and the word pops up in conversation with him rather frequently. For a moment I honestly believed the book was disgusting, depraved or just plain rude, before I realized what he actually meant.

As it turns out, the first time I attempted to read this novel my initial fears weren’t too far off. While not actually rendering me physically nauseous, there was something about this book that got on my nerves so much that, after fifty pages, I put it down and forgot about it for a few years. It could have been any number of things, really.

It could have been the fact that the book is narrated in second person perspective, like a Choose Your Own Adventure, which for some people is so highly distracting and dizzying that they avoid the particular format like the plague. You will really like this book if you are a narcissist, or like to fantasize about being someone else. In fact, if this is the case, you can feel yourself looking the book up on Amazon and purchasing it this very moment, paying for it with your own credit card. See? See how irritating that could become?

It could have been that the book deals in mid-90s stock exchange drama, a subject I could honestly care less about. I have somewhat of a distaste for hardcore white-collar dealings and this book is full of characters and terminology that, while I didn’t have difficulty understanding, I certainly wasn’t all that fascinated by.

It could also be the fact that the main character is a woman I would consider to be the perfect photo negative of myself. She’s career-driven, obsessed to be more accurate, concerned only with money and the stock index and the current going price of Fortune 500 shares. She’s a cultureless bitch in a Porche she hasn’t paid off yet, in clothes she hasn’t yet reimbursed her credit card for, living in an apartment she deems too small and low class for her that she’s desperate to move out of, banking her entire existence on getting into a place with a doorman and and a few hundred extra yards of space inside.

Oh, she’s just a treat, this prudish, squeaky voiced woman with her older, too sincere, rich-as-hell-but-unconcerned-with-money Christian boyfriend that she keeps around for no reason at all. Did I mention the boyfriend lives with Andre, a born-again macaque that was once one of the boldest jewel thieves in France? No?

I spent fifty pages inside the head of this woman, thanks to Robbins’ choice of narrative, and the whole time I was screaming to get out. She hates sex, everything is gross to the point where she blushes at the drop of a hat, she hates her Filipina background and her hippie parents, she hates not having money and the world laid at her feet and she hates the common people of Seattle. In addition to an overly nice but boring boyfriend and his pet monkey, her best friend is a 300 pound tarot reader named Q-Jo, and she hates being seen with Q-Jo in public because, oh yeah, the world hates fat people, especially fat people in purple turbans and other garish attire, so she keeps her best friend swept up under the proverbial rug in order to maintain her professional veneer.

I was rather amazed I got to page fifty, seeing as the whole time I just wanted to slap her. Or myself, seeing as I was supposed to be her this entire time. I felt pretty disgusted as I put it back on my shelf, relieved to find something a bit more enjoyable to spend my time on. And there that book sat, for two more years at least, until I picked it up again a few weeks ago.

I blame my recently-acquired interest in late twentieth and early twenty-first century humor fiction for sending me back to Half Asleep. Having read Barry and Coupland and Nielan over the last six months to a year, my attention turned towards Robbins again, a writer that numerous people have gushed to me over. Rather than buying another one of his books, or trying to find copies in the library (I love libraries but get a bit antsy over their rigid time restraints, due to my short attention span and habit of flitting back and forth between books) I decided to pick up and read Half Asleep. The whole way through. No more putting it off and leaving it shelved, telling myself I’d get around to actually completing it at a later date. Nope. Going to read it now.

And read it I did. I have to say that the second time is a charm for this one. It was so much easier this time around.

I found myself again rolling my eyes and feeling disgusted by Gwendolyn Mati and her obsession with emerging from the long Easter weekend triumphant over all of Wall Street and earning millions during an impending crash. That’s what this book is about at its core, a market on the brink of annihilation and a young, incompetent stock broker furiously trying to cover her possibly illegal (and most definitely amoral) investment strategies from both boss and client.

It’s also about philosophy, capitalism, African tribalism, sex, disease, space aliens, telepathy, hallucinogens and the arcane. It could also, if you stretch your imagination a tiny bit, be about love.

I started off wanting to beat the holy hell out of Gwen, just as I did last time, but pushing through this novel, page by page, I was able to witness her transformation from a completely self-obsessed, arrogant bitch to a woman who might have her heart in the right place even if she’s a bit on the narcissistic side. It was an amazing albeit snail-paced transformation, made all the better and worth waiting for by numerous encounters along the way that leave her humiliated and knocked down more than a few pegs. There are a few places where I had to hold my giggles in.

Is it possible to experience Schadenfreude against yourself? In this instance, I think so. And at the end, after I was flushed of all available derision, I actually felt a bit good for her.

4/5

#7 of 2009: The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner

2009-05-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I am caught in the grip of a nonfiction frenzy, usually focusing on a series of books with one theme running through them all. Last year, for a brief period, I was enamored with food journalism (The Zen of Fish is still one of my favorite nonfiction books, and probably always will be), picking up book after book on seafood and produce.

I’m guilty of doing this with fiction as well, buying up large quantities of a single author’s works (Barry, Gibson, Block and Wallace last year, Coupland this year), but it really seems to stand out when this happens with nonfiction. I think this is mostly the case because my nonfiction benders are fueled by topic and theme rather than a single author.

I have been dusting off my writing books as of late, straightening them out on the shelf to make room for new additions. Writing books are crucial to me, the tomes I turn to when I need advice, reassurance or examples of proper form. These are the books that most successfully help me aggregate my back brain for ideas, that illuminate the path ahead of me so that I don’t stumble completely and make a right ass out of myself when submitting manuscripts. They are my templates for style and substance, and while similar to one another there is not a single book in my collection that is not wholly unique.

I stumbled upon The Forest for the Trees while perusing the writing reference section of the local Barnes and Noble. The cover is absolutely brilliant, bright #2 yellow pencils slowly morphing into various trees where the sharpened graphite points ought to be. Flipping it over, I was also impressed by the collection of publication-submitted review blurbs. There are no overenthusiastic urgings by individual writers here, merely words of of praise by major journals and newspapers. Not overly minimalistic, but to the point. I liked it.

I also liked the fact that the author, Betsy Lerner, has run the gamut of bibliophilic employment, from a budding poet in an MFA program to an assistant editor working her way up the editorial chain at several major publishers to a literary agent. It’s much easier to take the advice, anecdotes and bad news (the whole industry is a crap shoot of timing, luck and talent, after all) when it’s coming from someone who has experienced the subject from multiple angles.

Inside, the book is divided into two main sections, Writing and Publishing. The first section, Writing, details the various motivations to write and different types of authors, which has garnered Lerner a bit of criticism, especially on peer-review sites like Amazon. It seems some authors, amateur and professional (though leaning more towards the amateur), do not appreciate being pigeonholed, even when it is done lovingly by a person who has spent years in the business. I don’t mind it. I found little bits of myself in each of the chapters, The Ambivalent Writer, The Natural, The Wicked Child, The Self-Promoter and The Neurotic. The only chapter I did not identify with directly, Touching Fire, is about substance abuse and mental illness, and I have had some small indirect contact with those types of people as well. Overall, I felt that Lerner explained her examples well and provided a great deal of feedback to each type of person she felt would benefit from her work. I didn’t for a moment find myself offended. Rather, I found myself full of new avenues to explore, mostly in the form of other writing-related books, as Lerner has a habit of citing other works in her examples.

The second part, Publishing, is broken down into the natural stages that a first-time writer will encounter and outlines what to expect with each one. There are six chapters, Making Contact: Seeking Agents and Publication, Rejection, What Editors Want, What Authors Want, The Book and Publication. Some of the information is common knowledge, or at least should be, but interspersed in with the advice that all authors should already be aware of (and aren’t always, judging by the personal stories of bad writer behavior) are insider details on editorial processes, book designing, publicity and the interpersonal relationships between the writers and the team of people that help them get their work into the public. It’s fascinating, really, and more than a bit humorous in places.

The Forest for the Trees reads much like Bird By Bird would if Anne Lamott were able to step back from her work and view the situation more objectively, though Lamott’s own work will always have a warm, welcoming spot on my bookshelf. Having the multiple-angle viewpoint helps quite a bit in getting the whole picture, rather than just the neurotic nail-biting writerly side. However, this is not really a book for someone who needs advice on how to write. The fact that you’re writing is just assumed, and it never goes into technical detail. For that, I would suggest the work of James Smith (if you have to pick just one, go for The Writer’s Little Helper, as he has the annoying habit of reusing exercises in multiple books) or James Scott Bell’s entries in the Writing Great Fiction series.

4/5

#6 of 2009: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

2009-05-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

I didn’t think it would take me so long to get to book number six for the year, seeing as how I sped through everything last year. This time around, though, I’m in the middle of revising a rough draft and I’m whittling away at my DVD collection along with reading novels.

For the longest time, while reading Microserfs, I got the feeling that it wasn’t as good a read as jPod. It took me much longer, and some of the concepts were outdated, but when I got to the end of it I came to the conclusion that it might, in its own way, be even better.

The book begins in late 1993 and runs until January of 1995, a period of time where I was slowly becoming more and more obsessed with technology. My fascinations were directed more at word processing, game playing and general screwing around rather than actually learning to code, which wouldn’t present itself to me until around 2000 and in such a poor fashion that I never really gave it my full attention. The characters in Microserfs, however, are fully immersed in the world of corporate coding farms and the Bill Gates deification that almost always tagged along back then.

Wave after wave of nostalgia hit me while reading Microserfs. I remember the commercials the characters bring up constantly, the Play Doh and Lego, the sugar cereal and megacorporations and clothing labels. I remember the current events, the celebrities, the earthquakes and fires on the news. So much of this book seems like it was yanked out of my life that it feels surreal, like pulling memories out of a dark corner that I wasn’t aware held anything at all.

Fast food is addictive but about as bad for you as a bunch of simultaneous chest x-rays.

Apple was, and always shall be, the height of cool.

Lego are impressive, but the claw-like hands on their little people (minifigs) are creepy as hell.

Not too long after this book came out I would wind up owning the much-ridiculed (in the novel and in my life) Geo Metro. It really didn’t have the capacity to kill anyone, or even so much as bruise.

This was like prematurely opening up a time capsule full of VCRs, fax machines, early-stage cell phones, GAP khakis, laptops, processed foods, Crystal Pepsi, Melrose Place and ramen noodles and going “Oh yeah, I remember this stuff. Man, weren’t those the days!”

I’m not going to delve into it in too much detail, but lest anyone think this book is some shallow jaunt down memory lane (or, around its publication, a piece of pop culture masturbation) let me say there is a very subtle but noticeable human undercurrent present at all times that comes out in full force towards the end.

Man, I miss the 90s.

5/5

#5 of 2009: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

2009-04-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

There are fifteen single-star reviews for this book on Amazon. I have to disagree with them all.

I’m not going to come out and say this is the perfect book on writing and will be a monumental help for people needing strict literary guidance. It’s not. It really is a self-indulgent, self-centered, rambling little book that careens all over the place while attempting to impart a bit of wisdom on the reader.

It works, though. It really does.

This is more of an author’s memoir than it is another guide to style, grammar and revision. It’s not going to help you with your plotting issues, or your overuse of dangling modifiers, or net you an agent. Not directly, at least. But what it will do is motivate you to keep going, to ignore the nasty voices in your head that slow you down or stop you completely, and it will make you very aware that you are absolutely not alone in your fears and insecurities and doubts.

We are all mentally ill, and it is beautiful.

#4 of 2009: Number9Dream by David Mitchell

2009-03-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

Mitchell is another author whose works seem, at first glance, to be simplistic and tongue-in-cheek and easy to finish, but they end up being all of the above and none of the above at the same time. What should be a quick read always finds a way of becoming complex without ever hinting at the mechanics that allow this trick to happen, a deceptively simple narrative unfolding into something rife with literary gimmicks and bizarre tales-within-a-tale that will leave you placing a bookmark between the pages and taking a break just to make sure your brain has absorbed the info properly.

That’s my excuse. I’m sticking to it. That’s my reason for never finishing Mitchell in a timely fashion.

Unlike Ghostwritten, Number9Dream sticks with one main character the whole way through, but in the eight chapters that cover the four-hundred-page novel there is a cast of characters almost too bizarre to be believable. Almost. We follow a young island hick in the big city looking for his unnamed father, a man who impregnated his mother and ran off, only to run into yakuza (multiple times), a concert pianist, a video store owner/capsule hotel landlord, a crazy train station employee, a wannabe hacker, a Korean bar hostess and several weirdo pizza delivery employees. Not to mention the equally weird pizzas they make.

It’s a strange story, told in a strange style, and once again I’m going to have to come out and claim a better understanding of the work would be had after a second reading. I notice myself making this claim a lot. Perhaps I read too quickly, to shallowly, to understand everything my eyes scan over. Perhaps I’m just not cut out for “intellectual” work. Perhaps I’m lazy.

Perhaps, like Number9Dream, I’m everything at once.

3/5, only for being layered enough to require a second reading.

#3 of 2009: JPod by Douglas Coupland

2009-03-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

2009 started off funny and has continued that way for a while.

First I became rather entranced with the idea of using this year to whittle my way through all the DVDs I’ve amassed over the years. If there’s one thing I love to collect as much as books it’s DVDs. I’ve been running on the elliptical and watching movies every day with the dual goal of losing a considerable amount of weight and seeing a considerable amount of movies and so far this year I’ve shed fifteen pounds and twenty-five DVDs.

Not too shabby.

Of course, all of this comes with the sacrifice of reading time. Not to despair, though, because I’ve lost my job as well, freeing me up for all kinds of time-consumptive projects. At this point in my life, losing my job might very well have been the best thing to happen in years, but this period of empty space is going to have to be incredibly short and bittersweet as I try to find a job in this very depressed market while reading, writing and watching movies on a tighter budget.

Good thing I have all this stuff already on my shelves, huh?

I burned my way through JPod in a matter of days. This is my fist Coupland novel, though I’ve been aware of him for years, and I’ve got to say I’m a bit angry at myself for not turning on to him much sooner. JPod is the kind of sarcastic, ironic, meta-book that I think I’ve been dreaming of. It’s almost post-modern but not quite so, caught up in a world full of penis-enlargement emails, lists of pi that last ten pages, missives from Nigerian scammers and concepts for the shittiest video games ever almost-made.

God, I love it. It's almost like reading Max Barry, whom I've already fallen quite head over heels for in a strictly literary-related sense, but not quite. It's Coupland's own distinct voice, completely different from Barry's, but they have the same sense of irony and humor combined with distaste for corporate retardation that gets me every time.

One of the traits of successful writers that I don’t believe I myself possess is the ability to create characters that flow through any and all situations, and the ability to make these situations arise without feeling contrived. God, when I write any emergence of the absurd or grotesque feels so forced that it immediately shames me. I feel like a walking cliche generator, a hack, someone who can’t even conjure the most basic characters or personalities.

JPod is life, the life of nerds and techies blending in with the rest of society, as seen through the glass of a slightly morbid funhouse mirror. What you’re looking at is completely real and mostly true, but it’s stretched a bit in ways that are physically improbable at best. But it’s great, and a blast to look at, and it reminds you of yourself in some kind of fucked-up manner that makes you also grateful at the same time that it’s not a complete mirror of your life.

Really, really good. I’m looking forward to rereading it sometime soon.

5/5

Now, back to Number9Dream, another great book that was misplaced somewhere in my house for a while. Hope I haven’t already lost my momentum with this one.

#2 of 2009: Spook Country by William Gibson

2009-01-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

Another book needing a dictionary with a plot that’s just a few inches over my head. I “got” it, but there are a few subtle detours in the storytelling I’m sure need a second reading to pick up.

Unlike Pattern Recognition, which deals with a subject that I loathe but am simultaneously fascinated with (advertising), Spook Country delves into a bit of territory that I’m firmly involved in, at least somewhat - GPS technology. As a geocacher, I really got into some of the concepts in this book, especially placing “invisible” art at specific coordinates that require special equipment to view. Other things, like using GPS to track objects around the world, caused the gears in my head to begin working overtime. All of the neat things that could be done with these satellites...

As it is with everything Gibson, there’s no such thing as a single story line. In this book, there are three, the story of the rock star turned journalist, the story of the young, spiritual mafioso and the story of the drug-addicted translator held captive by the supposed government agent. This last story line is where the book’s title comes from, as both the man employing the mafioso and the man holding the translator against his will are current or former intelligence agents.

It was a great read, but like everything of Gibson’s I’ve read, it’s long, arduous, and requires a lot of concentration. I’m glad to have read it, and I’m keeping my copy, but I think I’m going to hold off on any more Gibson until I’ve read some of these “essentials” I’ve been rambling about lately.

4/5

On to The House of Leaves. I’m not sure I should be complaining about a book requiring intense concentration before I’ve tackled this. I’m almost breaking out in cold sweats already.

#1 of 2009: Bangkok 8 by John Burdett

2009-01-18T09:08:00.000-08:00

An American Army sergeant in Bangkok is found under a bridge in a luxury car with its handles forced shut, the interior of the vehicle teeming with angry cobras. On the man’s head coils an equally angry python, bound and determined to swallow him whole. Two police officers, devout Buddhists and perhaps the only two non-corrupt cops in the Royal Thai Police Force, have been assigned to tail this man for reasons unknown, and when he slips away for a half hour he winds up dead.

Who killed William Bradley, and why? If you follow the pattern of other crime novels, the pages of this book should be devoted to finding the answers to these two questions.

Set in Bangkok, however, against the backdrop of two teeming, illegal industries, the most important question becomes “Who are all these people, and why do they live the way they do?” Prostitution and drugs abound, intertwined with Buddhist philosophy, as a half-Thai, half-American near-saint of a cop ponders the case and questions both himself and the people around him.

Call me stupid, but I’m still not sure why this is called Bangkok 8. Perhaps as a reference to the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhist scripture, I don’t know [It's a reference to the Royal Thai Police district Sonchai works in. Ignore me, I'm dense. - JB ]. What I do know is that this is one damn fine novel, a crime novel for sure but a bit apart from what classifies as detective fiction. I would probably refer to it as a character study steeped in illegal activity, or a character study because of illegal activity. Burdett’s Thailand seems to be fueled by it, though in a way that makes everyone both culpable and blameless at the same time. It’s all for the better of society, right? The redistribution of Western wealth into the East? And who doesn’t like to have a good time?

When the last page is flipped, two points will have been made. First, there is no black and white in Thailand, only shades of grey. Everyone is corrupt, even if only a little. And the second point?

Everyone is a whore.

5/5

New Year, New Goal

2009-01-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

In 2008 I proved to myself that yes, I really can read fifty books in a year. I can even read more than that, if I push myself. It was a great feeling, but I felt a little let down when I didn’t make it to 75. “Oh, well,” I said. “I can try again next year.” Great idea, right?

Well, I’m not going to do it.

2009 is the Year of Big Books. Those books that I’ve been meaning to read, but keep putting off because of their size or difficulty? The books that I shoved off to the side because I was afraid of slowing down my “completed book count”?

This is the year for them.

I’m setting a goal of twenty books or more, though these books will include the following:

Infinite Jest
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Out (for the second time)

The Broom of the System

White Noise

Cloud Atlas
The House of Leaves
Snow Crash
The Vampire Chronicles Collection 1
Gravity’s Rainbow

Any book I’ve wanted to read that I put off because it would take a week or more to fit into my busy schedule is being read this year. I’m not paying much attention to numbers this time. I have so many different things, easy reads with long page counts and difficult reads with shorter ones, plus anything in between, that I haven’t given an opportunity because I was too busy trying to reach my book number goals.

This is also going to be the Year of Suggestions. Some books people just keep bringing up, mostly Snow Crash and House of Leaves. I bought copies and ended up not reading them immediately, and I’ve been pestered over and over about when I’m going to read them. I’m going to read them now, this year, possibly even before Spring arrives. Who knows.

But this year for sure I’m not reaching for fifty. It was helpful in clearing out my TBR of shorter books, but it’s time to dig in now.

#61 of 2008 - The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi

2008-12-30T10:45:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest things about mystery novels, in addition to the prospect of solving a case before the solution is revealed on the page, is the amount of emotional depth that can be lent to the characters. Nothing brings out familiarity and camaraderie between an author and their audience like conflict and mortal danger, and crime novels have both in spades.

Crime is also an incredible vehicle for social observance. Reading foreign mysteries are the best way, aside from spending large sums of money at your local travel agent’s office, to get a feel for a country’s many overlapping societal layers. You have criminals, law officers, academics, local businesspeople, religious officials and many others weaving their way in and out of the narrative, sometimes the focus of a chapter and sometimes the colorful background.

This is a book written for the Japanese by a young Japanese writer. Both the novel’s date of birth and setting are 1947, just after the country’s defeat in World War II. Though there is little outright hostility directed towards the Western occupiers, there is a pronounced sentiment of loss, regret and bewilderment that permeates the narrative as thick as beef and potato stew. These people are survivors; ordinary citizens who’ve been conscripted and sent to hell only to return to a half-destroyed city, or people who never left and witnessed the air raids firsthand. Nobody in this story is untouched, innocent or naïve. Criminal or not, they’re all damaged in one way or another.

The crime appears early in the novel. A temptingly beautiful yet troubled young woman is brutally murdered, her torso and parts of her arms and legs carted away. Her head and the remaining portions of her arms and legs are found in a locked bathroom with the faucet still running, washing all the blood down a drain in the floor. Her home has been ransacked and her belongings stolen. Even the tattoos that adorned her body are gone, every bit of her that was inked having disappeared. From here we are led through twists and turns, given information about the then-prohibited Japanese tattooing underworld, in the hopes of finding this woman’s killer. Instead, what we find are more bodies and a deepening sense of dread as the case goes from very hot to tepid to cold.

When the killer, the killer’s motives and the methods employed are finally revealed at the end, the solution is obvious enough to cause the reader to nod and say, “Yes, that makes perfect sense now!” But nothing is so obvious that it would make the reader feel stupid.

This is Takagi Akimitsu’s first novel, written before he was 30, and the first to be published in English by SOHO. Two others, The Informer and Honeymoon to Nowhere, have been published in the years since The Tattoo Murder Case’s debut.

5/5

#60 of 2008 - Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

2008-12-18T07:01:00.000-08:00

I had to buy a dictionary for this one, an Oxford American with additional thesaurus features.

I didn’t know if I’d make it through this book in a reasonable amount of time. The premise is intelligent, captivating, but the language is dense with lesser known words and product references and the sentences are constructed so oddly that I was sure this was going to be one of those books that looks and feels fantastic but you-as-reader are never able to sink below the surface with. The kind of book that makes you feel inadequate, stupid even, as both a writer and a reader. The kind of book that’s just too much for you.

Like David Foster Wallace, or Pynchon, or DeLillo, all of whom I have unread works of sitting on my shelf, just waiting for me to attempt to take them on. Tomorrow, I tell myself, or next week, or next month, I’ll give them a whirl. But right now I’m reading for pleasure, damn it, not to tax my brain or grant me some kind of temporary bragging rights that will last until the next epic work shows itself to me. Not right now.

And, of course, those days have yet to come. Even The House of Leaves is still waiting for me, I’m sad to say.

However, things didn’t turn out the way I’d expected them to. Pattern Recognition takes a while to pull you into its orbit, and even longer to achieve rhythmic balance between mind and prose, but once you’re in you’re golden.

Just make sure you have your dictionary beside you and a browser open to Google, should you need them.

At the heart of this story lies Cayce Pollard, an uber-nerd living and working in the heart of chic as a “cool-hunter” for advertising agencies. In her spare time, she posts on an Internet forum devoted to a series of nameless, unidentifiable bits of film footage that emerge in random on different websites, seemingly out of sequential order. Who creates the footage, why, and how? She cannot figure it out, despite lengthy debates with her online friends, and eventually her online and real world realities blend together when she is hired by one of her current clients to begin a new job, actually a partnership, of finding the footage’s creator.

On top of this, Cayce has a severe allergy to several well-known corporate insignias, a mix of physical and neurotic reactions that leave her nearly unable to function at the mere sight of them. Didn’t know the name of the Michelin Man was actually Bibendum? You will after reading this. You’ll know what a Curta calculator is as well, but only after looking it up so you can picture it as it’s described on the page. Prada, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple and several dozen other recognizable logos make appearances here, either as severe allergens or harmless artworks.

Considering what Gibson is best known for (cyberpunk), this felt oddly mainstream, too close to real, actual life. Pollard’s father has gone missing in the 9/11 tragedy, and her mother’s coping mechanism includes going to live in a hippy commune with people who analyze recorded audio for ghost whispers. Between the constant references to pop culture, current (or very recent) events and corporate giants, this could be one of those “ripped from the headlines” type of stories, or even a cheap cyber-thriller. It is both of these, and yet it is neither as well.

What it really is, at its core, is an explanation to the rest of the world, the people who don’t understand the duality of Internet enthusiasts, of how people can live and befriend online, and how eventually the digital world spills out into the real.

4/5

Sometimes You Can't Say It Better...

2008-12-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

So you just repeat what the other guy said.

I’m probably the (at least) ten-thousandth blogger to toss their two cents in about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. I’ll keep my opinion as short and sweet as possible, then. It’s a series of books. They’re very popular with both the YA crowd and the adult women crowd. They serve a purpose not unlike Harry Potter in that they bring young people, people who could be spending their time texting, playing video games or talking on the phone into libraries and bookstores. Unlike Harry Potter, there isn’t anything grand or epic about these books and, if you hold them up to older, acclaimed works, they fall woefully short.

They’re still coercing people into reading, and hopefully picking up other titles, so I can’t complain too much.

However, and this is a big however (imagine it in seventy-two point font if you will), the characters are horrible. Bella is a Mary Sue under a very thin veneer of narrative viewpoint and her two would-be suitors are a prudish, bullying stalker and a whiny teenaged narcissist.

I think one of the reasons I dislike Jacob so much isn’t even his own fault. Any time he, or any tribal members, show up they are immediately described as being “russet-colored.” Meyer uses the word “russet” the way Anne Rice used the word “preternatural,” which is to say too damn much and too damn often.

I’m not sure if Meyer is a bit racially insensitive, is unimaginative or just really likes potatoes, but if I never have to see her use the word “russet” again I will die a happy woman.

TrebleClef over at LibraryThing said everything I wanted to say and more in a review of Twilight that I would like to repost here today. I couldn’t have said any of this better.

Essentially what happens when you walk into Hot Topic, pick out the first twelve year old you see, and then have her write an Anne Rice novel. Twilight is a shallow blunder, and it sure is proud of it. The book reads like fan-fiction from a horny teenager (though that phrase may be redundant) with a mental problem, instead of providing any form of good writing we get every vampire cliché known to man until you're guaranteed every scene-fag that reads it will adore it. It is truly astounding how Meyer is able to say so, SO little in the course of 500 pages.

More than half of Twilight is just characters giving wry smiles, chuckling, hissing, glaring, flaring nostrils and raising eyebrows during some vapid, angsty conversation. The whole thing is narrated by some chick named Bella Swan, someone so lacking in human characteristics that it is more than easy to forget this is your main character. Reading this book makes it no surprise the only people who like this are around thirteen years old, both the main characters are covered in disgusting gloss and teenage perfection. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are two of the dullest characters I've ever become acquainted with.

Bella is just another "average, ordinary, everyday girl" typical of romance novels. She is the "new girl in school" cliché and instantly becomes popular by doing nothing. She is made essentially perfect in every manner, but in an attempt to hide this the author decides to make her clumsy. The problem is that anyone familiar with these stereotypes knows that when it comes to these characters this is actually a "plus". It also doesn't help she spends a large amount of time I could have spent hammering a nail into my foot whining about how she always falls down. That is, of course, when she isn't using insane amounts of adjectives to describe the "dreamy" vamp of her life, Edward Cullen.

Oh, Edward Cullen. How I loathe thee. This talking mannequin is spoken about for pages upon pages with what looks like a late-night session on fanfiction.net with a teenager and a thesaurus. Like Boring Bella, Ennuyeux Edward is without depth and without flaw. Know what else Bella and Edward are without? CHEMISTRY. This is pretty much the book version of Neo and Trinity from the Matrix, except even worse. A third of the book is spent with these two Barbie dolls enjoying fake, unrealistic sexual tension akin to an episode of InuYasha until an awful plot forms. The important thing is that it ends with Cullen and Bella at the prom... AWWWWWWWWW, NO ONE SAW THIS COMING. AWWWW.

There is a lot more to say about this offense against literature, but this is just a quick little review from me. Despite all of this bullshit, the most infuriating thing about this 4-part story is that it isn't rotting on LiveJournal where it belongs. It is out there making millions with people who wouldn't know quality if it punted them in the vagina. It offers nothing to the reader. Just some clever marketing, some clever abuse of the masses. It is a superficial story that leaves readers with the image of a girl who discovers her own worth and gets all she ever wanted, by giving up her identity and throwing away nearly everything in life that matters. For this reason, Twilight's fame is far more understandable. For this sacrifice of self for the shallow and meaningless truly captures the spirit of the generation it's written for, or at least, the lack thereof.

This deserves a bit of applause, I think. Thank you for braving the anger of a legion of lovestruck young girls to point out Meyer's shortcomings. Hopefully the bulk of them will move on to something more substantial now that the series is (mostly) over.

#59 of 2008 - Tea From an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan

2008-12-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I make an impulse purchase on Amazon, usually of a used book, that looks decent, has predominantly positive reviews and has that complex something that catches my eye and says to me “Hey, this looks like something really interesting, you should check it out.”

If we’re going to be perfectly honest here, I’ll come right out and admit that this happens a lot more than “every once in a while.” It happens fairly often and I’ve got an exceptionally high percentage of success with these purchases. Most of the books I pick up I end up loving. My entire run of Japanese crime fiction began this way, when I decided to pick up some Miyuki Miyabe novels on the fly.

Funny how I should start out praising Japanese novels, because the Japaneseness is what makes this book so terrible. I should actually call it “wannabe Japaneseness,” because it’s a piece of cyberpunk detective fiction written by an American-born, British-emigrated authoress who apparently decided that this genre still doesn’t have enough Nihon-influenced gobbledegook floating around and writing a book full of loosely-connected Japanophile crap was a great idea.

Hell, even Gibson wrote a blurb for the front cover.

There are two intertwining story lines going on here in alternating chapters. First, in the Empty Cup chapters, you have a young full-blooded Japanese woman named Yuki who is about as Western as you can get because her homeland was destroyed by a vague natural disaster some decades back. At least she appears to be Western, though you don’t know much about her or anyone else in this book because back stories are apparently for other cyberpunk novels. This one is too hardcore for anything like that. Yuki is apparently obsessed with her on-again-off-again friend Tom, another full-Japanese who doesn’t care for her as anything more than a friend and occasional roommate when he needs a place to stay. He’s apparently been in and out of her life for a long time, but she cares enough to go searching for him when he stays gone for too long and the rumors begin to swirl that he’s become one of Joy’s Boyz, some kind of gigolo for a weird cosmetically-Asian woman with a color-changing tattoo who may or may not be a flesh broker of some kind.

Next, in the alternating Death in the Promised Land chapters, you have a detective devoid of personality who can’t stop thinking about or commenting on her ex husband responding to a death in an Alternate Reality parlor. Someone has been murdered while traipsing around online and now she’s on the case to find out what happened and why. Her fellow law enforcement officers are a large claustrophobic man and a bunch of women with mustaches and muttonchops, and the coroner is a self-inflicted midget who belongs to the Church of Small-is-Beautiful. Apparently the near future is all kinds of wild, but that doesn’t matter because you see very little of these characters and you won’t give a single shit about anybody in this book, no matter how much time you spend with them.

On top of all of this, there are rumors of an Out Door that leads to something not reality nor cyberspace, and people have begun to whisper about the resurrection of Old Japan as some kind of hidden AR level that only the genetically Japanese can find.

Does this sound like some kind of anime-inspired Japanophile fan fiction to anybody else yet? I bought this book thinking it would be some kind of cyberpunk crime novel, and that the Japanese characters were incidental, but what I ended up with is the literary equivalent of watching a grown white woman dressed up as Sailor Mars standing on a busy street corner screaming Japanese at cars, phrases she picked up from repeated late-night marathons of old anime videos.

The more I read the more I wanted to face palm.

There are things about this novel that could have made it a success. The idea of dying inside and outside of a simulation is interesting, if not slightly cliche, but had Cadigan had either one of her characters find out something interesting during their forays into cyberspace it might have been a pleasant ride. Instead we get to watch the mundane plodding of two apparent Luddites as they make their mundane way through a digital world of freaks and fake gods. Yawn. Neither one can even go down a street without having to consult a cleverly-disguised help file to find out where they are, who they are, where they need to go or what they need to be doing.

If you set most of your story in AR you apparently don’t need to worry about such things as plot or coherency. You can just blip your characters in and out of locations, warp reality and change things to whatever you want them to be without having to go to the trouble of explaining anything. There were times, several of them, that I wanted to put the book down or re-shelve it or even throw it out but I refused because I wanted to see it to the end. I wanted it to somehow redeem itself, even though I knew something like that happening was a long shot.

It didn’t happen, obviously.

Did I mention there’s a sequel, and I bought it around the same time I bought this book?

Shit.

1/5

#58 of 2008 - Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

2008-12-04T16:45:00.000-08:00

This is one of those books that I picked up and put down numerous times over the course of the summer. I’d read a chapter, set it down, pick it up, read another chapter, lather, rinse, repeat. Due to the complexity of language and the technical details, the Clear Island chapter near the end kept me from finishing the book time and again.

I finished the book today, and I must say that despite the lapse between reading the first seventy percent by July and what I’ve read today I am very impressed. This is an excellent debut novel, full of detail, layers and layers of people crossing each others’ paths and back again.

I’m not going to be able to do this novel justice by reviewing it now, so I won’t. It’s a definite reread candidate, though, and this time I won’t be slowing down or stopping until I’m done.

#57 of 2008 - Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore

2008-12-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

There are books for the serious literary reader, and then there are books for the person who values reading for pleasure over reading for enlightenment. Some people spend their entire lifetime reading nothing but books from one column or the other, never mixing, never broadening themselves. I find myself often pitying them, usually the literary types more than the pop culture types, simply because I mired myself in the world of horror fiction (a vast wasteland, according to many “serious” types, including an obnoxious WASP-wannabe I dated in college) at a very early age and never intended to find my way out.

In the last year, though, I have found myself in the midst of an amazing transformation. Not only am I reading books I might have previously blown off as “snobbish” or “intentionally difficult,” but I’m also reading for fun. Fun. Me, the vampire addict, the ghost story enthusiast, leave the beaten path of morbid and morose?

It seems now that I avoided the funny, laugh-out-loud books on purpose.

I devoured everything written by Max Barry that I could find this year and moved on to Paul Neilan before returning to the familiar books of my youth, books I’d been remembering fondly while simultaneously suspecting they hadn’t been that good. Somewhere along the way I stopped seeking out the humorous again, but when I found a copy of Christopher Moore’s You Suck: A Love Story in Borders the other day, I bought it. Remembering it was a sequel, I dug up its predecessor Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story out of my vast TBR pile (or, more accurately, piles, seeing as I have them stacked up everywhere there’s open space in my bedroom) and sat down to read it.

As it turns out, with some novels you don’t have to turn in your horror lover’s card to find humor. There are some that mix the two rather well, and Moore seems to have quite the knack for it. Murder and the supernatural make room for the bizarre and nonsensical as a young woman named Jody finds herself attacked for no reason and shoved under a Dumpster, her clothing stuffed with money. When she wakes, her hand, which has been sticking out from under the can, has been burnt by the sunlight and her sleazy wannabe stockbroker boyfriend doesn’t care about her ordeal. She can’t even get him to call the police, and throws a potted plant at his head before leaving the apartment they share.

On her own, the newly turned vampire realizes quickly that she needs a get, someone who will guard her vulnerable body and home during the daylight hours, but she also finds herself incredibly lonely. Being a serial monogamist, and missing the company of a live-in boyfriend, she picks up Tommy Flood, a 19-year-old “novelist” from Incontinence, Indiana, who has been in San Francisco for only a few days. From there, the two of them will encounter the homeless Emperor of San Francisco (and protector of Mexico), his two canine “soldiers,” a rowdy crew of grocery store night stockers, the taunting vampire who turned Jody and two exasperated policemen, plus an extended cast of weirdos and wannabes that pepper the story with amusing dialogue.

It’s a fast read for a three hundred-page novel. It felt, time wise, like a book half its size. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel, along with the rest of Moore’s body of work, which seems to be nearing a dozen at this point. A quick look at his Wikipedia page shows me that he’s labeled an “absurdist” author, which seems readily appropriate.

As soon as I’m done slogging through David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten, a book I’ve been picking up on and off over the course of about six months, I’ll be making a return to San Francisco’s vampiric night life in You Suck: A Love Story. I can’t wait.

4/5

The First Fifty-Five

2008-11-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

#1: Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe
#2: Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe
#3: All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe
#4: Piercing by Ryu Murakami
#5: After Dark by Haruki Murakami
#6: Jennifer Government by Max Barry
#7: Strangers by Taichi Yamada
#8: The Devil’s Whisper by Miyuki Miyabe
#9: Vibrator by Mari Akasaka
#10: Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula by Hideyuki Kikuchi
#11: Missing: Spirited Away by Gakuto Coda
#12: Calling You by Otsuichi
#13: Sayonara, Gangsters by Genichiro Takahashi
#14: In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
#15: Welcome to the NHK by Tatsuhiko Takimoto
#16: Missing: Letter of Misfortune by Gakuto Coda
#17: The Hunter by Asa Nonami
#18: I Haven’t Dreamed of Flying For a While by Taichi Yamada
#19: The Zen of Fish by Trevor Corson
#20: Boogiepop and Others by Kouhei Kadono
#21: 100 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick
#22: Real World by Natsuo Kirino
#23: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
#24: New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
#25: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
#26: Ring by Koji Suzuki
#27: Syrup by Max Barry
#28: Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Hurakami
#29: Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
#30: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
#31: Ballad of a Shinigami, vol. 1 by Keisuke Hasegawa
#32: Company by Max Barry
#33: A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
#34: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
#35: Boogiepop at Dawn by Kouhei Kadono
#36: Boogiepop Returns: vs. Imaginator, vol 1. by Kouhei Kadono
#37: Boogiepop Returns: vs. Imaginator, vol 2. by Kouhei Kadono
#38: Ballad of a Shinigami, vol. 2 by Keisuke Hasegawa
#39: Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
#40: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
#41: South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
#42: exit here. by Jason Myers
#43: Dangerous Angels: the Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block
#44: Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block
#45: Secret Vampire by L.J. Smith
#46: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block
#47: Daughters of Darkness by L.J. Smith
#48: New Tastes in Green Tea by Mutsuko Tokunaga
#49: Echo by Francesca Lia Block
#50: Necklace of Kisses by Francesca Lia Block
#51: Sunglasses After Dark by Nancy A. Collins
#52: The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
#53: The Writer’s Little Helper by James V. Smith
#54: No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty
#55: The Hunter by L.J. Smith

#56 of 2008 - Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite

2008-11-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

I first read Drawing Blood when I was much younger. The copyright is October 1994, so I would have just turned sixteen when it was released. I bought it shortly thereafter, during the days when I would walk into town and raid the bookstores (the new one and both of the used shops) for horror books on a near-daily basis.

Drawing Blood is the story of one very creepy haunted house that was the setting for a multiple murder-suicide and the now-grown survivor who revisits it to find out why he is still alive. On the way through his journey he meets and grows close to many people, including a young hacker on the run from the Secret Service who had a dysfunctional childhood of his own. Full of blood, drugs and explicit (gay) sex, this isn’t the kind of book I’d imagine would attract a teenaged girl. But it did. In fact, the sex didn’t phase me much, despite having not grown up in a home that was overly open about “alternate lifestyles” or sexuality in general. We kind of glossed over that stuff at the old Brown homestead.

I had such amazingly fond memories of this book that I had to reread it at some point. I raided my attic looking for my cache of prized paperbacks, but it was nowhere to be found. All those obscure 90s vampire books, all the Dell Abyss novels, my hardback of Lost Souls with the dust jacket intact that I’d bought from the library for fifty cents in the ninth grade, all gone. I resigned myself to the fact that some of these books, especially the ones that I did not remember the exact titles for, were gone forever, or at least until I stumbled across them in a dusty used bookstore, and those establishments are about as common as fountain pens in a drawer full of Bics these days.

Brite’s books, though, are still in bookstores, and for $8 I bought my second copy of Drawing Blood. There were a lot of pop culture references I didn’t pick up on way back when, and now the “hacker speak” sounds somewhat dated, though it’s not horrible or even irritating enough to slow down the plot. It just plants Drawing Blood firmly in the early-to-mid-90s as surely as Zach the hacker’s 2800 baud modem does. And that’s all right, really.

This book makes me want to befriend the nearest Jamaican (if there are any nearby) and smoke some “smart ganja” all damn day. Just the descriptions of the smell of pot and pot smoke make my mouth water, and I’m not all that much of a fan of it in real life.

This is one of THE novels that made me want to write long fiction, along with Kirino’s Out and Miyabe’s Crossfire. The characters are painfully exquisite, the drama familiar enough to feel a connection to while alien enough to remain interesting. This is one of those books that, when I look at my own short little 200-page rough draft, I feel woefully inadequate. I can only pray that revision and polishing render my own characters this lifelike and wonderful.

5/5

A Rambling Introduction

2008-11-30T04:19:00.000-08:00

2008 was the first year for me to attempt the Fifty Book Challenge. As a young girl and as a teenager I read voraciously, and I cannot even begin to count all the books that came and went through my possession during those years. I read mostly horror, vampire stories predominantly, and somewhere in those years I decided I was going to be a writer.

Actually, the writing began in the sixth grade. I wrote fantasy and horror stories with meandering plots that eventually went nowhere, weak characters and cliche dialogue. But I had a fun time with it, and my friends were impressed, so I continued. Eventually I improved enough to be published a few times when I was in my late teens and early twenties, by Shadow Feast and the Nocturnal Lyric. Bloodfetish.com published one of my raunchy vampire stories, of which there had been quite a few.

And then, suddenly, I dropped out of college, thrust myself into the world of working stiffs and lost all sense of self self-worth I’d possessed (which hadn’t been a lot to begin with, having been born with the common writer’s twin traits of self-doubt and perfectionism). I became depressed. I doubled my body weight. I had a brief and unromantic relationship with alcohol. I considered killing myself multiple times but never enjoyed the idea enough to actually do it. I looked down, and when I looked up more than five years had gone by and I’d gained nothing but debt, pounds and a few grey hairs.

I hadn’t been writing, not even in a journal. Those feel now like lost years, memories that are blurry at best. I vaguely remember being a complete ass to people, refusing to allow myself to have a good time, refusing to be creative and, worst of all, refusing to stand up for myself. That last one earned me a nice reputation at work as a keyboard bitch and all-around office moron, which I’m still trying to shrug off but will probably only escape me when I actually decide to leave the job.

All of that brings me to this. I’m back to writing, and have been for a good two years or more. I’ve been keeping a blog here on Blogspot dedicated solely to writing and my observations on my literary self-improvement. One of the things that I do in my quest to become a better writer (and it’s hardly unique - most writers do this) is force myself to read, even when I’d rather be working on my own stuff. It’s not difficult to convince myself to pick up a book - all I need is a few works of encouragement from someone else, a snippet of an Amazon review, a few lines of description on a message board. I’ve accumulated over the years hundreds of books, most of the ones not in storage catalogued lovingly over at LibraryThing, where I’ve been posting my 50 Book Challenge updates one novel at a time.

I’d like to create this blog as the twin to my writing blog. There’s so much I can say about books that I’ve read that I almost want to ditch the fiction writing and turn to essays - almost. I lack the credentials and the vast knowledge of “literary” fiction that would make a run at essay-writing even potentially lucrative. Still, I’d like to share my reading lists and attempt to engage others in discussion or debate over them, and this is as good a place as any.

I find myself wanting to reread old books lately, which is why I’ve named the blog “New Reads and Old Standbys.” Over the past few months I’ve been revisiting Francesca Lia Block and L.J. Smith, two YA writers I enjoyed a great deal when I was younger. I’ve been picking up Poppy Z. Brite’s horror novels and rereading them as well. I’m eager to see just how accurate my memory is, and if these books hold up to the test of time. At the same time, my queue of books to be read for the first time is growing rapidly, and I’m constantly worried about falling behind.

I suppose all I can do is keep reading.