Taking the Red Pill

Today I'm (most likely) going to finish the first draft of a novella I've been working on for all of February. That was my goal at the start. Ten to twelve thousand words and wrap up the first draft in a month. I got nine thousand words and twenty-four hours to go. I'm about there. But you know, hammering on my keyboard like a drunken monk, writing a story about predestination and the nature of the divine, I started asking myself one question. Was it my destiny to sit down at a computer and write stories about desperate men who cause gruesome bodily harm to each other? Did I choose to be there or was it written somewhere in a big, eternal book. Craig Clevenger once said writing is a pretty counter-intuitive lifestyle. You spend hours working hard at something that will give you very little money, while you could have fun and enjoy life. Yet, so many people are doing it. 

Here's a story from my childhood that I think explains a little where I'm at now. My parents were interesting cats. Loveable, but a peculiar accident in between two eras. They were old school, especially my dad, but since my mom got her bachelor degree in education in the seventies, new ideas seeped through my sister and I's upbringing. Happy self-esteem, my-child-is-the-future-of-society kind of stuff. I don't think any of us seriously believed in them, but we always gave it an earnest try. One thing my parents were hardcore about was violence. From zero to maybe seven or eight years old, any form of violent entertainment was forbidden in the house. It was the equivalent of a powerful acid. It kills on contact. One dose and you're damaged forever. They were so scared television and video games would turn me into a sadistic asshole that when I look back on it, it's cute.

Of course, you can exercise that type of control if only one parent in the neighborhood disagrees with your teaching methods. I watched WWF wrestling at a friend's house once and fell in love with it. I've been a fan for more than a decade after that. Mom & Dad also let me watch G.I JOE and TRANSFORMERS. Although they openly despised it and acted disappointed that I watched it, cartoons had an aura of harmlessness. "You'll outgrow it, you'll see", they kept telling me. But I didn't. A turning point in my young life was at a dinner my mother brought me at her friend's. After dessert, they put us kids in front of the television in another room so my parents and their friends could talk. What was on? You bet. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II.

My life changed that night. Yeah, there were bodies dropping all over the screen and I wasn't used to that. But the standard screenplays involving Sylvester Stallone are very easy to follow for a seven years old. I was moved by the strength of this lonely man, fighting off an army of angry, anonymous foreign men. Something about the balletic pace of it got to me and settled in. From this very precise moment, I started a fascination with the nature of violence that is still going on today. In music, video games, literature, movies, culture in general. Whether it's physical, psychological, emotional or intellectual *. Every form of violence fascinated me and took over my life. "If it has blood, sweat and tears in it, I'm in", I used to say.  I never tortured small animals or anything. My stance was one of an observer at best **, but it took over everything.

Were my parents right to be so radical about this? Probably not. There's nothing more seducing than the forbidden fruit. But judging how the concept fit me like a glove. How different would it have been, if they didn't take that demonizing stance against it? I think I would have become one of those book snobs who gauge the value of their existence by the number of cynical jokes they can crack about everything literary. I like my earnest stance on things, so I don't think it's a bad thing I am where I am now. If I read so many dark stories and I write my own, it's because it's what I love to do. It's just that I wonder how much of it was my choice. Life is chaos. It put me in a room with the red pill only. It could have been worse.

* A good noir story has all of these. Maybe that's why I love the genre so much.

** Before I started writing anyway.

Dead End Follies Book Club - HELL & GONE

HELL & GONE is the second book of The Accident People trilogy, but it's so different from the first, it's barely a pertinent perequisite to have read the first. Swierczynski does a good job at explaining what happened in FUN & GAMES anyway. In this novel, the scruffy, likable and impossible to kill Charlie Hardie is caught in a secret underground prison where...he's the warden! A whole lot of nuttiness ensues. Imagine your most over-the-top conspiracy theory buddy's speech. Yeah that, but in a novel.

I know what you're thinking. Dan Brown's Free Masons and Illuminati delirium is the same thing. Well, no. While Brown's material has the potential to be as wacky and fun, it isn't because DB takes himself so seriously, he gets a concussion just to look at his old photo albums. Swierczynski's trilogy has the right tone to convey such a crazy, paranoid material. It's pulp fiction in its purest form and it's a triumph for the genre that a big print like Mulholland Books have decided to take a chance on it. I wouldn't be surprised to see The Accident People trilogy being optioned and turned into a movie. Done right, it could be extremely successful.

THREE REASONS TO READ: HELL & GONE

1) Charlie Hardie. He's a protagonist so rational and so damaged, he keeps the pace with the ongoing crazyness, but not without questioning it all the time. His wits are little nuggets of gold, peppered through the novels.

2) The paranoid atmosphere. The prisoners as well as the staff are kept in the dark, regarding where they are or why they are there and it's driving them completely nuts. It's like having conspiracy theorists inside a conspiracy theory story. 

3) It's about the closest literary thing to an action movie. Really. By that, I don't mean SAFE HOUSE action, I mean Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, action.

THREE TOPICS ABOUT: HELL & GONE

1) Charlie Hardie is physically incapacitated throughout the novel. In perspective, do you think that it was a handicap or a plus for him?

2) HELL & GONE is a novel about the disparities between the individual and the system. Do you think someone can be imprisoned without a trial or even disobeying the law, if it's for the greater good?

3)  Would you still consider yourself free, if you learned that reality as you know it, is organized by a group of people you didn't know the existence of?

Book Review : Eric Beetner - Dig Two Graves

Country: USA

Genre: Noir/Dark Humor

Pages: 191 kb (eOriginal)

Buy It Here

"I don't like virgins in my shop." Jesus' eyes seemed to generate their own heat. The guy could order a taco and sound angry about it.

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect when I started reading DIG TWO GRAVES. The title hinted to a revenge story and the cover is stylish but rather abstract when it comes to crime. I dipped a toe into it, fearing I had just signed up for something generic and...holy shit. I discovered with great joy the twisted mind of Eric Beetner. You only need one idea to turn something generic into a demented piece of fiction. Not only Beetner had many ideas to give his story a unique shape, but he made them fit in the restricting form of the novella. Not only it feels fresh, but I hadn't laughed out loud while reading a book like that, since I have read Matthew McBride's now infamous FRANK SINATRA IN A BLENDER, last year. Not only Beetner's DIG TWO GRAVES succeeded at making me laugh, but it succeeded at many other things. Turning a bloodbath into a coming-of-age story, for example.

Confusing statement, I know. Here's how the story plays out. Simply put, Val just got out of jail and his partner in bank heists Ernesto has ratted him out to the police. Devoured by anger and bitterness, he prowls the streets to find Ernesto and take his vengeance. Simple enough, borderline cliché, right? Here's the twist that makes DIG TWO GRAVES oh-so-flavorful. Val and Ernesto had a relationship in prison. Yeah, that kind of relationship. While it might've started out of biological necessity, it evolved into something all entangled in feelings. Val was in love with his young partner. He still is, as he is consumed with ideas of a blood-soaked vengeance. There is also crime boss Frank, who he had a love-triangle issue with, in the days where he was still hetero. Frank wants to see Val in regards to his bloody escape from the jaws of justice and his goons keep trying to pick him up as he makes his way to Ernesto. It's a new dawn for Val, he is homosexual and starts getting used to the idea. As he gets deeper and deeper in the underbelly of the city, the new and the old Val collide for everybody he knew. 

"Poor mister lover man. Nobody to suck his dick anymore. Was it only a jail cell love affair? Destined to end outside the prison walls?" There went that tongue again. At the risk of sounding all Deliverance, boy did he have a pretty mouth."

The beauty of the issue here is that Val is animated by feelings of truthfulness and revelation, and yet his newfound sexual orientation is born out of prison sex, which is as ugly as it comes. He's soaking in a brutal, underworld where he used to have a place and this newfound outlook on life keeps interfering with his mission. That scene I just quoted, where he has to extract information out of a young man in a gay club bathroom,  is a prime example of the untimely nature of his new lifestyle. He has an inner struggle in between the person he really is and the person he built in the underworld. In DIG TWO GRAVES, Val is having the most violent and desperate coming-of-age one can have. 

I know it sounds strange, but the glue that make this story hold up together and stand out, is Eric Beetner's use of the first person narration. He made Val into this disgruntled small time robber with a vivid inner life. Everything is changing around him, even the foundations of his personality, so he keeps questioning everything and looking at his surroundings in a new way. In the Baby Jesus Morales chapter (I'm not spoiling anything, but it's great), Val has the eyes of a rugged veteran and a frightened outsider at the same time. I can't find any reasons not to read DIG TWO GRAVES. Yeah there are clichés in it, but it has enough original ideas to carry its point thought. It's short and funny enough to carry its point across with any kind of  reading crowds and most important, it's told in a booming, fearless voice. Eric Beetner has just gained a new fan. I bought a Kindle for books like that.

FOUR STARS

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues

I've been listening to this song a lot while writing, lately. I'm not huge on the country sound, but you can hardly say that Johnny Cash plays by its rules. The version available on Cash's vevo is a strange remix that reminds me what a DJ did to Elvis Presley's A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION a few years ago. Now I don't find the said remixes to be bad songs per se, but maybe they lack respect to the original version. Here's a version that I find to be less similar to the original in its form, but that carries its spirit better. It's a song about regrets, life on the fringes of society and how men do violence to themselves. It has to have an organic feeling to it. Here it for you, on this beauitful, frozen Sunday.

Johnny Cash - FOLSOM PRISON BLUES

I hear the train a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine,
Since, I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin' on,
But that train keeps a-rollin',
On down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy,
Don't ever play with guns,"
But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die,
When I hear that whistle blowin',
I hang my head and cry.

I bet there's rich folks eatin',
In a fancy dining car,
They're probably drinkin' coffee,
And smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Well, if they freed me from this prison,
If that railroad train was mine,
I bet I'd move out over a little,
Farther down the line,
Far from Folsom Prison,
That's where I want to stay,
And I'd let that lonesome whistle,
Blow my Blues away.

Non-Extreme Makeover

I've been meaning to do this for a while. Since I opened Dead End Follies, started selling stories and all that jazz, I used a set of personal photos on social medias. Things have been a little more serious in the last year, so I'm stepping up my game one detail at the time. I wanted to take photos, not because that's what professional writers do (these photos are anything but professional and it's the whole point of it), but because I wanted to show a more coherent portrait of me. Whenever I'm asked for a photo for a collaboration, I don't like to give vacation shots on things I've shot while I was with family. Josie took a set of photos I will now use on social medias as they represent very well who I am in real life or at least how I want to present myself to my readers. It's constructed reality, maybe. But it's me on my best day. Thanks to my better-half who was patient enough to do that with me. Here are a few more.

Book Review : Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers (1974)

Country: USA

Genre: Noir/Drama

Pages: 342

 "How's your need?"

She blinked and scratched herself; she had been scratching in her sleep most of the night.

"I don't know yet."

I've been chasing this book around the internets for a few years now. It had very high expectations to live up to, partly because it's been such a tease. You know when you tell people you're looking for a book and they tell you: "I've read it, it's SOOOOOOOOOOOO good, but I gave my copy away moons ago. I have no idea where you can get one now ." Yeah, that. I'm sure it happened to you too, at some point. You can't live up to this sort of hype just by being great. Many books are great. Well, ladies and gentlemen, DOG SOLDIERS found a way to live up to its urban legend status. Not only it's great, but it's great in all the ways I would've never expected. Robert Stone's National Book Award winning novels is "Advanced", according to Chuck Klosterman's theory of artistic evolution *.  By the way, did you know this was made into a movie in 1978? WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN, starring Nick Nolte. So Robert Stone was somewhat of a big deal before falling off the map.

The story starts in Viet-Nam, as the war is winding down. Journalist and playwright John Converse is over there, trying to find the next big story for the magazine he's working for. Being desperate for status and fame, he does something very stupid. He sets up a heroin deal. This is a very organic process, implicating family, friends and acquaintances and as little organized crime as possible. The deal  backfires as Converse's slightly paranoid courier Hicks decides to disappear along with his wife. Oh and did I mention Marge, the said journalist wife in question, is addicted to painkillers? Yep. Beautiful portrait, isn't it? So Converse is going after his paranoid Viet-Name vet courrier and his junky wife to get his drugs back...wait for it...because there's a rogue federal agent on his ass. Talk about being neck deep in doo doo. 

If DOG SOLDIERS is such an "Advanced" novel, it's because it aged very strangely and to a certain extent, it can explain why it's currently out of print **. The world (and especially the drug trade) has changed SO MUCH since then, that it reads like somewhat of an historical document. This was before the Freeway Ricky Ross events of the eighties and the heroin market was pretty much up for grabs. Not unlike Hunter S. Thompson's immortal FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, DOG SOLDIERS is a testament to the disenchantment of the United States in the seventies. The Nixon years and the post-Manson paranoia. Marge is a delicious character in that regards. She was a hippy in the sixties, but motherhood and domestic life caught back to her and all that there is left of her carefree youth is a powerful addiction to prescription drugs. Ray Hicks (another amazing character) insists on dragging her along, carrying her as if he wanted to prove to himself that he's not such a bad guy after all.

Hicks drove on speed. His fatigue hung the desert grass with hallucinatory blossoms, filled ravines with luminous corrals and phantoms. The land was flat and the roads dead straight; at night, headlights swung for hours in space, steady as a landfall - and then rushed past in streaks of color, explosions of engine roar and hot wind. 

That's some spectacular description if I've ever seen some. Evocative and yet spare. I had issues with DOG SOLDIERS, but very minor stuff. I thought John Converse to be a little too bland and blasé to my liking as if he was tired with life. I suppose it's fitting the mood of the novel very well, but I didn't care as much when he was on the page as when Hicks was. Also, while it captures the zeigeist of the seventies admirably well, it's also a little hermetic. You have to have the necessary point of reference to understand all the dread and the looming tension in his bad boy. But point is, it's a singular novel that is almost impossible to copy. It's very dark, but it has an innocence when you put it in perspective, because it had no idea of the terrible turn the world would take in the Reagan era. Do yourself a favor and get truck load of seventies America with DOG SOLDIERS. It's one of the most pertinent books about the era.

FOUR STARS***

* In a nutshell, "Advancing" is when your artistic progression tells any linear or logic path to go fuck itself. It's something unexpected. It cannot be the exact opposite of what the artist used to do, that would be being "Overt". For example, if Metallica would be doing hip-hop, they would be "Overt", but let's say they hire a keyboardist to complement their songs, they would become "Advanced" as long as they have any artistic intent behind it.

** Or about to be. I'm not sure of the actual state, but the books are hard as hell to get a hold of. It's fascinating, but not exactly sparkling with actuality.

*** I have not let go of my standards, it's just that the books I've been reading lately are THAT good.

The Workshop Conundrum

Today I need your help. Maybe more like your opinions,  fellow providers of fiction adventures *. I've been having this debate with myself. I have discussed it in private with a few other writers I trust already, but  I'm still undecided. Earlier this week, I signed up for LitReactor's workshops with a very precise goal in mind: reading their exclusive writing essays by the likes of Craig Clevenger, Chuck Palahniuk and Richard Thomas. Just the two Clevenger essays I've read since there were worth it, but here's the thing. Now that a potential workshop is a few clicks away, should I do it or not?

The easy answer is duh! Of course. Why not make the most out of a resource you're entitled to use anyway? See, I'm not so sure about that. I have doubts about the benefits I could reap from a workshop. Not that it's a bad thing altogether, but hear me. Things have been going really well. After I miserably failed at writing a novel, I went back to the drawing board and worked my way up from short stories. It was a great move as I re-taught myself how to write. Lack of perspective on one's own work is what kills most internet writers dreams and being in contact with the crime writing community, I have not only gained that said perspective, but I have learned a lot about how to write stories too. Of course, I faced rejection like everybody but I developed an inner-sensor now that tells me whenever my stories are good enough or not to send out. Since then, I have been able to find a home to whatever I write. That's a great confidence boost. I can now sit behind the computer, hammer down words and trust my judgment. I've been writing a novella for the past few weeks and it's been going very well.

I've asked two people already about their workshop experiences and if whether or not I should submit material to one of those. I've had two very different opinions. On one side, I've been warned about the disgruntled, frustrated writers who are prowling for dreams to crush in workshops. That it can get really unproductive and confusing at times. On the other hand, another writer told me how she met one of the best beta-readers in there and I'm telling myself, isn't all the negativity and the fuss all good if you find one good person you can trust? It's a seducing though. But I have good beta-readers I trust already. People who are giving me constructive criticism. Now that I have a little bit of confidence and things are rolling forward, would I benefit from workshopping my material? Would I benefit from unsolicited criticism? Is there something I don't see in this? At the point I'm at, is it going to help me go further or waste my time. 

See, the more I evolve in writing (because I do feel I've been evolving in the craft this year), the more I find that success come from within. You have to put yourself and your stories in tune with the publishing industry. Nobody is this unsung genius that will be discovered in a social event (or ALMOST nobody). It's up to you to work hard until your fiction is up to par with publishing standards.  That's why I like doing my own readings on creative writing. So Internet. You omniscient source of wisdom. Is there something I don't see in workshops. I've never been in one. It looks like a bad idea for me, but I'm opened to it now that it's a possibility for me.

* I hate saying "writers" like I was part of a highly selective club. Writers of the Internet is probably the least selective club in the history of everything.

Movie Review : The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

Country:

USA

Recognizable Faces:

Robert Pattinson
Kristen Stewart
Taylor Lautner
Billy Burke

Directed By: 

Bill Condon

In true adventurer spirit, I like to explore the heart of a subject. That is especially true if it's something I have taken a stance against in public *. But in true fearless spirit of intellectual exploration, I have brought a set of tools to help myself fight the need to violently seizure and bang my head against the floor from poor storytelling. A good handheld game is a necessity when watching shitty movies and let me tell you dear readers, I have found the holy grail of handheld video games. The INFINITE JEST of gaming (the movie within the book, not the book itself). Something so addictive, the only thing you will want to do until your body gives up on you is to play, play, play and play. I was playing TEMPLE RUN two hours after that movie was over **.

The premise is simple and yet so racist it's actually funny. You have stolen a golden monkey from a temple full of angry demon monkey on an unhealthy mixture of steroids and ephedrine and now, you have to run for your life. Of course you're a white guy (at least, in the beginning you are), slighly reminiscent of a British explorer who screwed up bad. You're never going to win, because the temple has you like Bangkok has the cast of THE HANGOVER PART II. What you need to do is to run as far as you can and collect as many coins as you can, so next time you can run further and collect more coins. A sisyphean task put in such a nightmarish context, you might just be in hell already. Has Guy the Explorer already died? Is it his eternal punishment to run away from these damn monkeys again and again? So much suspense***.

The design of TEMPLE RUN is brilliant in its simplicity. The aesthetic will remind you of the most frantic levels in CRASH BANDICOOT, where you have to run away form an impending danger (a rolling boulder or something like that) to the end of the level. But here you don't run to a safe place and it keeps going faster and faster. If the premise borrows heavily from UNCHARTED, this is another idea that takes elements from a Naughty Dog title, but it's all good because it's a quality product. The high-score oriented gaming is a pleasant throwback to the Atari days where what mattered more than anything was to beat the crap out of your friend's score. It gives an old school charm to it and heightens the tension. I talked some mean trash about TEMPLE RUN scores since I started playing. I know it's not an original idea for iPhone games, but it's implemented very well here. This might  be the DONKEY KONG of smart phone games ****.

In a market where it's the wild west, like iPhone gaming, the game with lasting appeal are rare. There's a LOT of things programmed in a basement, sold for 99 cents, who are cheap ripoff of flat-out boring game. TEMPLE RUN is the next link of the chain ANGRY BIRDS and TINY WINGS have started. It's simpler than BIRDS, but its graphics are more impressive (3D). That might be the only drawback of an otherwise great game. You can't play for short stretches. It's neurologically impossible. You will play for at least an hour and it will drain the hell out of your battery. So make it count. Whenere you play the RUN, make sure you're sitting comfortably and that you're ready to kill your best score dead. Great game. An achievement in casual handheld gaming*****.

SCORE: 94%******

 * This is not true. I walked in the living room and the movie was playing. Caught in a social situation, I didn't want to be a savage, so I sat down and watched the goddamn thing. Or almost. 

**  It would be more faire to say that I heard BREAKING DAWN more than I watched it. In both case, permanent damage to my intellect was made.

*** I'm not sure I got the core of BREAKING DAWN, but I think it's about Bella being pregnant with a demon baby. There is this mesmerizing scene where Edward gives her a pile of shit because the baby is destroying her and instead of throwing dishes at him like a normal girl would, she goes to see Jacob and says: "I feel complete with you". What the fuck does that even mean? Talk about being confusing for a poor hormone driven werewolf. Plus, can somebody educate me on the biology of dead people? How are they supposed to procreate? Can they even get boners?

**** And c'mon. Only a self-righteous turd would refuse to change Bella into a fucking vampire. I'm sure he does that "purity" routine only so she can die and he can be miserable for another hundred years before falling in love with another ordinary looking seventeen years old and treat her like shit. Not the most feminist stuff ever written here.

***** Yes, Edwards gives birth to his troglodyte child with his TEETH. It's not an urban legend. Director Bill Condon makes it horribly sensual too. And it's only sensual for Edward as Bella is bleeding out in the meantime. What the fuck is wrong with people?

***** 0%. Fuck this movie. It could have used a Prozac Tooth Fairy for its characters.

Ten Literary People on the Web that you Absolutely Need to Know

Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain.

The great thing about the web is that its a never-ending source of hidden treasures. It's also renewable. You won't be done discovering the marvels is has to offer and another layer of equally great people, sites or sources of information. Today, since I don't have anything constructive to say about myself, I'll introduce you to ten of my favorite literary people on the internet. A writer never has enough interesting people to hang around and after I'm done with this post you will want them hanging around you too.

Jed Ayres: One of the mad geniuses of crime and the mind behind the Noir at the Bar public readings (who are now all over the United States). Two of his short stories, A FUCKLOAD OF SCOTCH TAPE and VISCOSITY are being adapted to film right now and will hopefully give him the spotlight he deserves. His world is full of hairy biker-types and awesomely violent people in general. If I had half of Jed's creativity, my head would explode. He blogs at Hardboiled Wonderland.

Ingrid: The three girls behind The Blue Bookcase are awesome, but I have a weak spot for Ingrid for she's the female Rambo of book reviewers. She reviews books from the likes of Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich and Cormac McCarthy (This particular book), works that are often avoided by book reviewers. Her eyes probably bleed from the intellectual effort sometimes, but that's what puts her ahead. She's one of the only reviewers I never miss.

Allan Guthrie: If crime fiction is nearing another golden age, it's because of people like Allan. He's a bestselling writer (seriously, try BYE BYE BABY), a successful agent and an ePublisher all at once. I suspect Allan has eight pair of arms, six brains and needs about twenty minutes of sleep a night to for optimal functioning. If you're looking for new writers that will blow your mind, visit his publishing company's website, Blasted Heath. Unlike major publishers, Allan and his partner Kyle McRae don't bother with anything but great writing.

Brian Lindenmuth: If you're not closely involved with the development of the crime fiction scene, you might have overlooked Brian, because he's the quiet type. I've been working for him at Spinetingler Magazine for a few months now and I still find him mysterious. What you have to know is that he's the driving force behind Snubnose Press, who brought me AMAZING readings in the last few months. They are a small, fearless unit who aren't scared to take risks with their publications. 

Ellen Rhuddy: If Ingrid is the Rambo of female book reviewers, Ellen is the Indiana Jones. I have to admit, sometimes her blog, FAT BOOKS AND THIN WOMEN, intimidates the shit out of me. Especially her Long Reads Wednesday which always triggers deep and involving discussions. While she's more book-focused than me, I'd say she's more of a cultural blogger. FBATW is the closest thing to Dead End Follies on the web. If you like my place, you WILL like hers.

David Cranmer: Beat to a Pulp Publishing is a fascinating animal. Unlike other pulp venues, it doesn't focus only on crime fiction and extremely violent stuff. BTAP (for the initiates) captures the whole bouquet of Men's Adventure Magazines. Noir, Hardboiled, Westerns, Science-Fiction or straight up adventure, David only publishes the wildest, most original stuff. He made a name for himself to only accept the highest quality work and it shows because both his web sites and his books rock.

Craig Clevenger: Some of you might know him already, some might not. He had impressive success already with his novel THE CONTORTIONIST'S HANDBOOK. When Lit Reactor came alive last Fall, I found a new place to spend hours on. They had the best literary news and the best writing advice pieces on the internet. More often than not, I found myself reading Clevenger's pieces, which I found incredibly precise and helpful. He's my favorite writing-advice person next to Donald Maass (and you know me. I don't have many writing-advice people I like). He's a regular contributor to Lit Reactor and you can find his essays here.

Jennifer Hillier: She's 1) a great writer and 2) runs a blog you want to follow if you're looking to get in the business yourself and have two cents of perspective on what you do. Th best part of it is that Jennifer is not even awar of how valuable her work is to unpublished writers. On The Serial Killer Files, she chronicled her journey from total unknown to big six published writer in diary-style entries. If you're looking to succeed with your pen and have a mind of your own, you might understand that there is PRECIOUS INSIGHT to be picked up there. Like I said, the best part is that it's 100% candid.

Vincent Zandri: This is a writer with a huge cultural importance that will be understood better as time goes on. On his blog The Vincent Zandri Vox, he chronicles his fall from grace as a big six author and his reinvention through eBooks, small time publishing companies and ultimately up to a deal with Thomas & Mercer, Amazon's publishing company. Vincent Zandri beat the publishing game and therefore his online presence is a testament to the fact that ePublishing IS a revolution and that you can use its elements to succeed as long as you stay smart. Plus, his posts have a huge motivational value.

Kent Gowran: With his colleagues Sabrina Ogden and Ron Earl Phillips, he created Shotgun Honey, an eZine that takes more and more of an important place as months go by. Its peculiar format (700 words and less), makes it somewhat of a samples-bar of crime fiction. I've became fan of so many authors that were published there, it's not even funny. On top of that, Kent is one of the most original writers in hardboiled fiction, but he's very modest about that, so you'll have to seek it. If you're interested, they are listed on his personal site. I can't recommend it enough as he's one of my favorite short story writers.

Book Review : Heath Lowrance - Miles to Little Ridge

Country: USA

Genre: Western

Pages: 106 kb (eOriginal)

Buy It Here

He stepped in, and a man in a shabby, food-stained tuxedo scurried up to him. "We don't serve Negros or Indians here," he said. bending his head at a sign in the door. "You do now", Miles said.

A long, long time ago, in a society far, far away, it was considered all right for men to read. There even was a fiction market for them. Stories you could read in the bus, on the johns or during your break at work, without having to figure out the coming-of-age of some college kid formatted in sixty pages chapters. That's right, the pulp fiction era. David Cranmer, the one-man army behind Beat To A Pulp Publishing*, is one of the rare souls who work at the second coming of this golden era. His latest move was to franchise his Western characters Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles**. Interesting choice if there was one, he entrusted the ever busy Heath Lowrance with the responsibility of giving Gideon Miles his first stand-alone work, titled MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE. Two household names in pulp fiction, one character I really, really like, so how could anything go wrong?

Well, it doesn't. It's as simple as that. I've never shied away from the fact that I liked Gideon Miles more than Cash Laramie and I'm happy Heath Lowrance saw the same thing I did in this character. U.S Marshall Gideon Miles is on the job again, having to retrieve a man in the town of Little Ridge to bring him to justice. Being a U.S Marshall wasn't an easy job back then (it still isn't today!) and it was even worse for a black man. But Gideon Miles is cut from a special mold. He's no hero, but he's the most relentless bastard you will find. Little Ridge is not ready to see a black man tie up convicted criminal Edward Gandy and leave with him in the sunset. He's now one of their upstanding citizens and Little Ridge protects its own. So Miles is on his own against a city, who shelters a few distant memories from his own past. Not the pleasant type of memories, that is.

Here's what I like so much about Miles. He's a dedicated lawman and yet by nature he's made to be one of the greatest boogeyman of this era. He's black. And does this ever piss him off. What I thought Lowrance nailed particularly well here, is the feeling that Little Ridge is a warm and welcoming place for its own. Miles is seen as an intruder on both accounts. Because of the color of his skin and also because of his job. Little Ridge comes alive and tries to extract Miles like a virus. Lowrance used his knack for sharp dialogue to picture Miles and his crankiest, most efficient and yet so damn polite about everything. The U.S Marshall doesn't take shit from anybody, not even the most well-meaning asshole. The job's the job and it's hard enough for a black man to make it in the world, nobody's going to get in the way of things. He leads by the example like Martin Luther King did a hundred years later, except that Miles shoots people sometimes. Lowrance nailed that something in his voice that underlines this quirk.

"Sheriff," Miles said. "I'm not going to argue with you. I've just ridden three hundred miles. I'm tired, I'm hungry and I'm in no mood. You're going to tell me where to find Gandy, and you're going to do it with a smile on your face, because you're just happy as hell to help. I'm going to ask you one more time. Where is Edward Gandy?"

MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE is a novella, so it's rather short. I love that the eBooks bring back this almost-forgotten literary form. Lowrance does a good job at keeping his aim honest, but accurate. It reads like a short story, but its chapters structure and its dual storyline (Gandy's extraction/Miles' old friends) makes it richer and more complex than the short story form would have allowed. There is not a word wasted or misplaced to MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE. It's not easy to accomplish in longer forms. It's some of Heath Lowrance's best work. It's not the most visceral or emotional story, but it doesn't aim at being so. MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE exposes some of the sneakiest dangers a lawman had to face back then. Even if you hate Westerns with a gut-wrenching passion, MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE will make you like them.

FOUR STARS

*This is not true, I wrote it because it sounded cool and it illustrated the amount of work the man chomps down on a daily basis very well. I do know he receives help from Scott Parker, among others.

** Don't forget he wrote those under the pseudonym of Edward A. Grainger. I reviewed both short stories collections here and here.

Immortal Technique - Rich Man's World

Everybody's favorite intellectual-rapper-with-a-violent-quirk is back with a new record. If you don't know who Immortal Technique is already, the man is a paramount of artistic integrity with a foul mouth, a brain and a chip on his shoulder. He has a better flow than most rappers I've ever came across and his writing talent is second to none. He refused the proverbial mountain of money from the best record labels, in order to keep artistic direction of what he does and guess what? He makes a good living from it. His albums sell in six-digit numbers and his music spreads over the internet faster than a virus with a pair of boobs. Google him, his story is very interesting and inspirational to any artist. I gave only one listen to his new album THE MARTYR, but RICH MAN'S WORLD struck me as particularly groovy and ferocious. Check it out.

Immortal Technique - RICH MAN'S WORLD

You get up and howl about America and democracy
There is no America, there is no democracy
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies
The world is a college of corporations
Inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business
The world is a business and I have chosen you to preach this evangel

For all my free market, health care-robbing
Stock-stealing, retirement fund fuckin’-with niggas
Fuck your little credit card-scamming, jewelry-stealing
Crack-selling, liquor store-robbing, motherfuckers
Shout out to the homies Carnegie, OG Willy Randolph Hearst
Farouk, Rockefeller – the real Rockefeller
My main bitch Leona, pour out a little Louis the 13th
Scott Rothstein, Jack Abramoff, hold ya head
My Rothschild niggas…
LET’S GET THIS MONEY!

I spend my day pairin’ America overseas
Pension for the workers, nigga please
Embezzlement etiquette, private settlement
I’m better with confederate rhetoric
From my mansion in Connecticut
Foreclose, evict hoes out of tenement
I twist words like a speech impediment
I hope you got good credit, bitch
If not, better get a new job with benefits
While I play golf with niggas I get cheddar with
New money buys brand new carats
My old money bought your rich grandparents
You got grills in your mouth, I ain’t mad at ya
I own every goldmine in South Africa
Thanks, baby, you made me a billion
Plus I own a building for each one of my children’s children, that’s the shit
Snort coke in the whip, Miss USA suckin’ my dick
Yeah, what! Fuck the law cause real jail is for suckas
I go to country club prison, you dumb motherfuckers
(I am the 1 percent, fuckin’ bitch!)

You know my CEO, corporate steeze, please
Overthrow governments overseas in a breeze
Politicians in my pockets for a few hundred Gs
So if I’m ever in court, my assets will never freeze

I got a job and a house and a bank account
When I’m out, I doubt that’s something you can say
And if not then I’ll fake death like Kenneth Lay
Make money everyday the world burns on its axis
While y’all struggling to pay taxes
I’m getting my money the fastest
Memos and faxes, shredded up documents
Slush funds through the corrupt continents
But they don’t want me indicted
Cause they don’t want my dirty laundry aired when I’d fight it
Don’t get my lawyers excited
Cause what good is a law if you can’t rewrite it
I got CIA, traitors
Dictators, so fuck y’all whistleblowers and haters (SHEEEEEEIIIIITTT!)
All of this money from Al-Qaeda
In the bank 9/11 widows go to later
Capitalism’s who I pray to, fuck the state of the world
Money talks so what the fuck I need to say to ya girl
(I don’t pay them to fuck! I pay them to leave!)

You know my CEO, corporate steeze, greed
I treat countries like the IMF, down on your knees
Real gangstas run the world, fuck what you believe
I’ll cut down a forest while you niggas burnin’ some trees
I’ll get your family murdered for a couple of Gs
Cause your working class money ain’t fucking with me
You think rappers are rich cause of songs you heard
My labels make the money and have them rap the fucking words

Yacht in the ocean, coastin’ with the sails out
Hey America, thanks for the bailouts
I made off with the Banco Ambrosiano
Got away scot-free like Il Vaticano
Activists act a bitch, get mad at me
Cause of my tax-free charity
80 percent to the staff and company
And 20 percent to the homeless and hungry
The country gotta pay the Fed Reserve
Kick back to the banksters, haven’t you learned
You protest cops or patrols on the street
But I bought city hall so I own the police
E-mail, Facebook, and the shit you tweet
All the phone companies, so I heard you speakin’
My suggestion is your correction
No elections, sex with no affection
No invention of benefit to world of man
Will exist till I got the money in my hand
World Bank interest rate damn rape on the spot
But I’m gangsta, you gon’ take my money like it or not
(I got your country in my pocket, motherfucker!)

You know my CEO, masonic steeze, cheese
Only little people pay all these taxes and fees
Since you were born we control what you watch and you read
And pretty soon we’re gonna own the fuckin’ air that you breathe
I take what I want, fucker, I don’t have to say please
I convince you that it’s good for you, take it and leave
You think president’s are a face of a nation
I put ‘em all way off, end of the conversation

Remember When I Promised To Kill You Last? I Lied.

My piece PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY has went live on Shotgun Honey this week. To my great pleasure, the piece was well received and even was my second story this year to feature in the Story365 challenge after UNDER THE GAZE OF SATURN. Thanks to Johnny Shaw and Patti Abbott for selecting my stories. But it's not the only cool thing that happened this week, involving Shotgun Honey. Peter Farris has published yesterday the second part of his DAY TRADERS stories, shorts inspired from Raymond Pettibon's art. Pettibon is a legendary American artist and was the art director of Black Flag's DIY publicity campaign. You can read the first part of THE DAY TRADERS here. Do it, it's really good. Also, Peter is releasing his first novel in May, LAST CALL FOR THE LIVING. I thought you might want to check it out.

I also wanted to mention, last week on THRILLERS, KILLERS n' CHILLERS (also known as TKnC), there was a scandal I wanted to address here. Richard Godwin's story BATTLE FOR THE LAUGHING CITY has been targeted by ill-intentioned fundamentalists that called it garbage because of its over-the-top violence and sexual content. It's the second time something like this happens at TKnC. The first time, the story was pulled for being ''offending'' but this time the editors stood strong and busted the offended user who posted under many aliases to give credibility to his point. I thought Richard's story was great. He has his own peculiar way of portraying extreme content. If you don't like what you read, don't give it your readership. It's the most effective thing you can do. Don't try and censor everybody, you will only end up making people angry.  Richard also has a novel coming up soon, titled MR. GLAMOUR

Expect a leap in science-fiction in the next few weeks here as I will review Michael Offutt's debut novel SLIPSTREAM , which I started already and is pretty wild. I will give it priority as soon as I'm done with DOG SOLDIERS, so expect a review in the next two or three weeks. It's very good, but it's rather hard sci-fi. You can't leave your brain somewhere else reading this. But you know me, I can appreciate that. I will also review Beat To A Pulp Publishing's A RIP THROUGH TIME. As it's been hinted on Twitter, there is more of Simon Rip to come and honestly, Chad Eagleton and David Cranmer working together? I have to check this out. 

Oh yeah...I sat through TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN Pt. 1 (or something along these lines) yesterday. To be honest, I heard the movie more than I watched it, because I was busy playing the slightly racist and oh-so-addictive TEMPLE RUN. Seriously, think the most frantic levels from Crash Bandicoot, rendered to you on your iPhone, with only goal is to get a high score. I might give you my opinions on BREAKING DAWN this week or I may not. You might expect it, but it was somewhere in between appalling and funny.

I have three stories that are supposed to come out in the next weeks or so. Keep an eye out for them too. I'll post links here, of course.

That is all for today. 

Book Review : Chuck Wendig - Blackbirds (2012)

Country: USA

Genre: Urban Fantasy/Crime

Pages: 288


*This is coming out in April. You can pre-order this bad boy here*

“OK. Calm down,” he says, putting his hands out.

Miriam grits her teeth. “That’s the worst thing you can say to somebody who’s not calm. It’s just gas on a fire, Louis.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not...trained in this.”

This? He means dealing with crazy people. Which she is, probably.

“I’m not trained in being this way, either” Though, she thinks, I’m getting better with it. Week by week, month by month, year by bloody year. One day, it’ll be water off a duck’s back.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“That’s the multi-million dollar question.”

I’m always suspicious of people with writing advice blogs. It’s because most of them are worthless. They are run by people who love to talk about writing more than writing in itself. You can see that in the generic nature of their advice. One of the reasons why Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds gained my readership, it’s because it’s a life raft in a dark sea of lonely people with demented dreams of literary grandeur. The man wrote a lot and it shows beyond his Amazon writer page. His writing advice is precise and shaped by his knowledge of the battlefield. Understandably, I was very curious to see what he could deliver. I got my hands on an ARC of his upcoming novel BLACKBIRDS and let me tell you, dear readers. Chuck Wendig is not all talk. The man writes fiction like a cokehead drives a motorcycle. Lean, mean and obscene, as James Ellroy would say.

Miram Black is a young woman, damaged by an unlikely curse. If she touches people skin to skin, she will see how they die. On a long enough time period, you see a lot of deaths. A lot of fucked up things and the worst part is that you can’t prevent them. Fate is a crippling force. So Miriam is drifting along, doing con jobs and hating life in general, until she meets Louis. A nice trucker who picked her up after a hard day. When they touch, she has a horrible vision. Louis is going to be murdered in a few weeks, while calling her name. Miriam sees a lot of deaths. So much that she has given up on trying to save anybody, but seeing someone she actually likes being murdered motivates her to try her luck one more time against fate.

Mark my words. Miriam Black is going to make Chuck Wendig a very wealthy man. BLACKBIRDS is a high-octane, action packed novel that will leave in a pitiful state to work, after a night of frenzied reading. It is one of the most well-plotted and well-paced novels I have read and I read an industrial number of novels every year. What Wendig understands that most novelists don’t is that pacing and plotting are intimately linked. So whenever there’s a high action scene, it’s not just a bunch of actions crammed together, but it’s delivered with great atmosphere and precise detail that makes the scene memorable. There are many plot twists to BLACKBIRDS who will make you stand up and yell “OH MY FUCKING GOOOOOOD. NO WAY” but they are strategically placed in the story, so you never know when you’ll be slapped across the face. Keeps a reader tense, believe me. All in all, it’s a crazy story I could very well see on film in the next few years.

“No,” she seethes, “I look like I do heroin - and I don’t do that either. I have all my teeth and I don’t smell like cat piss, so don’t think I’m some basehead tweaker fuckface.”

Isn’t it a little poetic? Another trait that puts Wendig ahead of the competition is his peculiar use of language. Profanity being a category if its own. It’s safe to call BLACKBIRDS a foul-mouthed novel in general, but Wendig does it with so much style and fervor that it adds a special spicy flavor to it. Not everybody will like this, but I enjoyed it. I do have a few complaints with BLACKBIRDS because I’m a bit of a nitpicky bastard (OK, I totally am nitpicky). Some of the characters were a little cliché. The baddies for example. Not all of them, but most of them were you know, generic baddies with a bar code on their forehead. * It was a little bit of a nagging issue for me, but the story was so strong in general and Miriam such a driving force with her complex inner life (illustrated very creatively by Wendig) that I didn’t care much. It does so many things right that I can overlook the little things it did wrong.

I have a lot of things to say about this, don’t I? I can’t close this review without slipping a word about the themes in BLACKBIRDS. I know I’m discussing the technical merit of this novel a lot, but technique is nothing without a sense of purpose. It’s one thing to have a plot like a chessboard, but it’s the thinking behind the moving pieces that make the game great. While remaining classic in its form, doesn’t give into the good vs evil duality that’s often used in supernatural, you have something a lot less obvious and a lot deeper. Downtrodden loser versus fate. Loser versus luck. It seems evident said like that, but someone who loses a lot defines himself by his very lack of luck (and Miriam IS one unlucky girl). Having to challenge fate is not only immaterial, but it’s a fight against yourself. Very interesting dynamic behind the discourse of BLACKBIRDS. It's also rather new, in this particular genre.

I might be wrong, but knowing Chuck Wendig has experience in tabletop roleplaying games and in their design, I thought it showed. Having experience as a game master myself, I thought the plot of BLACKBIRDS had this nutty quality of a RPG where you have to be wild, interesting and coherent, episode after episode. I think that’s the moving power behind this terrific story. Read it if you like supernatural stories. Read it if you DON’T like supernatural stories (yeah, I know. I just said that). Read it if you like good novels because BLACKBIRDS is a great one.

FOUR STARS**

* To be fair, it could be stylistically explainable.

** But it flirts with the five.

Movie Review : The Hangover Part II (2011)

Country:

USA

Recognizable Faces:

Bradley Cooper
Ed Helms
Zach Galifianakis
Justin Bartha
Ken Jeong
Paul Giamatti
Jeffrey Tambor

Directed By:

Todd Phillips

Cult movies aren't always the easiest nut to crack. I reviewed the first HANGOVER in 2010 and I admit I didn't get its beauty at the time. It took me multiple viewings to start anticipating the cool moments and say the say the dialog lines along with the characters. It would be a whole other movie if I had to watch it again. I did the same thing with THE BIG LEBOWSKI a few years back. Not that the two movies are in the same league, but you get the idea. I ended up racking around a hundred viewings of the Coen brothers' godly comedy. So I watched THE HANGOVER PART II with a knife jacked in-between my teeth, expecting Phil, Allan and Stu to wreak some serious havoc in Thailand, a country that embraced chaos and integrated it to its economy a long time ago. Was I right to be so pumped up about this? Somewhat. If you use the same idea twice, in a different setting, it's not going to have the freshness and the spontaneity of the first time. THE HANGOVER PART II is a recycled product, so it does have a certain organic charm.

 It's Stu's (Ed Helms) turn to get married this time. Not with the crazy, controlling chick he was engaged to in the first, but to a quiet and submissive Asian woman named Lauren (Jamie Chung). He makes an effort to avoid what happened to them in Vegas a few years back, by organizing a bachelor's brunch on a Sunday morning, much to Doug (Bartha) and Phil (Cooper)'s dismay. They leave for Thailand soon after, but not before Doug convinces Stu to invite his quirky brother-in-law Alan (Galifianakis) who was responsible for all the trouble in the first movie, having given roofies to the group. The wedding celebrations are well underway and only a beer on the beach, in between friends separate them from the actual ceremony. The next morning, they wake up in a hotel in Bangkok, just like last time and Teddy, Lauren's little brother, is missing. Oh yeah his cutoff finger is in the room with them.

I have to give it to Todd Phillips and his team of screenwriters, they milk the hell out of the panorama of depravity Bangkok has to offer. Superposed to the existing history in between the three protagonists, you have room for many, many different funny situations. The mercurial Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) is also back and still has somewhat of a defining part in the story. My favorite scene, I think was at the pre-wedding dinner where Lauren's dad compares his about to be son-in-law to plain rice and ensues this weird clash with Alan, who tries to claim the merits of his friends in his own peculiar way. The relationship between Stu and his father-in-law has some of the biggest comedic elements of the movie, but it's not exploited very much. 

Everything is turned up a notch in THE HANGOVER PART II. They tried to make it more intense, funnier, darker also to a certain extent. On some aspects it works, on others not so much. Many elements of the first HANGOVER were so perfectly on pitch that making them just a little harder is sometimes trying too hard. The Mr. Chow storyline for example, while wonderfully random in the first, is really out of tune with the characters' problems this time around. Overall, THE HANGOVER PART II is good, but not as funny and refreshing as the first movie. The problem is not the actors, they are as great and energetic as ever (Bradley Cooper can act a little. He keeps surprising me). The problem lies in the screenwriting, which isn't as well developed as it should've been. It feels rushed and unpolished at times. It's still a good movie. I had my fair share of laughs, so I don't complain but I hope they won't stretch the joke to a third and a fourth film.

SCORE: 77%

Book Review : McDroll - Kick It Together (2012)

Country: Scotland

Genre: Crime/Drama

Pages: 168 kb (eOriginal)


Buy It Here

I make a vegetable broth with the innards. Now I know people would think I'm a little old fashioned but it's just more protein that usually gets wasted. Young women today don't like to think that meat was once an animal at all...

It wasn't long before at TrestleGate survivor was back to his feet. McDroll strikes me as someone who understood what to do with the proverbial hot potato that is the one dollar eBook. Don't be cheap, but don't give the readers too much. Give them a sample of what you can do. KICK IT TOGETHER, formerly two five stories volumes named KICK IT and KICK IT AGAIN, is still very short at ten stories, but it's straight to the point at showing what McDroll is all about. It's as long as a novella maybe (I'd say sixty to eighty pages) of kick-ass and oh-so-scottish short stories. The best part in this is that it's only one freakin' buck.

The best story of the collection (and one of the best shorts I've read this year) is titled DROWNING, where a support for learning teacher named Kirsty is having extreme difficulty to face her daily obligations. Work has become a black hole of pain and dread for her and there's no end in sight. It's a very accurate story that portrays the throes of depression without the usual obvious signs: pills, alcohol, explicit self-destructive behavior, doctors, concerned relatives. Not only it's accurate because McDroll is able to write it in Kirsty's behavior, but also because depressed people tend to isolate themselves and keep everything within. It's borderline noir* and it's written with a very acute sensibility. Don't be surprised to see this story around for the Dead End Follies Awards at the end of this year. Here's an extract:

Being the "Support for Learning" teacher was meant to be a key post within the school but Kirsty knew that her "colleagues" saw her as a failure, not able to hack having her own class, not able to deal with behavior issues, not able to get her finger out and come in prepared every day. In other words lazy. So she had been shunted out of the classroom and now sat with the "numpty" kids  who still couldn't read and write, the kids who were still struggling to order to 20 even though they had been at school for six years.

There are also the Gemma Dixon stories, who have a pivotal place in this collection. Gemma is McDroll's recurring character. A woman in the harsh and very masculine word of police. I like her a lot, because she's very feminine but not overly sassy and over-the-top. She acts like one of the boys, but her feminine sensibility is leaking sometimes, like sun through the planks of a barn. Those moments are delicious. It's those human moments that put all the fun in reading McDroll, those moments where truth comes out even if the protagonists are struggling to keep a facade. Not many writers do this well and McDroll does it with great attention to detail.

I was a little lost throughout some of the stories. Not that they were confusing or anything, but McDroll herself admits that she loves to write about Scotland a lot and it shows. Some of the stories are you know, have a very Scottish feel to it. While I don't mind her use of vernacular*, some stories showed such a strong sense of place that I thought there were thinks that I didn't get. Anyway, it didn't detract from the fact that those ten stories for only one buck are highway robbery. Not every story is straight-up crime, but most of them are. McDroll is at her best when she handles those damaged protagonists of hers, who were only just a little more human than the people they live around. Chalk her up as another interesting author from Scotland.

THREE STARS

*It's a little too emotional to be noir, but really who cares? It's just a really good story.

** I love it when she uses the word "wee"

Hip to be Square on Valentine's Day

Fuck Valentine's Day. There, I said it. I know this is going to make me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's next to Mother's Day and Father's Day for economically driven holidays and don't tell me it's not. Greeting Cards companies, florists, restaurants and chocolate factories would beg to differ. I was miserable on Valentine's Day when single, I was miserable on Valentine's day in couple and I thank Baphomet every year that I have landed on a safe shore, where it's a holiday devoid of any meaning as much for Josie than it is for me.

 If you love someone, you should celebrate it every day. Easier said than done, I know. But worst come to worst, you can celebrate your feelings for that person on her birthday (meaning "I'm happy you were born") or on the day of your first date, something like that (meaning "I'm happy I met you"). So what would Valentine's Day mean? "I'm happy I have feelings for you"? You should be happy to have feelings for your partner, you rude bastard. No, like most representations of love in the media, Valentine's Day doesn't exactly represent love, but desire. If you're single, it tells you "Tell her your feelings and score tonight" and if you're already in couple it tells you "Just buy her something, man. You'll get some tonight". It's the promise of something tangible. 

Sex.

The world turned to a huge beer commercial sometime ago. The definition of happiness is to hit the club, drink some ale with your buddies, spot the evanescent, glowing chick on the dance floor and go get some. Have you ever noticed those commercials always end on a flirty look and in the best case scenario, a flirty dance move or even a kiss. You never know what's going on after. Some would argue it's X Rated, but allow me to say I will be very impressed and consider buy a lot of beer from the company that has a commercial that shows the morning after that "wild night at the bar", instead of the night itself. If you can sell me beer with the truth, you deserve my money.

Because you know what? I've been there, I done that and goddamn. I don't get it. It's the most dreadful life routine one can have. You bust your balls all week long for a few hundred dollars. You stay disciplined, you go to bed early, you work out, take care of the details like perfume or antiperspirant and all of that for one or two nights where you will spend your hard earned cash in booze and hope for sex. Or hope for some kind of life-affirming revelation that you could read in the body curves of a drunk girl. The sense of independence and freedom I felt living that lifestyle lasted for as long as one of those Budweiser commercials that features Beach Volleyball.

I have been a lean, mean monogamous machine for the last five years and it's been nothing but fucking awesome. Seriously guys, living with someone who loves you, understands you and wants the best for you, beats any mirage a beer commercial can cast on your poor little damned soul. In five years with Josie I have: traveled to the other end of the continent, finally visited New York, picked up writing as a potential career path (hence this blog. No Josie, no Dead End Follies), gained a better sense of who I am and how I want people to perceive me and opened up to a world outside of my narrow, self-righteous blinders in general. Would I trade that for a booze-soaked night of party and sex? No. Not for ten and not for a hundred either.

It's not just the self-improvement that's awesome. Being monogamous has a whole array of non-negligible benefits. You go home and you have someone to talk to. Who cares about how your day has went. Somebody who is not your mother and won't give you crap about how you need to save money, get a better job, get a property, etc. You eat better*, you save more money, you get out more and you do things you would have never done on your own, because your little self is to busy surfing the couch, lost in his mind. 

Finding Josie is the best thing that ever happened to me. Being with her is the best decision I have ever taken in my life. For Valentine's Day, I can only wish you to find a better-half who cares about you as much as you will care about her. In life, you reap what you sow, so stop thinking about your dick, go out in the world and care about somebody else as hard as you can. Screw the beer commercial mentality and invest yourself in somebody else that you think is worth a shot. I don't care if you find me mushy this morning. Monogamy rocks when you put your shoulder into it. Josie, I love you. I will not take you out of Valetine's Day this year, but I will take you out one random day during the year, just because. There will be less people in the restaurant, the roses at the florist will look (and smell) better, this will be more fun. 

On those words, I'm going back to Huey Lewis and the News and a bottle of Bourbon...

I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around
But I couldn't take the punishment, and had to settle down
Now I'm playing it real straight, and yes I cut my hair
You might think I'm crazy, but I don't even caaaaaaaaaaare....






* People in their early twenties might roll their eyes, but at you go through the wild jungle of your twenties, you will see people you know and love get disgustingly fat and happy about it. Remaining able to enter in your jeans in the morning will become important to you.

Book Review : R. Thomas Brown - Mayhem

Country: USA

Genre: Multiple

Pages: 152

Buy the eBook

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She began to scream from the depths of the soul that she had forgotten she possessed. I lifted my haze toward the stars and drank in the fear of the moment, and the freedom it brought.

MAYHEM is quite the fitting title for R. Thomas Brown's debut short story collection. He was always known to be a very eclectic writer and it makes absolute sense that his greatest hits reflects the scope of his ambition and talent. MAYHEM is a tornado of short, sharp stories that are meant to hurt you and broaden the spectrum of your perception. It tears everyday life out of its contexts and uses it as a weapon. My main complain when I review short stories collection is that it's now going anywhere precise. It's just a pile of stories that the author has put together without any particular purpose. MAYHEM doesn't suffer from that, despite that it has a wide array of genres. R. Thomas Brown writes about the wounds and the scars of peoples lives and he does it very well.

There are a few stories that hover above the average level of the collection and get my seal of excellence. THE HIT being my favorite of the lot. It's the most original hitman story I've read since Chris F. Holm's piece in PULP INK last year. Good, fresh hitman shorts are a rare bird. If you think of professional killers as these polite, cold-blooded type, you better think again because R. Thomas Brown's protagonist in THE HIT takes a vicious pleasure at his job. Don't get me wrong, the guy is cold-blooded, but think about him like a construction pro. Does his job and finds the little pleasures where he can. It's a brutal story and it's funny in every wrong way possible. Oh and it has a nice plot twist on top of the plot twist. So technically speaking, Mr. Brown is pretty sound and rather bold too.

The two other stories that crept under my skin were THE LESSON and A DIFFERENT COMMUNION. The first is one of those rare efforts I've seen from a write to get inside a psychopath's head and understand the logic of his thinking. It's very well achieved here as Brown illustrates the dichotomy in between "normal" and "normal for a psycho". The trap Brown doesn't fall into here is that his protagonist environment doesn't reflect his inner self. He's a psychopath that lives among healthy people in a seemingly healthy part of the world. That gives his actions infinitely more weight. A DIFFERENT COMMUNION is the story that is the best developed in the collection (the longest also, if I'm not mistaken). It illustrates the best in Brown's writing, protagonists who's lives are crumbling under the weight of their mistakes.

I waited while the kid told me his sob story about his imprisoned dad and how his mom was shacked up with some dude who paid for the house. I didn't care. The story kept going. One thing I knew is, the longer the story, the less the money.

It's sure that the fact that MAYHEM doesn't have a genre is particular is going to turn off some potential readers. The themes are very precise, but to classify this short story collection would be very difficult. Given that readers (and I'm including myself in this statement) have a tendency to select their readings by genre, it's going to hurt its popularity. But R. Thomas Brown is this kind of writer. He writes what's coming to him and is very little motivated by financial gain or popularity. What he writes best, in my honest opinion, is horror and it seems like it's coming to him more and more. After his novella MERCILESS PACT he released last year, he has HILL COUNTRY, coming up soon who seems to be written in the same vein. MAYHEM is tight and a lot of fun, but it's a little unfriendly to usage in its presentation. Read it though as it's going to give you a good sneak peak on an up-and-coming writer.

THREE STARS

Big Black - Kerosene

If you don't know Big Black, I don't exactly blame you but you're missing out. They were always too edgy (and really, in the REAL sense of edgy. Not bangs-and-leather-jacket edgy) and bold for the sensitive ears. Noise rock is an acquired taste. You might know their frontman Steve Albini, who is more known as a producer with an attitude and artistic intgrity (yeah, I know). He produced albums for the Pixies and did IN UTERO for Nirvana, which drove Geffen Records insane. That live video is a very good example of how intense they were on stage and how charismatic Albini could be on stage. Ideal to slip a little existential dread in your quiet Sunday.

Big Black - KEROSENE

I was born in this town
Live here my whole life
Probably come to die in this town
Live here my whole life
Never anything to do in this town
Live here my whole life
Never anything to do in this town
Live here my whole life
Probably learn to die in this town
Live here my whole life
Nothing to do, sit around at home
Sit around at home, stare at the walls
Stare at each other and wait till we die
Stare at each other and wait till we die
Probably come to die in this town
Live here my whole life
There's Kerosene around, something to do
There's Kerosene around, she's something to do
There's Kerosene around, she's something to do
There's Kerosene around, we'll find something to do
Kerosene around, she's something to do
Kerosene around, set me on fire
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire
Kerosene around, something to do
There's Kerosene around, find something to do
There's Kerosene around, find something to do
Kerosene around, find something to do
Kerosene around, she's something to do
Kerosene around, set me on fire
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire
Kerosene around, she's something to do
Kerosene around, now what do we do?
Jumped Kerosene, now what do we do?
Jumped Kerosene, now what do we do?
Kerosene around, nothing to do
Jumped Kerosene, now what do we do?
Never anything to do in this town
Never anything but jump Kerosene
Never anything to do in this town
Never anything
Jump Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire, Kerosene
Set me on fire