Telekinesis and Other Items for Your Consideration

I’m not sure how many people actually read this shit but I finished my second deployment last Friday. It feels good to be back on land. I’ve met a lot of new people and expanded my network. Some new short stories have been accepted for future publication and I sold all of the personal copies of my book. Things are good for the most part…

Hopefully, my second book A Lightbulb’s Lament will be coming out this month and I recently hit the studio to record my new music project Cabin Fever that is meant to be dark and lyrical. I’m excited for people to hear these tracks. They show a lot of growth.

Book trailers and music videos are being worked on at the moment. So be patient, a lot of craziness is about to happen.

And yes I know this post has nothing to do with telekinesis but it’s a dope picture and I hardly post photos of myself on this thing. Oh did I say thing, I meant lovely blog.

Here’s what I’m listening to at the moment. Let’s set a mood.

Guest Post: That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote (Book Review)

by Evelyn Platt

This collection of stories verges on the darkly surreal and deliciously deranged and is penned by the Australian author K.J. Bishop, who also brought us The Etched City. There are fables here, stories of post-apocalyptic worlds in which lunacy and reality collide and lurch off into other dimensions. That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote is filled with the unexpected, with magic and science fiction, and it makes a fascinating read.

Bishop’s previous work, The Etched City, is an urban fantasy about how magic can transform worlds and features a healer escaping a ruined country and seeking a new life out of old debris, with a killer for company. ‘Have you seen a split cranium, growing flowers like a window box? I saw that, a mere hour ago’ (Tor, 2004). The book gained Bishop recognition as one of Australia’s startlingly good new writers as well as winning her the William L. Crawford Award and two Ditmar Awards.

Mad Ancestor is fluid and vibrant and utterly compelling and features a story that was reprinted in The Weird, (Saving the Gleeful Horse), and surrealist tales such as We the Enclosed. Each story leaps into a different realm with great energy and is infused with wonderful, original writing.

Her short story The Love of Beauty can be found in Mad Ancestor and follows an artist’s journey through an otherworldly place, the Ravels, to meet a veiled lady who has asked him to paint her, but only if he has courage. Seaming, the artist, is afraid of this place, he thinks of childhood memories that scared him. He is a new man, articulate, sociable, educated, and interested in the human form and its defects. His journey leads him to a house on a hill, where a child in a circus costume answers the door, only to reveal herself to be an grotesque old woman. When Seaming meets the lady of the house and she removes her veil, he is completely unprepared for what he sees.

Bishop writes about beauty and the grotesque with an assured nature. She is inquisitive about the idiosyncrasies of the human form and its biological workings and this permeates her writing to bring us a fascinating, thought provoking read. Bishop plays on the traditional and transforms it into something that is not quite fantasy or science fiction, but somehow gives us the best of both. This is the New Weird genre at its finest.

New Weird

The New Weird movement began in the 1990s, with the introduction of niche anthologies for experimental science fiction, fantasy and horror. China Mieville became the icon for New Weird with his novel Perdido Street Station, set in an alternative London, and the genre has gone from strength to strength as new writers have emerged to grasp its form and focus on dissecting the reality of our world to immersing themselves in complete science fiction. New Weird is truly pioneering and it is bringing the previously stereotypical genres of fantasy, horror and science fiction to the forefront of exciting new writing.

Bishop writes New Weird with a very literary spin on it; her words flow like honey blossom tainted with poison. She pulls the reader into each world with a confidence that we believe and bewitches us with her fables. By mixing the traditional with the new, she entwines a rich tapestry of words together to create surprising, compelling universes and characters, many of them injected with themes of science and the human form.

Pushing Boundaries

In an interview for Weird Fiction, Bishop explained how she likes to explore neurotic and eccentric personalities, and ‘a deep experience of wonder’ in writing. She confesses to being inspired by Cook’s Chronicles of an Age of Darkness for its gritty and moral themes, which she uses in her stories, as well as drawing on myths and fairytales. The New Weird genre pushes writers to their boundaries to create experimental, often surreal stories that gain their audience’s attention. Their interest in science fiction is deep rooted and, in dissecting a moral universe, many find that an exploration of science complements their writing, particularly biology. With the wealth of material available to read online, researching this field is more accessible than ever for science fiction writers who are keen to push their boundaries and create alternate worlds and characters that are ultimately grounded in reality.

All Hail Hamgawd

The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone is the debut novella of bizarro author MP Johnson. A farm boy named Daryl Malone becomes attached to his pet pig and his father feels this bond is unnatural and slaughters the pig. Daryl takes the remaining meat and runs away from home and this is when shit hits the fan.

The ham still has a spark of life thanks to the boy’s love and becomes more powerful as the novella progresses. I don’t want to give away too much so I’ll leave it at that.

The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone is a fast paced, fun novella dripping with greasy bizarro goodness. I can’t wait to see what Johnson comes up with next. Pick the book up here. http://www.amazon.com/After-Life-Story-Pork-Knuckles-Malone/dp/0615772757/ref=la_B00BH7XF9I_1_2_title_0_main?ie=UTF8&qid=1367934155&sr=1-2

The Time of the Month

My bizarro short story “The Time of the Month” was recently published at The Mustache Factor. Special shout outs go out to editor extraordinaire Dustin Reade. It’s an oldie that I’ve been shopping around for years and one of my personal faves. I’m happy it’s finally found a home. Check it out here.

http://mustachefactor.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-time-of-month.html

Cities of Night (Book Review)

Cities of Night by Philip Nutman is a short story collection by the man known most for being a major part of the splatterpunk movement. Honestly, this is my first time reading Nutman despite loving hardcore horror. At first, I didn’t recognize the name so I dove into the book with no preconceptions which was a good thing. I was pleasantly surprised as I burned through story after story full of crisp, lyrical prose.

Cities of Night is packed with emotionally devastating short stories about washed up writers, empaths, and wasted youth. The only stories that felt out of place thematically was the Hellboy one and the Van Helsing story, but they were still enjoyable nonetheless. I did get depressed a few times feeling a bit of empathy for the characters but that’s a testament to Nutman’s storytelling skills. I highly recommend this book. Buy it here
http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Night-Philip-Nutman/dp/0981297889

Bestseller Status (Kinda Sorta)

So I’ve finally achieved bestseller status. Kinda sorta…

https://bizarropulppress.squarespace.com/blog/2013/4/15/quarterly-best-s ellers-list

Actually, the first quarter result sales just came out from Bizarro Pulp Publishing. So when compared to the other books published by the company, Notes from the Guts of a Hippo sold the most paperbacks. Eric S. Brown beat me on the ebook front. Shout out to him. So I’m doing pretty well in terms of sales, considering this is my first book. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but I don’t really care. I’ll take this as a win and keep the momentum going. Perhaps I’ll write a sequel called Guppo.

Right now, I’m on the final leg of my second Navy deployment heading back home. I cannot wait until this shit over, but in the meantime, I’m chugging away on this non-fiction project and spitting out a short story every week. There’s a lot of plans in the works, when I touch down on land. Expect some big things in the future, I know I am.

Guest Post: Going, Going, Gone (Book Review)

Written by Evelyn Platt

Going, Going, Gone by Jack Womack

Jack Womack is an author whose books are every bit as disturbing as they are imaginative. His work has been categorized as ‘cyberpunk’ by Istvan Csiscsery-Ronay Junior of the Science Fiction Studies journal but has more in common with speculative science fiction authors like HG Wells than it does with some of the more heavy-handed cyberpunk books that have emerged in recent years. Womack specializes in mixing sci-fi with social critique, satirizing the world in which we live by creating settings that are similar to our own but with a few key elements deliberately exaggerated in order to raise issues. Going, Going, Gone is set in an alternative version of 1960s New York where all of the African American citizens were deported earlier on in the century and anybody with any black ancestry is forced to keep their heritage under wraps. It is a vision of what humanity could become if its darkest elements were permitted to flourish.

Psychotropic Substances

The strength of this book lies in the flawed nature of the main character, who spends half of his time taking drugs and the rest of it attempting to figure out what is real and what is a product of the abundance of psychotropics that he has taken. He shows no sign of wishing to overcome the allure of drug abuse, partly due to the fact that the government pays him to test narcotics. This permanently stoned beatnik is an unlikely narrator for a story, as he has no clue what is real and what is a product of the substances that he has taken. This gives the book a surreal feel to it and makes it slightly confusing at times. The sense of puzzlement that is brought about gives the impression that the story is taking place in a world that doesn’t quite make sense, which is perhaps the atmosphere that the author was attempting to create.

The Downside

One thing about this book that detracts from its quality is the vernacular used by the central character, which becomes grating after a while. He talks like a cross between a hippie and a character from an Iceberg Slim book, referring to morning as ‘rooster time’ and sleeping as ‘cooling on my slab’. Although this helps to create a clear image of what type of person he is, it does get a little bit irritating. However the strength of the plot and the imagination that has gone into the storyline mean that it is but a minor detail.

Fast-Paced and Urgent Prose

The ‘sci-fi’ part of this speculative sci-fi book comes into its own when it is revealed that a time/space crisis is threatening to destroy the world. One of Womack’s main talents is his aptitude for creating a fast-paced plot. A plethora of different events occur within the story without it ever seeming as if it is going too quickly or skimming over details. This helps to capture the sense of urgency that the characters experience and whips up dramatic tension. Womack has his own very distinctive writing style that draws you in from the first page. Okay so he might occasionally include the odd piece of hippie jargon that is difficult to decipher but once you have got used to this, you will no doubt be captivated by his penmanship.

Overall Opinion

Womack is definitely not your typical sci-fi writer. His work is dark, cynical and poses questions about society. It tackles emotive issues such as racism and drug abuse whilst still managing to remain accessible and not overly morbid. Going, Going, Gone will appeal to fans of books that make you think whilst you read them. The fact that the central character is imperfect makes him easier to identify with than your stereotypical sci-fi hero and injects an element of realism to the work that is in stark contrast with many of the events that take place in it, which are extremely surreal. Don’t pick this book up expecting tales of spaceships and robots because it is simply not that kind of sci-fi story. It truly breaks the mould and manages to inject a beatnik sensibility into an alternative version of the past where society has taken a turn for the worst. Going, Going, Gone is highly recommended to anybody who wishes to read something that is likely to confuse and challenge them whilst still remaining entertaining and capturing their imagination. It is like a cross between Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which is a strange combination but somehow works extremely well.