Review: Sloughing Off the Rot

Read 11/13/12 - 11/19/12
3 Stars - Recommended to readers with strong stomachs and a sense of humor
Pgs: 125 (eBook)
Self Published - Release Date Unknown

In his third self published novel, Lance Carbuncle takes us inside the head of a comatose man and leads us down the red brick road to redemption.

Our protagonist, John, awakens in a cave with no memory - he has no clue who he is, how he got there, or why this is happening to him. With a voice in his head and a demented madman by his side, he sets out on a dream-like quest to cleanse his soul. Along the way, he picks up Alf the Sacred Burro (long time Carbuncle fans will remember this filthy, lovable little guy), a philosophical giant, and a group of colorful desert indians - all of whom play a special role in John's unusual spiritual journey.

While it's not a story for the weak of heart or soft of stomach, Sloughing Off the Rot does have quite the cheeky sense of humor. Pop Culture references are hidden like Easter Eggs in this incredibly raunchy, slightly pornographic, bizarro mashup of the Bible and the Wizard of Oz. John's quest comes complete with its own red brick road, burning bushes, sleepy field of poppies, and new-wave zombies who will either eat you or gang-bang you. The strange, dreaming landscape is reminiscent of what we're taught to think of as purgatory - that in-between place where you work off your sins to prove you are worthy of living the good life in heaven.

In Carbuncle's hands, though, the inherent good in people is tested in the most hellish and nightmarish ways. A near-complete departure from his previous books, he plays around with salvation and forgiveness and the ability to overcome one's own festering wounds. He toys with man's willingness to persevere. He decorates the path to redemption with some of the most foul and disgusting things I've ever read.

Clocking in at a short 125 pages, I found myself wishing that Lance taken more time to expand on the story - there were times where it felt as though it wasn't as polished as it could have been, where some moments flew by at lightening speed while others seemed to plod along unnecessarily. However, the overall dream-like/ nightmarish setting made it easy for me to forgive those. When we dream, things are not always as clear and linear as we would like them to be, right?

Take a peek at this spotlight, where Lance features an excerpt and two illustrations from the book. Then, go give his writing a whirl. Your mind will never be the same again!

Where Writers Write: Brian Griffith

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

Brian Griffith is an independent historian who's interested in culture wars and cultural creativity. So far he's published four books. The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History examines how environmental degradation has affected society across the center of the Old World from ancient times forward. Correcting Jesus: 2000 Years of Changing the Story and Different Visions of Love: Partnership and Dominator Cultures in Christian History reflect on the culture wars that have raged within Christianity from the religion's beginning down to the present. A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization explores the alternative traditions and religions of Chinese women, which offer the world a powerful vision for partnership, health, and spirituality. Griffith lives in a multicultural marriage in the multicultural hub of Toronto.

Where Brian Griffith Writes

Here's my solarium tower, shown with the blinds pulled aside for a 10th floor view of Toronto's burbs. The view out the windows has remained almost unchanged for years in this economy. About half the year, the outside world is cold, gray, or just iced over. But that's okay for focusing on the screen or pieces of paper without distraction. For some reason, however, I always seem to write about other parts of the world. The flower pots seem to have baby date palms growing in them, because I ate dates on the job and tossed the seeds there. Guess we'll soon need a neon flamingo to go with the palm trees.

The office's interior walls are also of glass, as you see looking through them in the picture from the dining room table, The reference books and boxes of notes are fairly under control, and mostly inside drawers or bedroom closets. If my clutter was exposed to view, it would be clearly visible from the surrounding living and dining areas, which would clash with my wife's clean and open style of life. The desk has a fairly big surface, but still holds little more than the computer equipment, keyboard, and mouse pad. To use notes for writing or to keep style sheets for editing, I need to set up folding tables to the side. Anyway, that's the condo writing life -- small spaces with big views.

Check back next week to see where Kristy Athens gets her writing done.

The Audio Series: Daniel Clausen

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.   




Today, Daniel Clausen is reading an excerpt from his novel The Ghosts of Nagasaki. Daniel has wanted to be a writer ever since he was in elementary school. He has published stories and articles in such magazines as Slipstream, Black Petals, and Leading Edge Science Fiction. He has written three books, The Sage and the Scarecrow (a novel), and the Lexical Funk (a short story/word dance), and The Ghosts of Nagasaki (a novel).

Click the soundcloud file below to experience an excerpt of The Ghosts of Nagasaki as read by author Daniel Clausen.






The word on The Ghosts of Nagasaki:

One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something. The words pour out and exhaust him. He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago. 

Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery. 

Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago--a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island. He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn't solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever. Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing lies the key to his salvation.

*lifted from goodreads with love

Review: The Alligators of Abraham

Read 11/5/12 - 11/12/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to fans of the unconventional / historical fiction but not really
Pgs: 214 (read on Kindle)
Publisher: Mud Luscious Press
Release Date: Nov 15, 2012

Beware readers. The Alligators of Abraham is not a book that is passively read. Written in the strangely comforting second person plural, Kloss sucks you into this novel, dragging you through the dead bodies that are left behind in this war, and our country's obsession with embalming EVERYTHING, and your father's particular brand of CRAZIES after losing his first son and your mother, and the death of Lincoln and the rise of Grant, and the uncontrollable infestation of alligators.

Unlike anything I have read before, and certainly not typical of what I normally read, this war-time explosion of sound and vision moves you beyond the historical and into the inexplicable. God, how often I found myself clawing at the surface for breath as I made my way through these sentences as thick as stew, these emotions forced out of the pixelated text, everywhere I turned was death and destruction and confusion and no way of escaping it.

And there was no escaping your father until he began to forget you, the general who lost his mind and hated you for being alive, the pining for your brother and mother that consumed him and the juices he pushed into his veins, perfecting and practicing for their own.

And the snapping, starving alligators that pulled themselves out of the waters to devour the dead, to pull down the still living, until the living struck back, and hung the alligators from the street lamps, leaving them to eat each other.

A powerful, possessing novel that crawls down into your throat and chokes you from the inside out, The Alligators of Abraham shakes loose the skin of fiction and marches through your streets bare and bloodied and full of rage.

I have been waiting to get this novel into my sweaty little hands ever since Mud Luscious Press premiered it in our Indie Book Buzz series last December and it was worth every agonizing second...

Listen to Robert Kloss as he reads an excerpt from the book.

Then go and give it a read. You will be gasping for air, too. That is a promise.

Indie Spotlight: Lance Carbuncle's Sloughing Off the Rot

Dear readers, you are in for a treat today! We've got an exclusive sneak peek at Lance Carbuncle's upcoming new novel Sloughing Off the Rot. 

Lance and I have known each other (cyberly) for quite awhile. I've read and LURVED both of his self published novels, hosted an author Q&A with him, and interviewed him for this blog. 

Actually, the story of how we first came to know each other is kinda funny-in-an-embarrassing-for-me way. Back in the days between TNBBC's birth on Goodreads and my decision to start blogging, before I really knew what "reviewing" was, Lance had reached out to me and asked if he could send over a copy of his first novel. I still have the message in my Goodreads inbox, where I responded by saying: 

Wait a minute, you're not a stalker, are you? I would hate for this to be some kind of sick set up for a new novel... {{Author visits the reader's home to 'hand deliver' the prized book, kidnaps and tortures her as she reads it, then leaves her on the side of the road, beaten and broken, after he forced her hand for a great review}}... 

Not my proudest moment, I can tell you. Anyhow, here we are, nearly 4 years to the month, celebrating Lance's soon-to-be-debuted new novel! 

Lemme go ahead and turn this thing over to Lance:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Next Best Book Club is kind enough to present the opening chapters of my third book, Sloughing Off the Rot. This book is a bit of a departure for me in that it incorporates aspects of horror and fantasy and has something of a spiritual (but not preachy) tone to it. This is not because I am particularly spiritual (I’m not, at all), but because I wanted to address the philosophical theme of inherent goodness that is in each one of us (even the worst of us). Unexpectedly, when one eliminates the violence, gore, and weirdly uncomfortable situations from the story, Sloughing Off the Rot turns out to be an optimistic statement about innate human goodness thriving under the proper circumstances and guidance. Of course, you will have to wade, thigh-high, through a sea of blood, puke, piss and filth to get to the message of virtue and redemption (kind of like the bible without all of the boring parts about who begat what or how to compensate a man for the loss of his ass or daughter).

If you have read and (hopefully) enjoyed either of my first two books, I am confident that you will recognize the narrative voice of Carbuncle in Sloughing Off the Rot. Yes, in parts the story is vulgar and disgusting, but what do you expect from a guy who chooses to base his pseudonym on an infected boil. I guess that I like the challenge of making my readers cringe, yet at the same time still want to read more. And if you’ve already read my work, you know to expect this. Also, you will likely notice ties to my other books. It is a lot of fun as an author to continue the conceptual continuity of the fictional Carbuncle Universe. Hopefully this does not come off as self-absorbed or self-impressed. It was merely fun tie my other works in and I hope that my readers feel the same way.

Sloughing Off the Rot was a lot of fun to write. And, this book was even more enjoyable because I had a talented artist, Kelly Williams, illustrate it. It was a blast working with Kelly and watching the physical manifestations of some of my characters materialize. (Check out a bit of the awesome artwork below).

Check out the opening sections of Sloughing Off the Rot. And, if you like it you can preorder a signed copy at http://www.lancecarbuncle.com/lancecarbuncle.com/Sloughing_Off_the_Rot.html.

As a special offer, anybody who preorders a copy of the book through my website will get a free eBook version of their choice of either of my first two novels.  Thanks for checking out the excerpt of Sloughing Off the Rot.  Please spread the word about my work if you enjoy it. Thanks.

Carbuncle

Sloughing Off the Rot 

Sneak Peek

And that night John went to bed without eating his dinner. Zonked on zolpidem and single malt scotch, wrapped tightly in his super-special 1,000 thread count sheets and nestled comfortably on his newfangled memory foam-reclining-adjustable king-sized bed, John blacked out just after lying down. Peaceful nothingness swirled around him, tossing off flecks of gold and strands of cool blue. The ten thousand things fled and left in their place a cozy void.

            And that night a screeching horn section from below jarred John from his warm nothingness. Dissonant, jagged saxophone, rending the night and prematurely tearing the morning from its belly. Screaming brass devil, like the Demon Zorn ass-raping Kenny G with a chainsaw. Raw blistering giggle-jazz. 

            And that night John heard a voice, as a trumpet in his head. And the voice commanded: “You shall henceforth be known as John the Revelator. And you shall walk 500 miles. And when you wake up, you’re gonna be the man that wakes up next to me.”

            “Who are you? What are you?” asked John.

            “I am the alpha and the omega, the first and last.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “I am you as you are me as you are he and we are all together.”

            “What is that even supposed to mean?”
            “Enough of your questions and your havering.  There is important business before us,” the voice demanded.

            And that morning, when John received his walking orders, he asked no questions. He did as he was bade by the commanding disembodied presence that he assumed to be the God he never really believed in. Surveying his surroundings, John realized that his room was no longer a room, but instead a craggy cave. His bed was now indiscernible from the dusty ground, his memory foam pillow now a rock. And beside the spot where he awoke was a hole five cubits in diameter. John peered into the pit but saw no bottom. He dropped a rock but the sound of it hitting bottom never came to him. At the edge of the pit were claw marks in the sand and a trail that dragged itself to the spot where John awoke.

            The voice, now speaking in a gentler tone, said, “You have not been true to me, nor to yourself. But, you are a good soul. Now is your chance for redemption. Before your journey, it will be necessary to polish thy rod and salve it with balms and ointments. Do this and your seed will find purchase, thus populating this desolate land. Be true with the stroke on your sanctified rod and your issue will increase exponentially and be fruitful.”

            On the floor at his feet sat earthen jars filled with aromatic balms and ointments. The perfumed scents of frankincense, and myrrh and patchouli wafted from the containers. John’s member stood erect against his stomach when he bent and he noticed his nakedness for the first time. Inexplicable shame first gripped him but was quickly dashed by his arousal. Glancing around the cave, John confirmed that he was alone and dipped his hand in one of the clay pots. The golden goo from the pot warmed his hand and pleasured him greatly as he rubbed it on his loins.

            With each slow stroke of his hand John brought himself to ecstasy, and his loins issued great spouts of crimson spuz, like a massive bloody font. And a gory puddle formed at and around John’s feet, like the blood-soaked floor of a slaughterhouse. From the rippling surface of the blood-puddle, small unrecognizable forms dragged themselves, clawing madly at the ground, grimacing and pulling themselves through the dust, growing in power and size while leaving behind them rust-colored trails and torn membranes as evidence of their birth. And their screams, their wonderful horrible screams, gasped from newly formed throats. New jagged teeth cut through fresh pink gums. Some of the creatures stretched, morphing into muscular serpents, and slithered from the cave. Others took on three legs, four legs, five legs, more. Thick pelts of fur coated some while others were pale and wrinkled and unfinished in appearance. Horns and tusks sprouted from their faces and heads. Incipient bipeds, visibly growing and drunkenly stumbling away on awkward and uncoordinated spindles, instinctively sensed their superiority. A two-legged being fell on a small, bushy-tailed creature and beat at it, discovering the destructive power of the balled fists that had just formed at the ends of its arms. The biped, triumphant over the smaller creature, tested his pointy teeth and tore at the creature’s flesh, devouring it, fur and bones and all. Other two-legged creatures, some simian, some hominid, tore at the smaller creatures, rending their forms. And as the lesser creatures were destroyed, torn at, and stomped out, they reverted to bloody puddles, and new, different forms crawled from the pools and grew and moved out of the cave.

            Spent from onanism and birthing, John collapsed in a corner of the cave, and watched in both horror and fascination at the genesis of some creatures, and the death and rebirth of others. When the last of the beings slithered, slunk, scrambled, walked and crawled away, and the bloody puddle of mess was nothing more than a stinking brown taint on the ground, John wrapped his arms tightly around his knees and wept until all feelings deserted him. And he relapsed to the swirling nothingness of the void left in the absence of the ten thousand things.

            In a space of time that stretched out infinitely, but also contracted into a sliver of a moment, John wept away his fears and trepidations. And he rose and stepped wide around the rusty blot on the floor. And the commandment that he begin his journey rang in his head. And that morning, before dawn broke, John dressed in the white robe and breeches of fine twisted linen that were left for him. He slipped on leather sandals, exited the cave, and started walking.

            The red brick road snaked before him, a loopy serpent slinking its lazy way toward the horizon. John knew not the country around him and marveled at the alien landscape. Rust-colored rock formations presented with arches carved out of them by time and wind and water. The barrel cacti, in full bloom, birthed blood red flowers. The black and twisted skeletons of dead juniper trees silhouetted against the red sky. It all looked as arid and dusty as John’s throat felt.

            And as he walked along the road, the clanging tone and drone of an out of tune guitar tweaked John’s ears, the hint of a melody drawing him in while, at the same time, the slightly out of tune chords setting him ill at ease. An intermittently off-key twang of a voice crooned about garbage dumps and their previously unsung benefits. The grating voice finished the song with “and that sums it up in one big lump,” as the high E string snapped with the last strum.

            “Ah, it will be fair weather, my brother, for the sky is red.” The voice, with forty grit coarseness and dry as the red sand around them, issued from a slight figure with a crusty tangle of a beard and the mystical bearing of a holy man. With merely a girdle of skin about his loins and a leather pouch hanging from his neck, and holding a weather-beaten guitar close to his chest, the bearded man sat atop a balanced rock and bored into John with bulging, unblinking eyes.

            “Who are you?” asked John. “Where am I? What the hell is going on?”

            “I’m the son of man, son.” The man went silent and his face contorted, cycling through and miming random emotions. All the while, his intense unblinking eyes stayed locked on John. The face emoted confusion, switched to astonishment, followed by sorrow, glee, horror, amazement, anger, and settled finally on contentment. “I am nobody. I’m a tramp, a bum, a hobo. I’m a boxcar and a jug of wine. And I’m a straight razor if you get too close to me. I go by many names. Santiago. El Diablo. Jerry. Whatever you want to call me, I’m sure I’ve been called worse. Santiago will be just fine for our purposes.”

            “What are our purposes?”

            Setting his guitar beside him on the rock and cocking half of his bushy unibrow, Santiago smiled broadly and answered, “well for now it seems that our purpose is for you to toss questions at me as if I’m somehow obligated to give you all the answers. And then I’m supposed to spoon-feed you the meaning of life. Right, Johnny?”

            “Why do you call me Johnny? Is that my name? How do you know it?”

            “See, there you go again. All pushy with the questions. Yeah, your name’s Johnny, for our purposes. And how do I know? Shit, boy, I’ve been waiting for you twenty and five days and nights. I’ve been living on the desert jive, just stayin’ alive. You took long enough to leave the cave, didn’t ya?”

            “You’ve been waiting for me?” said John. “But why?”

            “I’ve been fasting. And waiting. And walking. I spent a little time on the mountain. I spent a little time on the hill. I knew you’d be here. I just didn’t know it would take you so damn long. I’m starving, Jack.” Santiago leapt from his rock, ratty guitar held to his chest, and stuck his landing right next to the pinyon pine several feet to John’s side.

            “I don’t get it,” said John. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t remember anything. I woke up in a cave and I must have been hallucinating because I can’t believe the things I saw. And now you’re here, telling me that you’ve been waiting for me.”

            “Right on,” said Santiago, cocking his eyebrow to the point that it looked painful.

            “So tell me again, what are our purposes?”

            “You’re going on a journey. Dig? A helluva trip. One big mind-fuck and I get to tag along.” Santiago accented his words with a fluttering hand and circled John. “Ain’t that a big kick in the nuggets?”

            “A journey?” John rolled his eyes, threw back his head and sighed deeply, trying to get on top of the panic that was rising in him. “You’re telling me I’m going on a journey. I’m in no shape for this. Obviously I must have suffered a head injury or something. I need to get to a hospital. And you say I’m going on a journey. Says who?”

            Santiago’s mouth snapped shut and a bland blankness washed over his face. Although his eyes lacked expression, Santiago’s fingers flew over the fretboard of his guitar while his right hand feverishly plucked strained strings, plinking away at a jangling staccato, ostinato arpeggio and ignoring John’s questions, circling John, dancing faster and faster as the tempo of his disharmonious notes quickened.

            “Stop!” shouted John, reaching out and trying unsuccessfully to grab the nimble little man by his hair. “Stop now and answer me.”

            Santiago danced and dodged and plucked the repetitive spastic notes, the strings going more and more out of tune and spitting out a warped, grating song. Born of his complete frustration, John mustered the speed and agility to finally grasp Santiago by his tangled hair and wrest the guitar away from him.

            “Ahhhh!” screamed John. “Ahhhhh!” and he bashed the guitar against the balanced rock, reducing the instrument to jagged fragments and splinters. The guitar’s wooden body lay in horrid disrepair at John’s feet as he stood, hyperventilating and grasping the broken guitar neck in his hand. Pathetic metal strings dangled from the neck, as if trying to drop to the ground and take root.

            “Oh. You wanna play rough, Johnny?” An almost joyful glint in his eyes, Santiago leapt back and dropped into a wrestling stance. His feet spread to shoulder width, one in front and the other lagging back, knees bent with elbows near the thighs, and hands held out in tensed claws as if to fend off any further attack. “I was just trying to play some music to help you calm down. And you attack me? I see how it’s gonna be. Well let’s roll then.”

            Before John could say “no” or even brace himself for the attack, Santiagosprang and was on him, a maddened savage gripping John’s torso and sweeping his legs. Face down in the red dust and choking on a mouthful of earth, John swung his arm back behind him in an effort to elbow the bushy-headed wild man off of him. Santiago effortlessly dodged the elbow and grabbed at the arm, twisting it high behind John’s back and dozing the red dirt with his face. With John’s arm still wrenched, Santiago mounted his back, wrapped his legs around and locked them on John’s inner thighs, rendering the larger man helpless.

            “Say uncle, Johnny,” Santiago whispered into John’s ear, the stench from his rotten mouth making John’s eyes water.

            “Get off of me.” John wriggled in Santiago’s hold but was unable to free himself. “Get the fuck off of me.”

            “Just say uncle and I’ll let you up.”

            “No!” John struggled and rolled but Santiago clung to his back, like a dog locked in coitus with a bitch.

            “If you won’t say it, then you’re escalating this thing.” Santiago leaned in with brown stumps that used to be teeth and tore off the top of John’s ear. Blood dribbled down his chin as he chewed on the gristle of the ear and swallowed.

            Blood rained from the remainder of John’s ear and soaked into the sand. “Owww! Fuck. Okay. Okay. Uncle. Get off of me.”

            Santiago sprung from John and reverted to his defensive wrestling stance, hands out in front and clawed for another attack. His unblinking eyes locked on John’s. “Are we done with this nonsense? Are we cool?” asked Santiago. “Can we get on with things now?”

            John rose unsteadily to his feet and wobbled, almost falling back down. Backing away from Santiago, John said, “You ate my ear. You ate my fucking ear. You’re crazy. Just leave me alone.” He continued to shrink back from Santiago, shaking his head in disbelief. “You ate my fucking ear.”

            Thin, dry lips parted, revealing Santiago’s moldy smile. “Come on, man. It doesn’t matter. Your ear will grow back. And besides, I warned you that I was hungry. I’m always hungry, man. You should have said uncle.”

            “What do you mean my ear will grow back?” John held his hand tightly to the side of his head to stanch the bleeding and felt the thub, thub, thub, thub of the injury throbbing on the palm of his hand.

            “That’s the way things work here.”

            “Where is here?” asked John, waving his free hand about around himself.

            “That’s what you need to find out,” said Santiago as he climbed back atop the balanced rock and sat, Indian style.

            “I need to be anywhere but here,” John said. He turned and started to walk. “I certainly don’t need to be attacked and chewed on.”

            “Wait up, man,” Santiago shouted from the rock as John continued to walk away. “Don’t you want to know what our purposes are before you split?”

            And John paused his retreat, stopping but not turning back. “Why should I believe that you have any answers for me?”

            “Because I’m spiritually allied with the desert, Jack. I’m spiritually allied with the scorpion and the wolf. You live in your physical realm. But, I’m in the spiritual, baby. I walk and talk and do all the physical things. But that’s only because I want to. Dig? If I don’t want to do something, I don’t have to. I’m not stuck on that trip. See?”

            “No, Santiago or whatever your name is, I don’t see,” said John, flapping his arms about spastically as if slapping Santiago’s words from the air before they could reach him. “You don’t make any sense. If you have some answers for me, please just give them.”

            “I have no answers.”
            “Then why did you ask me to stop?”

            “Because I know where your answers can be found.”

            “Well, tell me then,” said John.

            “You must climb the mountain and seek the counsel of the burning thorn bush.”

            “Okay, so you’re just talking nonsense again. I get it. Thanks for nothing.” John turned and began walking again. Almost immediately, Santiago appeared at his side, grabbing his arm to stop him.

            “For real, man,” Santiago said. “Just turn around and look.”

            With the last of his patience, John stopped and turned around. Santiago’s buggy whip arm extended his hand and pointed toward the mountain from which John exited. A stone’s throw above the cave entrance sat a thorn bush, alight with great blue and orange flames, but the bush itself did not burn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh but wait... we're not done yet! 

Lance has cooked up a cool giveaway to help promote Sloughing Off the Rot.

2 Grand Prize Winners (US Residents only due to Shipping)

A signed copy of Sloughing Off the Rot

2 Runners-up (International)

eBook copies of both 

 Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked, and Spewed

and

Grundish and Askew

in the format of your choice

COMMENT HERE TO THROW YOUR NAME INTO THE HAT!

The giveaway runs through November 23rd

Winners will be announced on November 24th here and via email

(be sure to tell us what country you are in so your comment counts!)

Good luck!!

The Dr. Reverend Lance Carbuncle was born sometime during the last millennium and he’s been getting bigger, older and uglier ever since. Carbuncle is an ordained minister with the Church of Spiritual Humanism. Carbuncle doesn’t eat deviled eggs and he doesn’t drink cheap beer. Carbuncle doesn’t wear sock garters. Carbuncle does tell stories. Carbuncle’s stories are channeled through a pathetic little man who has to work a respectable job during the days in order to feed the infestation of children in his house. Carbuncle is the author of Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed and the 2009 Reader’s Views Literary Awards Humorous Fiction Winner, Grundish and Askew. Carbuncle’s third novel (unnamed at the present) will be released in November/December of 2012 by Vicious Galoot Books. 

Where Writers Write: Nan Cuba

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Nan Cuba. She received her MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, is the founder and executive director emeritus of Gemini Ink, a nonprofit literary center (www.geminiink.org), was twice the runner-up for the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, and received a Fundación Valparaiso Residency Grant in Mojácar, Spain. She is currently an associate professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University. As an investigative journalist, she reported on the causes of extraordinary violence in publications such as LIFE and D Magazine. Her stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in Quarterly West, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose, the Bloomsbury Review, and the Harvard Review, among others. She is coeditor of Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers & Artists (Trinity University Press, 2008), and her novel, Body and Bread, will be published by Engine Books in May 2013.

Where Nan Cuba Writes

I’m sixty-five, and I’ve reverted to the womb.  When I converted a bedroom into my office, I consciously filled it with memorabilia and art, surrounding myself with artifacts that stimulate and nourish.  Everywhere I look: faces, scenes, chatter.  Stuck for a piece of dialogue: glance at the bookshelf to the left.  Need an image: look inside the glass-fronted cabinet above the desk.  If nothing else works, check the window on one wall.

I’m a phenomenon of self-discipline, a holdover from my Bible-belt upbringing.  When I sit at my desk, I have no trouble getting to work.  So once, I tried writing according to a specific schedule.  Fitting time around my day job, I rose at 4:00 a.m., read the previous day’s product, then pounded out a pledged three pages.  I loved being in the world when everyone else seemed out of it.  The dark, the quiet, the stillness invigorated, sending me straight to my subconscious.  Like an automaton, I stuck to my schedule because I’d been trained that failing to meet a commitment meant irresponsibility, flawed character, and worse, a father’s disappointment.  I was proud, productive, and finally, exhausted.  After five months, I went to bed with the flu, sleeping almost continually for a week.

Now, like all my other tasks—planning classes, grading papers, running errands—I fit my writing into life’s evolving demands.  Although I miss that wee-hour nether-world, I can produce whenever I keep my appointment at the computer.  Like getting a haircut or attending faculty assembly, my writing opportunities vary but are slotted into my schedule.  I block out days on my calendar for upcoming projects and announce this to my family.  When I start writing, I find eating, talking, even dressing an irritation.  My husband brings meals on a tray.  I have arthritic hips, so I sit on a pillow, but eventually an ache forces me to rise and check the mail or take a trip to the bathroom.  If someone talks, I share what I’ve been working on, watching reactions.  Then I return to my computer.  Instead of clutching a rifle like Charlton Heston, my “cold, hard hands” will someday have to be pried from the keyboard. 

I used to listen to the local classical radio station, but I’ve switched to one that plays jazz.  My parents were characters straight from Mad Men, a glass of Scotch in one hand, a cigarette or pipe in the other, songs by Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, or Benny Goodman filling our house, all of it topnotch background music I still hear.  I remember watching these artists and others—Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holliday—on TV.  Once, I took my daughter to see Dizzy Gillespie at the Blue Note in NYC.  Now, it’s Coltrane, Simone, Monk, Parker, too many to name.  Like the narrator in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” I enter every lick and pitch, listening to the haunting messages, warmed and bothered, opening while I type. 

Like these musical idols, amazing writers also inspire me.  Each came to my house while I served as executive director of a literary center, Gemini Ink (www.geminiink.org), and I collected their autographs on a door frame that now borders my bookshelf.  Former teachers, role models, a few friends—literary icons, all—they cheer me on.  What else?  My grandmother’s sinister ceramic Easter rabbits, my father’s knit booties and toy horses, a Michael Nye photograph of two Indonesian women in saris, a pottery figure of the Mexica goddess Tlazolteotl, an iron mask of Sophocles, a former student’s pen-and-ink drawing, “The Poetess,” of what looks like a manikin on a gurney in a torture chamber. 

I sit at my grandmother’s drop-front secretary, an antique my mother used in a room she called the study.  My wallpaper is a jumble of letters from the Greek and English alphabets.  Even my paperclips have a special holder, one passed from my grandmother, to my mother, to me: a ceramic bug-eyed baby bird, its mouth stretched wide, its right foot glued at the ankle.  I’m cushioned and surrounded.  Ready to write.

Check back next week to see the writing space of Brian Griffith.

The Audio Series - Robert Kloss

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.   



Today, Robert Kloss is reading an excerpt from his upcoming release The Alligators of Abraham. Robert Kloss is also the author of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria. He is found online at robert-kloss.com.  Mud Luscious Press drops the book November 15th. 

Click the soundcloud file below to experience an excerpt of The Alligators of Abraham read by author Robert Kloss.





The word on The Alligators of Abraham:

Robert Kloss's The Alligators of Abraham is a fever dream built from the fly strewn corpses of armies, the megalomania of generals, the madness of widows, the fires of mourning, the fury of the poor, the indifference of the wealthy, and the ravenous hissing of those alligators who have ever plagued the shores of our national nightmares. With a cover design and interior illustrations by Matt Kish (author of Tin House's Moby-Dick in Pictures), this is a Civil War epic unlike any other.
*lifted from goodreads with love


And due to some incredibly fortunate timing, if you are looking for more Kloss, you can find texts inspired by The Alligators of Abraham at Sundog Lit, the author's playlist, and a shortie by Kloss titled "The Inheritance of Man". 

Indie Spotlight- 3:AM Press

Imagine waking up to find your literary magazine gone. Completely and bizarrely... just.. gone. Without a trace. As if it never was. Such was the story of 3:AM Magazine. Yet, rather than freak out about losing everything they had created (like I would have done!), out of the empty space that was left behind, 3:AM Press was born.

Christiana Spens, Producer and Creative Director, and author, is here to shine the spotlight on this new little press and tell us the story of how it came to be:

The Story Behind the Stories:

3:AM Press is a very young publishing company, and was conceived at a time of panic and crisis earlier this year. I had been involved with 3:AM Magazine for some time, and from about February this year, they had been serializing my novel, “Death of a Ladies’ Man”. However crisis struck when the entire online magazine just disappeared overnight. I remember meeting the Editor-in-Chief, Andrew Gallix, for a drink, somewhere in Montmartre, when he explained that the server had just disappeared, and so far all attempts to trace the owner of the server were winding up nowhere. It was at that point that we came up with the idea of 3:AM Press. Or rather, it was that point we decided to actually get it up and running. There had been talk of starting 3:AM Press for some time, but this particular crisis was the impetus we needed to really get started.

A week later, and I had the website up and a provisional list of authors. I had known Adam for a few months already, through slightly roudy drinking sessions that Andrew had organized but not actually attended (the other regulars were Gavin James Bower, Gerry Feehily and Karl Whitney). I read Adam’s book GREY CATS over the next week or so, and adored it, so that was one of our very first titles. Andrew also thought we might as well publish DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN, since the website had disappeared before it had all been serialized, and that seemed to make sense. After that, Andrew introduced me to the philosopher Dylan Trigg. We all met in Montmartre a very hot June day (one of the few very hot June days in Paris that summer) and ended up chatting for hours and hours about his previous books and research, (and phobias) and of course the book he was to finish for us, BODY PARTS. 

By this time, 3:AM Magazine was luckily resurrected, after the owner of the server was tracked down to some tattoo parlour in the Mid-West, and he agreed to put the website back up. And I had a lot of work to do for the Press, with the help of Susan Tomaselli (an Editor for 3:AM Magazine) and graphic designer Will Stewart. Lee Rourke also got involved, with his collection of poetry, VARROA DESTRUCTOR, as well as a few as yet unannounced new authors. There have been a few moments of panic since we decided to launch 3:AM Press – a number of random technical problems, minor artistic differences, and a huge amount of admin – but mostly the launch has been an enjoyable learning curve. And my sisters are always around, should I need some help with PR or whatever.

That Parisian June seems very distant now, but I hope to go back for a reunion (and some readings) soon. Everybody has worked very hard to make the Press work out, and certainly I feel very lucky to be involved, and working with this particular group. There is a real sense of freedom and camaraderie – which is of course what indie publishing is all about. As a writer, publishing books can often be quite a lonely and disconcerting experience, but I think 3:AM Press avoids that, simply because everybody is involved. I always used to wish that publishing was more like film, in the sense that it can be hands-on and collaborative rather than solitary, and I think that’s pretty much what we’re doing here. On a personal level, I’ve enjoyed working on all the other aspects of book production, rather than simply panicking over my own sentences. It’s been exciting to shift from ‘writer’ to ‘director’, and to feel just as excited when the others’ books are finished, as I am when my own are done. I just hope everyone else enjoys them as much as I do. 

Christiana Spens is the author of “The Wrecking Ball” (Harper Perennial 2008), “The Socialite Manifesto” (Beautiful Books Ltd., 2009) and “Death of a Ladies’ Man” (3:AM Press, 2012), and has also written for Art Wednesday, Flux, Architectural Design and Studio International. She studied Philosophy at Cambridge (BA (Hons)) and is now studying for a Masters in Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews. This may or may not be research for a spy novel.

Lavinia Ludlow's Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze is a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC that will post every Friday in October. The participating authors were challenged to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

Lavinia Ludlow's Character's Get Their Booze On

It’s not often that I get to slam the ironies of my books’ main characters in one sitting, and simultaneously reveal the sharpest edges and darkest corners of my writing’s content. Today, I toast three characters in my debut novel alt.punk, as well as two characters in my upcoming sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven, with drinks invented exclusively for The Next Best Book Blog.

For those who have read alt.punk, you know what train wrecks Hazel and Otis were as individuals, and what psychotic a-bombs they became when they were together. For those who haven’t read alt.punk, in a nutshell, Hazel is a germaphobic suburbanite who tosses her job, sanitary living comforts, and her family’s hypercritical distain out the back door to hit the road touring the nation with a grimy, manic-depressive Goth rocker named Otis, and his disapproving severely left-winged whip-smart brother, Landon.

Oh, Otis, you simple-minded thirty-something psychotic man-boy who lacks the self-control and mental aptitude to put down the gas station generic hard liquor long enough to use a glass, much less mix a drink. For you, I’ve crafted the Otis Opus:

--One bottle or any large quantity slurry of the following: Jim Beam, Jack Daniel’s, Southern Comfort, Wild Turkey

--Splash of Listerine or Nyquil for added taste and/or color

**Garnish with backwashed chunks of own puke

Hazel, because you somehow believe processed foods such as Twix, Twinkies, Milano cookies, and diet soda are immune to carcinogens, pesticides, and whatever other infectious ailments you neurotically fear like hoof and mouth disease, mad cow, anthrax, E. coli, herpes, I’ve engineered the Hazel with a Twist:

--Boxed red wine so cheap that it tastes like grape juice or any other high-fructose corn syrup drink

--Martini glass coated with a thin film of hand sanitizer

**Garnish with a can of Pirouline hazelnut cookies eaten in one sitting

Landon, similar to the Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix, a limited edition, once-in-a-lifetime single malt borne from the disaster of the distillery roof collapse wherein casks of scotch varying in age were salvaged from the extreme snowy temperatures of the open air, you are the salvaged and remarkable remains of the disastrous fall from grace you had to watch your band, Riot Venom, and your brother, Otis, go through over the course of a few months. Although you’d probably call Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix a booze for pretentious yuppies who redefine douchebaggery, you should be toasted with this remarkable scotch straight up, and commended for your strength through the most dismal of situations (even though you served as Otis’ enabler for years, and you punched Hazel in the face, and some may theorize you drove her into the throes of a psychological breakdown, you’re still the biggest badass I’ve ever written, even bigger than my next book’s antagonist: Duncan).

I’m going to take advantage of the segue to introduce my upcoming second novel, Single Stroke Seven, a dark-humored “Behind the Music” glimpse into the chemistry of a Bay Area rock band that has yet to “make it” despite years of ambitious initiatives and unconventional sacrifices. In this tale, Lilith is a literal starving musician and trying to land an indie record label and nationally sponsored tour for her band. The stress of her job and her band mates’ figurative ADD, especially the band’s frontman, Duncan, prevent her from performing further than the rehearsal space in their house’s kitchen. Though there are multiple characters I could have explored, focusing on my main two characters will do justice to the novel without releasing any spoilers:

Duncan, because you’re the West Coast’s biggest hipster trust funder, who despite being thirty and living with his band, Dissonanz, in a moldy possibly government-subsidized Victorian shanty downtown San Jose, has never had any real-world work experience and can therefore buy thousands of dollars of edible gold leaf for the sole sake of “blinging up his food,” I’ve crafted the Tall, Dark, and Whorey, because you’re kind of a man-whore, who’s promiscuity and frivolous spending is brought on by the fact you have no life direction, aspirations, or deep and meaningful connection with anyone.

--Laphroaig Islay single malt scotch whiskey aged twenty-five years

--Wisk in two sheets of edible gold leaf

**Sip while smoking a ridiculously expensive brand of cigarette imported from a company you think is Irish and linked to your ancestors but is probably manufactured and distributed by some British conglomerate

Lilith, you are a diehard Gordon Biersch drinker because you have some inexplicable devotion to San Jose, California, but for you, I’ve crafted Lilith’s Run:

--Gin and tonic, minus the tonic because your job as a human resources administrator in an East Oakland bottling plant is a stress hell of frivolous claims and accusations of being the summer intern

**Shoot gin intermittently while gorging on an eclectic medley of cocktail pickles, martini olives, pickled eggs, pearl onions, maraschino cherries, and anything else a bartender would garnish drinks with like celery sticks, grape tomatoes, and fruit pieces fished out of sangria mixes, because everyone knows you’re a starving drummer who’s made meals out of condiments like Coffee-mate and ketchup, and your anxiety is on overdrive because you’re on the verge of aging-out of eligibility of Club 27 and you’ve yet to advance your music past dead end bar rock

Thanks to Lori Hettler for not only reviewing alt.punk and putting up with all the intense characters like Otis, Hazel, and Landon, but also challenging me with a writing prompt, to throw down my thoughts on drinks for these characters and gaining a better understanding of them in general. Big thanks for also allowing me a medium to introduce a few characters from my next novel, Single Stroke Seven, which has a seemingly sliding scale of being released in late 2013 or early 2014 through Casperian Books.

For those reading, I’m interested in reading your responses to Lori’s prompt. Email them to lavinia (dot) ludlow (at) gmail (dot) com or reply to Lori’s post directly. Happy writing, drinking, and/or writing about drinking!

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician, writer, and occasional contortionist. Her debut novelalt.punk can be purchased through major online retailers as well as Casperian Books’ website. Recently, her sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven was signed to Casperian Books as well. In her free time, she reviews independent literature over at places such as Small Press Reviews, Smalldoggies Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, American Book Review, and Plumb Blog. She hearts all indie writers, musicians, and artists and hopes you do too. Find her on: Facebook, Goodreads, Fictionaut,  Twitter