Review: The New hunger

(Not the actual cover image)

Read 1/12/13 - 1/15/13
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to fans of Warm Bodies, zombie lit, and prequels that refuse to give it all up
Pgs: 128 (E-novella)
Publisher: Zola Books
Release Date: 1/28/13

It's the early days of the collapse. The streets are littered with corpses, buildings have been looted and cleaned out, and the dead are slowly taking to their feet.

Twelve year old Julie rides in the SUV with her parents as they move from city to city in search of safe zones. She misses her friends and her school, but is learning to adapt to this hard, new life. Somewhere else, Nora and her little brother Addis pick through stores and buildings in search of food and temporary shelter, always on the lookout for other survivors. They are starving and scared, and are being followed by a silent large man with a gaping hole in his gut. Meanwhile, in the woods, a tall man begins to stir, a new kind of life animating a body that was once dead. He has no memory of who he is but immediately feels a strong desire to find others.

As these characters make their way towards each other, awful and unexpected things will happen and as the dead become more aware, underestimating their power and hunger can be fatal.

The New Hunger behaves very much like a prequel - giving its readers a glimpse into each characters' back story, building the tension and expectations typical of a zombie apocalypse that pushes these separate groups together - while still screaming for even more back story and falling this short of  leaving off where Warm Bodies began.

Fans of Warm Bodies will be happy to find themselves falling back into Isaac Marion's capable hands, trusting the decisions he makes along his destroyed and demolished landscapes, eagerly anticipating his every twist and turn. Never read Warm Bodies? No worries, The New Hunger works very well as a stand-alone novella too. Zombie fiction lovers who pick this up are guaranteed to find something to sink their teeth into.

Other recommended Warm Bodies / zombie / prequel-ish online samplings can be found here: Boarded Window and here: I am a Zombie Filled with Love

Go get your zombie on!

Review: Death of a Ladies' Man

Read 1/8/13 - 1/12/13
3.5 Stars - Recommended to readers who like their love complicated and devious
Kindle eBook
Publisher: 3AM Press

Dear dirty politician,

Did you really think you could fuck around on your wife, for years no less, and not get caught? Haven't you witnessed enough of your brothers falling from grace for the exact same thing? What makes you so special, that you should be spared the same embarrassment?  Because you were careful? Because you took precautions? Ha!

Once a cad, always a cad, amirite? So sad, really. The shame and humiliation your family had to suffer, all because of your selfish acts.. your inability to keep it in your pants.. your obsession with the female sex organ. You got so used to having whoever you wanted, whenever you wanted, that you let it cloud your thinking. The power of your position went straight to your... head. It boiled your blood, didn't it, the desire? To have sex with a hot woman, any woman? It started to drive you mad, didn't it?!

Seeing a lovely lady and expecting, convincing yourself that she wanted you as much as you wanted her. What gave you the right? It certainly served you right, you fuck up. You horny bastard. You give men a bad name. A bad rap. You're the reason wives worry when their husbands call from the office and tell them they're "running late". You and your cheating ways.

And your wife, man, did she make it easy for you, or what? No balls on her, that one. The less she knew, the better and how lucky for you that she never questioned or cared what you were up to when you were away from home for so long. Poor girl, no self esteem, no self respect. And willing to stand behind you through almost all of it. Why am I not surprised that this added fuel to your cheating-fire instead of filling you with guilt?

Oooohhh, but the guilt eventually found you, didn't it? No matter where you hid or how hard you tried to outrun it. It worked its way into you and consumed you and made you mad with it.

I almost wish your wife had found out before the rest of us did. It might have been your saving grace.

Signed,
A disgusted non-voter.

Where Writers Write: Kathleen Rooney

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. 

This is Kathleen Rooney. 

She is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a three-person team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She is wearing a mustache in her author photo to celebrate the release of her sixth and latest book, Robinson Alone, a novel in poems based on the life and work of the poet Weldon Kees. She lives in Chicago with her husband, the writer Martin Seay. 

Where Kathleen Rooney Writes

Earlier this spring, I read Edna Ferber’s novel So Big, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925. In it, Ferber has the unhappy and unlikeable title character Dirk “So Big” DeJong, during his soon-to-be-abandoned studies to become an architect, express his distaste for the type of structure in which I have my writing space:  

His contempt for local architecture was now complete. Especially did he hold forth on the subject of the apartment-houses that were mushrooming on every street in Chicago from Hyde Park on the south to Evanston on the north. Chicago was always very elegant in speaking of these; never called them ‘flats’; always apartments. In front of each of these (there were usually six to a building), was stuck a little glass-enclosed cubicle known as a sun parlour. In these (sometimes you heard them spoken of, grandly, as solariums) Chicago dwellers took refuge from the leaden skies, the heavy lake atmosphere, the gray mist and fog and smoke that so frequently swathed the city in gloom. They were done in yellow or rose cretonnes. Silk lampshades glowed therein, and flower-laden boxes. In these frank little boxes, Chicagoread its paper, sewed, played bridge, even ate its breakfast. It never pulled down the shades.

Unlike Dirk—whose opinion Ferber clearly intends for the reader to disagree with—I love my solarium on the third and top floor, even when it’s not sunny. Rainarium, windarium, cloudarium, snowarium—this room is my favorite place to write. 

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

Check back next week to see where Colin Dickey gets his writing on.

The Audio Series: Tod Davies

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, Tod Davies reads to us from her novel Lily the Silent. She is the author of Snotty Saves the Day, and Lily the Silent, books one and two of The History of Arcadia series. She believes that imagination forms stories, and that stories form reality--which means that imagination forms reality. So it's not at all strange that the world of Arcadia, which has discovered the same principle to be true, should be sharing their fairy tales with our world through her.

By the way, she not only believes in mermaids, she has met one recently, and can guarantee that the Arcadian description of them, related in this recording, is completely true.

Click the soundcloud bar to experience an excerpt of Lily the Silent, as read by Tod Davies.

The word on Lily the Silent:

Lily leads a serene life in Arcadia until the forces of Megalopolis invade. Rescued from slavery by a prince of Megalopolis, Lily is sent to retrieve a very important key. Aided by her friends, her dog Rex, and even Death herself, Lily's adventures take her from the Moons to the Bottom of the Sea, and finally back to Megalopolis, where she faces the decision of her life. Will she choose True Love and relinquish the key to those in Power or will she risk everything for who she is and return the key to Arcadia?

Narrated by Lily's daughter, Sophia the Wise, this is a story about a girl who learns to live by her own light and--no matter how reluctantly--become the queen her people need. Full of Arcadian legends, it is also a fairy tale within a fairy tale about a troubled world not unlike our own, as well as a beautifully illustrated prequel to "Snotty Saves the Day," which critics and booksellers hailed as "Lewis Carroll with footnotes by Jonathan Swift," while comparing it to authors whose work can be savored by readers of all ages: Susanna Clark, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, and L. Frank Baum.

Tod Davies lives with her husband and her two dogs in the alpine valley of Colestin, in Oregon, where she discovered the first Arcadian manuscript, and at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in Boulder, Colorado.

Mike Madrid, a native San Franciscan, is the author of "The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines."
*lifted from goodreads, with love

Review: Wool Omnibus

Read 12/25/12 - 12/30/12
4.5 Stars - Highly Recommended / for the cautious, curious, and malcontent
Pgs: 532
Publisher: Self published

When you look at Hugh Howey's Wool Omnibus sitting on the couch beside you, you think "whoa, how am I ever going to finish this brick?" A large and daunting presence in any review pile, I decided to tackle this monster during Christmas break, when I had 5 lounge-around-the-house-and-do-nothing-all-vacation days laid out ahead of me. I was feeling the beginnings of what soon developed into Strep Throat and wasn't moving off of the couch unless nature, or my stomach, called, so it seemed the perfect time to crack that spine and dive into things. (and for the record, I totally didn't crack the spine. I am not a book abuser. It's not in my nature. Actually, I don't think I am physically capable of cracking spines. Books or otherwise. I've tried. I start to break out in a sweat and my hands begin to shake as I force them to bend the book apart. I cringe and look away, and just. can't. do. it.)

I'm not ashamed to admit that Wool and I started off a little rocky. The first line - "The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death..." - felt strange, as if I'd just walked into the middle of story-time and had to scramble to figure out what the heck was taking place. Wait. Who was Holston? Why was he climbing to his death? What do they mean, climbing? Climbing what? Where the heck is he? Stop. Stop the story. I need to know.

I read on, just a few pages, then found myself flipping back to that first line and reading it all, all over again. I blame part of it on my being under the weather and not at my reading best. I blame the rest of it on good ole fashioned impatience. Because I hate not knowing things. I hate feeling like everyone (yes, even fictional characters) knows more than me. And I hate to wait. Little did I know that making one wait is what Wool is good at. Or that most of the characters would turn out to know a heck of a lot less than I did...

Wool is a self published author's dream. What began for Howey as a stand alone, self published novelette back in 2011 quickly grew into a five-part series as he worked to meet the demand of his readers. That five-part series was then optioned for film in 2012 and picked up by Random House for a hardcover release this month in the UK. Not too shabby for a book that started its life as a 49 page story about an undefined apocalyptic event that destroys the earth and forces its survivors to live underground, huh?

Over 140 levels below the surface of a ravaged earth, a society of people have managed to eek out a living that somewhat resembles our own within the concrete confines of the Silo. They work, they go to school, they eat, and they sleep. There are mechanics and IT personnel, doctors and nurses, farmers and couriers. Cameras, placed outside the Silo at ground level, project images of a nearby destroyed city inside its walls. It's the only contact these people have with the outside world. Rules have been put in place, everyone is expected to obey the laws of the Silo; the Mayor and her sheriffs are the enforcers, and all criminals are sent out to clean. To even speak of the outside can be grounds for banishment.

Fear of the outside keeps the people in line, keeps the peace, quiets the questions. The people have been locked away within the Silo for so long that none of them have ever known any other life. They wouldn't know what to question. There are rumors of past Uprisings. Of groups of people who rebel against the laws and demand to know what the Silo's government is hiding. Secrets that a select few appear to be protecting. But each time, the history books are wiped clean and somehow peace is always restored and the hush of normalcy returns.

Holston, the man who is climbing to his death at the start of Wool, has stumbled upon a secret and it has been eating him alive. And if you only read that first 49 page story, what you won't know, dear reader, is that  we are witnessing the very beginning of the next Uprising...

Reminiscent in some ways of M. Clifford's The Book - another self-published novel that deals with a twisted, manipulative government and a futuristic, dystopian society of people  - Wool worries at the frayed edges of man's sanity. How long will people allow themselves to be herded along like mindless sheep? Is man bound to repeat history when the past has been hidden from him? Can a powerful few ever truly keep mankind in check? Is the threat of death enough to stunt human curiosity?

Over the course of Wool Omnibus's 500+ pages, Howey toys with those very questions and tugs his readers down along the dark and difficult stairway of the Silo to discover the answers. And discovery came quickly to me, because I was barely able to put the book down after starting it. A quick paced, lightening fast read for those who are not content with waiting.

Whether you are a fan of the Wool series, dystopian novels, or self published literature, come join TNBBC between January 15th and January 30th, as we host Hugh Howey in a two week long discussion of those very things AND MORE.

Molly Tanzer's Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze  premiered as a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC back 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. 

Molly Tanzer's Infernal!

Mixology is a passion of mine, so I was tickled when Lori asked me if I would like to compound some sort of  A Pretty Mouth-themed libation for The Next Best Book Blog. I hadn’t yet designed an Ivybridge cocktail; last year, around the book’s publication I’d been tinkering with The Heavenly Twins  (two cocktails with the same base, titled after a book that planted the seed for A Pretty Mouth in my brain many, many years ago when I was still in grad school) but nothing that was strictly Calipash-themed.

For those of you who have read A Pretty Mouth, or any of the individual stories in the various places they appeared before the collection debuted, you know that the Calipash family is a degenerate but noble line given to occasionally spawning pairs of evil/unsavory twins, usually during periods of English history and literature that are of interest to me personally. (Convenient, that.) For those of you who haven’t read A Pretty Mouth, well, feel free to buy it! It’s available in e- and regular book form … but as I just explained it’s shtick feel free to make the cocktail below and just not really get the joke.

Though there are many—five, to be precise—pairs of twins featured in A Pretty Mouth, I decided to do only one cocktail, based on the original pair: Basil Vincent and his twin sister Rosemary from the original Calipash story, “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins.” Basil and Rosemary will always be special for me for a number of reasons (You never forget your first, right? Or something) and they also work together a lot better than most of the perpetually flaky Calipash spawn. Juxtaposing ingredients harmoniously is an essential part of creating new cocktails, after all.

Here’s a brief description of those original Ivybridge twins for the uninitiated:

“Truth be told, even had Basil been interested in women, his slouching posture, slight physique, and petulant mouth would have likely ensured a series of speedy rejections. Contrariwise, Rosemary was a remarkably appealing creature, but there was something so frightening about her sharp-toothed smile and wicked gaze that no boy in the county could imagine comparing her lips to cherubs’ or her eyes to the night sky…”

(Basil would, of course, be played by a young Jeffrey Combs and Rosemary by Chloë Moretz.)

Anyways! I wanted to design a cocktail that was sweet and sour and bitter and seductive, dangerous and amusing, and also somewhat historically interesting/educational. I must say I’m rather proud of the resulting potent potable. It’s vaguely gimlet-ish but with a few extras that make it a bit more special, and it’ll get you where you need to go.

Some explanation before the recipe:

1.      The “Infernal!” uses as its base “Old Tom” gin. If you’re not familiar with Old Tom, it’s a gin that traces its roots to the 18^th century, and was immensely popular during the Victorian era. You can find bottles of Old Tom in high-end liquor stores these days. I think the most commonly-available brand is Hayman’s, but you can also find one these days called Ransom. I haven’t tried that one yet, but I very much want to. Basically, Old Tom gin is sweeter than a London Dry gin like Bombay Dry or, god forbid, Tanqueray. If you can’t find a Tom-style gin, ask your favorite liquor proprietor for a recommendation on a sweeter gin than the usual Dry style one finds most regularly these days. I really like Maxim, which is inexpensive, or Hendricks. But the fad for micro-distilling has provided the home mixologist so many regional options it’s best to ask someone locally in-the-know.

2.      Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur is available in most liquor stores. It’s used sparingly in many classic cocktail recipes, so it’s worth picking up a bottle. Most only call for a teaspoon or less so it’s a good investment.

3.      Real absinthe. Find some. Herbsaint (a common substitute for absinthe, especially in the Sazerac) is, in my opinion too strongly flavored, and as it’s often artificially colored … no thanks! Real, legitimate absinthe is legal and easy enough to find these days, so there’s no reason to compromise. If you’re unsure if you like absinthe, get a little bottle. Lucid, for example, makes smaller bottles, is reasonably priced, and totally good. If you can get Leopold Brother’s absinthe (Colorado peoples especially, I’m looking at you!) it’s amazing, but it’s a small distillery. Just be sure, in the liquor store, to check the back of the bottle (eschew artificial coloring if you can!) and read reviews before you buy.

Okay! Enough chit-chat and noodling. Time to start drinking! Or rather, mixing. Mixing then drinking is preferable, of course.

Infernal!

2 oz Old Tom gin

½ oz basil and rosemary-infused simple syrup (recipe follows)

½ oz lemon juice

½ tsp. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur

¼ tsp real absinthe

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice; shake vigorously and pour gently over a cocktail cherry* nestled in the bottom of a chilled cocktail glass.

Basil and Rosemary Simple Syrup

The leaves of 4 stripped sprigs of rosemary, washed well

1 c natural brown sugar like Turbinado or Demerara**

1 ½ cups water

The leaves of 4 sprigs of basil, washed well

Combine the first three ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir and bring to a boil. Simmer for 1 minute, then kill the heat and let steep for 45 minutes. Strain and chill. Store in a sealed Tupperware or mason jar or something, and use within 1 month of making. If you’re not making Infernal!s, use it in place of sour mix in a whiskey sour or Tom Collins, but avoid using Rye. The spicy notes make resultant cocktails taste like those lemon-eucalyptus cough drops. Not good.

*Recommended: Luxardo Maraschino cherries for the cherry in the bottom. Yes, those cocktail cherries you’ve laughed at for being priced around 19 dollars a jar. Trust me, they’re worth it—and more importantly, you’re worth them.

** Not grocery-store brown sugar! If you don’t have natural brown sugar, use regular white sugar.

That’s it! Thanks much to Lori for reviewing A Pretty Mouth and for taking an interest in the project. We’re doing an author Q&A inFebruary so check back for updates on that, it should be a blast! 

Molly Tanzer lives in Boulder, Colorado along the front range of the Mountains of Madness, or maybe just the Flatirons. She is a professional writer and editor, among other things. Her debut, A Pretty Mouth, was published by Lazy Fascist Press in September 2012, and her short fiction has appeared in The Book of Cthulhu (Vols. I and II), Future Lovecraft, and Fungi, and is forthcoming in Zombies: Shambling through the Ages, Geek Love: An Anthology of Full Frontal Nerdery, and The Starry Wisdom Library. She blogs—infrequently—about writing, hiking, cocktail mixing, vegan cooking, movies, and other stuff at http://mollytanzer.com, and tweets as @molly_the_tanz.

Where Writers Write: Jane McLoughlin

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. 

This is Jane McLoughlin. 

She is an American from Minnesota who has lived in the U.K. for twenty years. She’s written screenplays, radio dramas, and has had several short stories published. She lives in Brighton with her husband and teenage children, and teaches English in a secondary school. At Yellow Lake (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books) is her debut novel.

Where Jane McLoughlin Writes

First, a bit of ancient history: I started writing when my kids were small (they are now VERY big) and so my first writing space was the kitchen table, where I’d bash out short stories on old manual Imperial typewriter. A few of these were published in literary magazines, but it took me longer to finish a story than to grow a baby and, as the stories weren’t all as amazing as my kids turned out to be, my “career” wasn’t particularly lucrative.

Still isn’t, as a matter of fact. But now that I no longer need to use correction fluid, little erasers with brushes, or those weird fiddly tapes, the writing process is at least less cumbersome, less messy (usually; see below) and less time-consuming.

Luckily, I’m still happy writing on a table in the bedroom, or in any room of the house. I don’t need any special equipment other than a fast keyboard and a well-lit screen. I don’t have any pictures around me or favorite mementos. Usually, I’m just surrounded by clutter: a pair of scissors, a coffee cup, part of yesterday’s newspaper, some loose change, a hair dryer, and even a towel and extra keyboard because I usually spill a cup of tea over everything!

So where I write has never been a huge issue for me. How I write is much more important. I need QUIET; no soundtrack, please. I need to be ALONE; no cafes, either. When I started to write neither of those conditions were available to me.

Hey, remember how Mum used to yell at us to leave her alone and be quiet?
Wasn’t that fun?

But there is one writing place that is special to me.

My family has a lake cabin in northern Wisconsin, and this place--the cabin, the surrounding forests, the lake--was the setting for my debut YA novel, At Yellow Lake. I didn’t write the entire book there, but I was looking out at its view while I wrote some of the book’s most difficult scenes.

It’s a beautiful place, as you can see. To use it as a setting where terrible things, as well as good ones, happen to the teenage characters I’d come to know and love should have seemed wrong. I don’t consciously mine my own life when I write. In this case, though, it seemed right to connect scary fictional events to a place where I’ve always felt safe and secure.

Maybe that’s what I need from a writing space: a sturdy anchor, in a calm harbour, so that I can visit dark, dangerous places and still find a safe passage home. 

Check back next week to see where Kathleen Rooney writes. 

The Audio Series: Sybil Baker

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, Sybil Baker reads to us from her novel Into This World. She is also the author of The Life Plan and Talismans. She teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as well as in the City University of Hong Kong's MFA program and the Yale Writers' Conference. Sybil Baker was named one of "today's strongest emerging talents in literary fiction and poetry" by the Huffington Post. Recently she was a Visiting Writer at the American Writers Festival in Singapore, where she was awarded the National Critics Choice Best New Cross Cultural Literary Fiction and Poetry Writer of the Year. A recipient of Chattanooga's MakeWork Grant, she is Fiction Editor at Drunken Boat.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience Into This World, as read by author Sybil Baker.

The word on Into This World:

The answering machine picked up after the fourth ring. "Are you my father?" On the day Allison Morehouse walks off her job, her sister Mina calls from Korea, frantic and in tears. Determined to discover the truth about her adopted sister, Allison flies to Seoul, yet Mina-and Korea-are nothing like Allison imagines. Over the next three months, Allison and Mina will unearth thirty years of family secrets-and Allison will discover in Mina the sister she never embraced and in herself, the stronger woman she can be. This story of sisterhood, betrayal, and a tangled history of love and deception will carry you halfway around the world and deep into the hearts of two sisters whose fates were shaped by a long-lost love and the lies it spawned... and the history of a country and a man they never understood. "Sybil Baker is a startlingly good writer. The big cities and small villages of Korea feel alive on every page. And if you think there's nothing fresh to say about the fragility of family bonds, read Into This World. Only in the best-told stories, like this one, may we measure and forgive one another, and ourselves." -Nance Van Winckel, author of No Starling. "Vivid writing compels us to make this journey through the streets and temples of Seoul. Baker's fresh and graceful plotting fuels the reader's hunger to know what will happen next to these sisters in a family and a country torn apart by the past." -Jane Bradley, author of You Believers "A story of one family's secret history glimpsed through the eyes of two estranged sisters; Allison, a troubled woman still grieving the loss of her unborn child, and Mina, a half-Korean expatriate in search of her shadowy past. Beautifully told, Sybil Baker weaves a lush, finely wrought tale of two daughters in search of love, two sisters in search of forgiveness in the middle of a foreign land." -Cathy Holton, author of Summer in the South

*Lifted from Goodreads with love.

Review: Fight Song

Read 12/23/12 - 12/25/12
4.5 Stars - Highly Recommended / middle age mid-life crisis fiction never looked so good
Pgs: 252
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Release Date: February 12, 2013

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who allow things to happen and those who make things happen. Right from the opening pages of Fight Song, it's easy to see that Bob Coffen is a classic case of the former. Our overweight, middle-aged video game programmer is a victim of his routine, compliantly riding the waves of boredom day in and day out, awkwardly poking fun at himself before others ever have the chance. At home, he suffers a chilly marriage to a wife who is too busy training to break the world record for treading water to show him any affection. His technology-obsessed children barely acknowledge him. His neighbor - an old high school football player - bullies him relentlessly, while at work, he feels the life force being sucked right out of his skull working for a boss doesn't even know his name.

But it all comes to a head one evening when, pedaling his bike home from work, his neighbor takes things too far and runs him off the road. No longer willing to be the world's doormat, Coffen gathers up all of his anger and humiliation and makes a stand against Schumann. This, like everything else he does, crumbles and flops to the grass of his neighbor's lawn as he finds himself, instead, accepting Schumann's offer to become his "life coach".

And so begins Coffen's seventy-two hour metamorphosis from a man who allows things to happen into a "man who makes things happen". In no time flat, he finds himself the head designer of a bestiality video game, co-kidnapper of a marriage counseling magician, and temporary roommate to the company janitor, who also happens to moonlight as a guitarist in a KISS cover band. (Well, no one said he'd make the right kind of things happen, now, did they?)

Joshua Mohr continues to dazzle us with characters that are stuffed to the brim with deliciously wild flaws while keeping things grounded with a healthy dose of humor and heart. Rather than suffering through the depressing tale of a man on the brink of losing it all, we find ourselves on a journey of self-discovery, of finding friends in the unlikeliest of places, of learning the value of accepting help even when you weren't asking for it, and of shedding those layers of dead skin that have been weighing you down without you having realized it.

Be sure to celebrate the release of Fight Song as we bring you a two-week long Fight Song Blog Tour this February. Dates and destinations will be released soon! Hope to see you there.

Emmet O'Cuana Takes it to the Toilet

Oh yes! We are absolutely running a series on bathroom reading! So long as it's taking place behind the closed  (or open, if that's the way you swing) bathroom door, we want to know what it is. It can be a book, the back of the shampoo bottle, the newspaper, or Twitter on your cell phone - whatever helps you pass the time...

Emmet O'Cuana is a freelance journalist based in Sydney, who writes and hosts podcasts on The Momus Report. And today he's gathered the courage to engage in a little potty-talk.

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

There is a chap I know, a very talented artist and graphic designer based in Dublin, named Eoin Hamilton. Imagine if you will a mountain of a man, a Celtic Berserker born in the wrong time and forced to occupy himself with the pallid chaos of a metal bar mosh pit, but in repose a good hearted fellow with an infectious laugh. That's Eoin.

Our paths crossed several times during my late teens - I had not made much of an impression on him and generally had to introduce myself - but it was when he moved in with a mutual friend that I first became properly acquainted with him. Looking back on it all, I can say our friendship commenced when I discovered his choice of toilet literature.

On a lazy Sunday that had no right to be - a definitive college exam was taking place on the following morning, which I was drinking expensive Belgian suds to distract myself from - I sat in a smoky room that had become a home away from home. One particular long-standing feature of the room had been an impressive 'Byramid' - a pyramid composed out of beer cans. Although I cannot recall if it was still standing at this point in time - this tribute to many wasted nights is gone but not forgotten.

I suddenly launched myself upright from the comforting nicotine musk of the sofa and staggered out of the room in the direction of the toilet. Raising the lid I did my micturate duty, only to notice to my surprise an old friend shoved between the bowl base and the wall - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Not only was this the combined edition of all three novels, it was the same edition as the one I had read half a dozen times by the age of 15. I would read it yet again the week before Peter Jackson's film The Fellowship of the Ring was released in the cinema.

All this I could tell despite the forlorn condition of the book - cover missing, pages yellowed and curled. Now some might find the presence of this book in such a place shocking - but ask yourself, when forced to answer the call of nature, why not transport yourself to a land of elves, ambulatory trees and boozy hobbits, even while your insides conduct waste to its final destination. There's a line in The Big Chill - that breezy take off of John Sayles' far superior Return of the Secaucus 7, which has less popular tunes but does feature David Strathairn's naked arse - when sleazeball journalist Jeff Goldblum is criticized for writing pabulum which he claims is aimed at readers sitting on the toilet. Kevin Kline responds that people read Tolstoy on the toilet, only for the rebuttal to come 'Ah, but they don't finish it'. When I emerged I asked who owned the book and it turned out of course to be Eoin's copy, but he was still working on getting to Mount Doom.

And why not I thought.

Where Writers Write: Courtney Elizabeth Mauk

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. 

This is Courtney Elizabeth Mauk. 

She's the author of the novel Spark (Engine Books, 2012). Her work has appeared in The Literary Review, PANK, Wigleaf, and FiveChapters, among others. She is an assistant editor at Barrelhouse and teaches at Juilliard and The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.

Where Courtney Elizabeth Mauk Writes

The only place I can write is at my desk. I’ll take notes anywhere: coffee shops, the subway, the doctor’s office, in class while my students work on an exercise. I keep a little notebook in my purse for that purpose. But my notes are fragmented, interrupted by grocery lists and ideas for the weekend, and I can’t make out half of them anyway. It doesn’t matter. The act of note-taking is more important than the notes themselves. It’s a way of warming up my brain so that when I sit down at my desk, I’m ready to go.

My husband and I live in a 500 square foot apartment. There’s not a lot of room for anything but the essentials. My “office” is in the corner between the bedroom and the couch. We’ve used bookshelves to create a little wall. It’s nice. When my husband is home, he takes up residence on the couch, and we become absorbed in our separate pursuits, able to get into our individual grooves while pausing now and again to chat.

 I used to say I could only write in the morning, but that was romantic. I’ve become adaptable, although I still like mornings best. What I do need are quiet, a mug of strong, black tea, and my water bottle. 

 On the wall directly above my desk, I post notecards mapping out whatever I’m working on at the moment (right now, my second novel). I make those notecards when I’m well into my first or second draft and need a visual of where I’ve been and where I’m going. The surface of my desk is (neatly) littered with things that make me happy: two origami wolves made by my friend Fiona, a couple of good luck pigs, a photograph of my mom, my favorite hand lotion. The notecards take me into my work, and my collection of happy things brings me back to myself.

 And watching over everything is my little skull baby with his pink elephant. He is my muse. 

Next week, Jane McLoughlin shows off her writing space. 

Book Giveaway: A Pretty Mouth

Since July 2010, TNBBC has been bringing authors and readers together every month to get behind the book! This unique experience wouldn't be possible without the generous donations of the authors and publishers involved.  

I'm excited to be partnering with Lazy Fascist Press

to bring you next month's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing A Pretty Mouth 

with Molly Tanzer.

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Lazy Fascist Press has agreed to give away 15 eBooks (mobi format)

 INTERNATIONALLY

Here is the Goodreads description:

Re-Animator meets The Secret History in this Tale of Sex and Science
Henry Milliner thinks his days of being the school pariah are over forever when he attracts the attention of Wadham College's coolest Fellow Commoner, St John Clement, the Lord Calipash. St John is everything Henry isn't: Brilliant, graceful, rich, universally respected. And as if that wasn't enough, St John is also the leader of the Blithe Company, the clique of Natural Philosophy majors who rule Wadham with style. But when being St John's protege ends up becoming a weirder experience than Henry anticipated -- and the Blithe Company doesn't quite turn out to be the decadent, debauched crew he dreamed of -- Henry has some big decisons to make. Should he beg the forgiveness of his only friend, naive underclassman John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, or should he ride it out with St John and try to come out on top?

Tangling with a Calipash is an invariably risky endeavor. From antiquity to the modern era, few who have encountered members of that family have benefited from the acquaintance. If only Henry knew the that Calipashes are notorious for their history of sinister schemes, lewd larks, and eldritch experiments, he would realize there are way worse things than being unpopular...

This giveaway will run through January 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on January 9th.

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating that you'd like to receive a copy of the book. 

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from February 15th through the end of the month . Molly Tanzer has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for her. 

 *If you are chosen as a winner, by accepting the copy you are agreeing to read the book and join the group discussion at TNBBC on Goodreads (the thread for the discussion will be emailed to you before the discussion begins). 

 3 - Your comment must have a way to contact you (email is preferred). 

Good luck!!!

Review: Raised From the Ground

Read 11/28/12 - 12/17/12
3.5 Stars - Recommended to fans of historic epic family stories / Not recommended as an intro to the author
Pgs: 363
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Released: Dec'12

The more I read Jose Saramago's earlier works, the more I appreciate his distinctive writing style. Originally written in his native language in 1980, Saramago's posthumously translated Raised From the Ground gives us a glimpse of the conversational, long-flowing sentences and creative characterization that become commonplace in his later fiction.

In this, the author's most personal novel, Saramago tells the story of three generations of Mau Tempo's - a hard working, illiterate, and landless family - in a fascinating and wholly engaging way. Forget reading a book about the things that happen to this growing family of peasants who work their knuckles to the bone out in the fields of Alentejo in order to keep food on their plates and a roof over their head. Instead, find yourself pulled through the pages by the narrator as he sits besides you and decadently deviates from the tale of these unfortunate grandparents and daughters and sons from time to time, zooming in among the pebbles on the path that our Mau Tempo's walk to show us the thin line of ants who parade alongside these humans on their very own survival mission, and drawing our focus towards the dribble of water that spills from a bucket, contemplating the liquid's fate as members of the Mau Tempo family fight to see another day.

A story of perseverance in the face of public humiliation and political punishment, Saramago's strong feelings for church and government dance in the background as he dazzles us with the simple strength of human will. In a time when standing up for your rights found you jailed and tortured, we are urged to watch as generation after generation of the Mau Tempo men attempt to make a better living for their families.

Saramago and his crafty narrator find the perfect balance between satire and sadness, where elements of history and humor mix together expertly to keep the tears from forming in your eyes as you root for the hardy farm workers to finally get their day in the sun.

I found the novel to be somewhat long in the tooth - the ponderous deviations that I look forward to in Saramago's later novels are still figuring themselves out here, sometimes appearing at the wrong moment, other times deviating so far off the story's path that it actually slows the tale's momentum rather than enhance it. Yet as I say that, Saramago also manages moments of sheer perfection as his mind strays from the story - most often in the form of an additional perspective during events that are taking place. Our narrator has no qualms stepping back and allowing another to tell the goings-on when the opportunity arises. Take for instance this thin line of ants that happen to find themselves in the path of one of the Mau Tempo men as they fall to the ground from a beating. Our narrator allows the lead ant, which holds its head like a dog, to share what it is seeing in that very moment, how it observes and makes note of the man's bruised and battered face, a face it shall never forget, before the ant moves on to wherever he and his friends were headed. And later in the story, we are treated again to their perspective, when this same line of ants find themselves moving along the walls of the prison that the battered man is being held and tortured in...

A moving tale that demonstrates the cunning and creative beginnings of a wickedly talented Nobel-laureate novelist.