Book Review: Die You Doughnut Bastards

Read 4/5/14 - 4/7/14
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of light bizarro cause light bizarro's like a box a chocolates, you never know just what kinda crazy ass stories you gunna get.
196 pages
Publisher: Eraserhead Press
Released: 2012



Every once in awhile, I gotta take a break from the overwhelming pile of review books and stick my nose into something else. A little breather reading. Something fun - not that what I have in my review pile isn't fun, mind you - but a pressure free read that I can escape into, like a warm bath after a mentally draining day at work.

For these side-reads of mine, I like to pick up lighter books, funkier books, books that don't ask to be taken seriously. Because lord knows 'serious' books require quite a bit of work and effort on the part of the reader. (Wait till you read my upcoming review on You Lost Me There, which isn't written yet because I'm still chewing on it all. Yeah.)

Cameron Pierce's Die You Doughnut Bastards was just the bizarro brain candy I was hungry for. I downloaded the collection for 99 cents on a whim when Eraserhead Press had a can't-pass-this-shit-up sale (my words, not theirs). Knowing Cameron through his position as head editor at Lazy Fascist Press, but never having read any of his own writing, I figured hell, for 99 cents, even if only one of his stories blows me away, it was worth it!

But I really shouldn't have worried. Typical of the work he chooses to publish over at LFP, Cameron is king at creating his own absurdly awesome and awesomely horrible worlds. Regular sized pet guinea pigs that develop a taste for blood and escape the confines of their cages to chew their way past your eyeball and into your brain? Check. Spooky Christmas pancakes that howl and scream while you drown them in maple syrup and cut into them? Check. Oh, and how about a prison made of pizza that drips sauce all over its anorexic inmates? Yup, it's got that too. And how can we not talk about the opening apocalyptic story that involves killer doughnuts? It'll have you thinking twice before biting into that Boston Creme with your morning coffee!

Not all of the stories are as whacked out as these, however. Some are actually quite sweet and touching. "Lantern Jaw" is a lovely, if not strange, little love story about two misfit high schoolers, while "Mitchell Farnsworth" is more a lusty fuckfest-gone-to-pot between two former roommates. And then there's "The Death Card" which is part bittersweet and part goopey-doopey, where an expectant young father is tasked with packing up his "toy" room to make space for their baby.

Cameron walks a delicate line between being overly sappy and slightly too gross, threading just enough of each into his stories, blending just the right amount of awkward into the absurd. You almost don't trust where he's about to take you. And it's a pretty cool feeling.

Melanie Reviews: Two Small Birds

Two Small Birds by Dave Newman

296 pages

Publisher:Writers Tribe Books

Released: 2014

Guest review by Melanie Page

In Two Small Birds, readers are reassured that they will probably fail, despite their best efforts to be “good” when they know they’ve been “bad.” The novel follows 23-year-old Dan Charles as he shuffles between an undergrad degree in poetry plus a few bad part-time jobs, to full-time truck driver. Well, truck driver for a year; that’s all he’s promised his brother John that he can do. Truck driving is the most boring, soul-crushing job that forces Dan to choose between right and wrong and more money versus little money on an hourly basis. He finds that if he takes speed and drinks he can stay on the road longer and make more cash, but he’s nearly dead when he gets three days off, which he uses to sleep at his brother’s apartment. Or, he can eat well, exercise, and stay sober, but then he has trouble driving for ridiculously long periods.

The whole truck-driving career is part of a plan for Dan and John to invest in a wire that other companies won’t carry--it’s expensive, but everyone sells the cheap imitation that has to be replaced all the time. Dan drives truck and saves up money for his part of the investment, and John continues working his crappy on-call job as his end of the bargain. Both know Dan’s job is harder, and tension grows as Dan remembers their childhood when John would lie to get Dan in trouble or beat his younger brother to keep him in his “place.” Here’s where readers start to feel distrusting of John. “Boys will be boys” is a cheap excuse adults use to justify brothers abusing each other, but when does it stop? Is John going to screw Dan over despite them being in their 20s?

The beauty of this novel comes from two places. One is its specific appeal to American ideals: working hard, bootstraps, that sort of thing. John and Dan aren’t part of a get-rich-quick scheme; the hours Dan logs are equivalent of years of working. But the jaded America we live in today tells us that whether John is trustworthy or not, their dream is dead before its up and running. Compared to those who reach out and achieve success seemingly without effort, the brothers are like two small birds trying to survive in nature’s deadly ecosystem. Dan wants to be a full-time poet and reader, but others who work those man’s-man jobs are skeptical of his employability: “You should go to prison,” his landscaping boss advises, “They have a good welding program in prison.” Do we live in a place where prison serves us instead of us serving in prison?

The other beauty of Newman’s work is his attention to people. To capture such weird, unbelievable characters and make them wholly likeable is a feat that no other in contemporary small press author comes close to. Newman does dialogue like nobody’s business. In unfamiliar territory, Dan stops to ask if there is a Chinese restaurant around the area:

The skinny guy said, “Yeah, next exit. Head east. Only place on the road.”

“That’s not Chinese. That’s Korean,” the old guy said....

“What the fuck’s the difference?”

“I was in Korea,” said the old guy.

“...You’ve been bullshitting about car racing like you know everything and now you’re 

bullshitting about Korea. You’re a bullshitter. Shut up and watch the TV.”

“My big brother was in Korea for the war. Got shot in the pinky toe.”

“So your big brother was in the Korean War and got shot in the foot and now you’re an 

expert on Korea, is that it?”

“I didn’t say I was an expert.”

“No, you said you were in Korea.”

“I misspoke,” the old guy said. “Now I’m going to go out to my truck and get my gun and I 

wouldn’t be surprised if it misspoke right in your skinny fucking face.”

For anyone who has been in those “good-ol’ boys”-type bars, you know these patrons. You’ve seen them or argued with them. They’re probably members at your local Eagles or Moose or Elk club. Newman grabs these personalities, rips them off their bar stools, and smacks them on the pages of Two Small Birds. Even the prostitutes are likeable when they’re making you mad. This is definitely some manly fiction with a humanities bent.


Melanie Page is a MFA graduate, adjunct instructor, and recent founder of Grab the Lapels, a site that only reviews books written by women (www.grabthelapels.weebly.com).

Indie Book Buzz: Quirk Books

It's the return of the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few months or so, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks comes from Eric Smith,

Social Media & Marketing Coordinator at Quirk Books.

World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters

July 15th, 2014

When I started at Quirk Books four years ago, I was already a fan of Ben H. Winters. I’d read his mashups (Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters!), followed him on Twitter, and was just really excited to get to work on whatever books came through the Quirk HQ with his name on them.

So when he pitched a trilogy to Quirk, one with a pre-apocalyptic angle, I was beyond psyched.

World of Troubleis the final book in that trilogy, a series of books called The Last Policeman. It imagines the world on the brink of the apocalypse, with an asteroid heading towards the Earth. What would our final days look like? How would people treat one another? What would society become? Winters seeks to answer these questions, and explores them through Hank Palace, a detective who keeps doing his job even though the world is destined to end.

It’s been a moving and exciting ride (especially when he won the Edgar award for the first book!), and while I’m sad to say goodbye, I’m thrilled at the success the series has had. Definitely pick up the first two books, and get yourself caught up.

William Shakespeare’s the Jedi Doth Return by Ian Doescher:

July 1st, 2014

Oh my goodness, another end to a trilogy! Excuse me, I’m busy experiencing serious feelings.

Okay, let’s continue.

Last year, Quirk published the New York Times bestselling debut of Ian Doescher, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, a mashup of Shakespearian writing and the plot of Star Wars Episode IV. We followed it up with another bestseller, The Empire Striketh Back. And now, the trilogy comes to a close with The Jedi Doth Return. Just look at Jabba on the cover! LOVE IT.

These books have been a thrill to work on. Star Wars fans love them, and watching the Internet explore whenever one comes out has just been fantastic. When Quirk was pitched the books, it was just a given. We had to put these out. And we’re so happy that we did.

Nick & Tesla’s Super Cyborg Gadget Glove by Steve Hockensmith & Science Bob

October 7th, 2014

This is the fourth book in the Nick & Tesla series, an adorable bunch of books by Steve Hockensmith and Science Bob. And thankfully, it isn’t the last book, which prevents me from having another emotional breakdown. You might have one of the authors, Bob, on Jimmy Kimmel, where he performs amazing experiments to the delight of the audience.

The Nick & Teslaseries introduces readers to a brother and sister duo who solve mysteries using projects they make themselves. Burglar alarms, glow in the dark tracking ink, simple robots, things of that nature… and as kids read along, they can actually make the projects too! The books have the instructions in them!

I read every book we put out at Quirk, and just love it when a new Nick & Tesla book pops up. They’re middle grade reads, so I usually get through them in a day or two, and love every page. They are the kind of books I would have devoured as a child, and I’m glad we put them out. You can learn more about the series at www.nickandtesla.com. 

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

Eric Smith is the Social Media & Marketing Manager at Quirk Books, and the author of The Geek's Guide to Dating (Dec 2013). He's hopelessly addicted to good books, bad movies, writing, and video games. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericsmithrocks and Quirk at @quirkbooks.

Where Writers Write: Gert Loveday

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 Gert Loveday. 

Gert is the author of Writing is Easy, an Australian comic novel about the writing world.

Where Gert Loveday Writes

Yes, I'm sorry to say it really does look like this most of the time. If I sit at the desk to write, I just put everything on the floor. Every now and then I tidy it all up and am filled with a new sense of purpose and direction – for a while.

You'll see a music stand to the right with my computer on it.  I like to write standing up, which I find puts my hands in a good position on the sloping keyboard and means I don't get an ache between my shoulder blades.

You'll also see my yoga chair, which serves the double purpose of a seat and something to hang upside down on for a good stretch.

And here is my cat Celie who is always close by, and as you can see in my author photo, helps with yoga too.

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Nik Korpon

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....


Today's ink story comes from Nik Korpon. Nik Korpon is the author of Stay God, Sweet Angel; Fight Card: Punching Paradise; Bar Scars: Stories; By the Nails of the Warpriest; and Old Ghosts. His stories have ruined the reputation of Needle, Noir Nation, Out of the Gutter, Shotgun Honey, and Yellow Mama, among others, and he is an associate editor at Dark House Press. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and kids. Give him some danger, little stranger, at nikkorpon.com.

I’d been getting tattooed and hanging out in shops since I was 19, so after I finished my book Stay God (now Stay God, Sweet Angelwith an additional, origin-story novella), a celebratory tattoo was sort of a given. I hadn’t yet sold the book, but that wasn’t the point. It was more a matter of marking that moment, the culmination of six weeks of fourteen- to sixteen-hour writing days. That was the most euphoric period I’ve ever typed. Only problem was, I was living in London when I wrote the book and all my artist friends were back in Baltimore. There are a ton of great shops in London and any number of them would have made a great tattoo on me, but this wasn’t just some banger I’d wanted because I was bored (and I do have a couple too many of those).

One of the overarching themes of the book is the various incarnations of family. It could be argued that the book is also a love story, a la Hot Fuzz, between Christian and Damon, the two mains. (I did also get the bloody cricket bat from Shaun of the Dead, though that’s a different story.) It could also be said that Christian and Damon are based largely on myself and my best friend, Christian, though I am the one who usually talks us out of whatever trouble he gets us into. So I thought it would be appropriate if Christian, who is also a phenomenally talented tattoo artist, did my book tattoo. In the interim, I got tattooed at Frith Street tattoo, settling on a chainsaw for my then-girlfriend/now-wife because our first date was Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Once back in Baltimore, Christian drew up a cool little black jet in honor of Jet Black Records, the shop the character Christian runs. (The name itself was a reference to a song on Jawbreaker’s Dear You, an album that became the soundtrack to many of our road trips.) It’s a small tattoo that is frequently lost in the clutter of my arms, but it’s one of my favorites.

Drew Reviews: The Holy Ghost People

The Holy Ghost People by Joshua Young
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
85 Pages
Publisher: Play Inverse Press
Released: Feb 2014



Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: The Holy Ghost People - who are they? Where did they come from (are they aliens or are they human or are they ....)? What is the god they believe in?  Who are we to decide?  The Speakers might not believe (in any of it) - but that doesn't mean they don't have to come to terms with it all anyway.

The Review: I have a long and still developing history with non-traditional theater.  I still remember the first plays I read in Scott Cummings' "Dramatic Structure & Theatrical Process" class that forced me to start reconsidering what a play could be - and one of the earliest reviews on this blog, of a Mac Wellman play called Description Beggared, or the Allegory of Whiteness, saw me continuing to grapple with the idea that a playwright can present something that the reader, the director, the cast must then truly translate into a staged event.  See, even the strangest things I grew up experiencing ('bold' settings of Shakespeare, the occasional dip into Beckett) in the theater paled in comparison - and while I still believe that a traditional narrative structure is the stronger form, some amazing things can come from stranger and more thorny stylistic choices.

Such a play is The Holy Ghost People.
I was skeptical at first, I must admit.  There's a line early on in the play, Scene 7 I believe, where the Speakers (ostensibly ordinary average human beings) say to the Holy Ghost People (these potentially otherworldly and certainly strange human-esque figures): "...you talk like a grad student, the way you dismantle language..." and my first instinct (this, on page 17 of an 70-ish page script) was "oh, man, you've set yourself up with that one."  See, I usually don'tgo in for that sort of language in whatever I'm reading.  Lord knows I struggle with the Blake Butlers of the world - for language must, to my mind, root in something in order to connect with me.  Rootless language, no matter how rhetorically beautiful, irritates me.  It feels like a sort of peacocking.  And I'll admit that, at first, I though that's where this play was going.

But shortly after this, after several pages in an ensuing scene of the two groups saying back and forth to one another "we drink from the same water" in some sort of hellish Meisner exercise, some policemen appear on the scene (they don't reappear in the play, at least not as policemen) and say "we got reports of some weird people being weird."  And all the sudden, the play won me over.  Just like that.  That single moment of self-awareness on Mr. Young's part reminded me to not only take this a little less seriously but also it showed me that he isn't just trying to impress people with his avant-garde linguistic abilities.  He's actually doing something here - and so it was that I found myself reading the play with an eye towards, well, staging.  We read novels and see the cinematic versions play across our mind's eye - why is it so much more difficult to do that with plays?  It's funny, isn't it?  But then, this is why I don't direct too often: it's rare that I can read a play and see it before me like I'd want it to be seen.

So color me pleasantly surprised when I looked up from the first reading of this play to find that I'd scribbled notes in the margins of the copy I printed out, thoughts about staging and about the lines and about the concepts - and I then read it again, thinking about the concepts more clearly and interestingly than I had before.
See, this is a play about (to me) religion.  Or perhaps more accurately: belief.  I am and always have been an atheist - but there are things that I do believe in that defy explanation.  And I've been called on to defend those things to those who would seek to shoot down my beliefs because they don't jive with their own.  And on both sides in this play - the Holy Ghost People and the Speakers - I saw that happening.  A fundamental unwillingness to truly communicate, even as they were communicating.  The Holy Ghost People speak of not just the present-day human conception of God (regardless of denomination or delineation) but of science as well as false, falsely believed in.  Their god is a different god than the one we understand - and so too is their science.  There's a spaceship, maybe, and there are definitely some things that are different about the Holy Ghost People - but are they just a version of us considering things differently or are they truly other?  It's a question raised and (to my mind) unanswered in the text of the play.  The crux is, instead, the debate between the two sides.  How they interact.  On the one hand, I'm inclined to side with the Speakers: nobody wants to be told that they are wrong, wrong, wrong and that they'll (essentially) be damned for it.  But on the other, the Speakers are the ones who escalate things and who react most impulsively, which doesn't look too great either.  There's something quite humanely flawed about both sides of the argument here - despite the other obvious differences as laid out in the text (like the fact that the Speakers look like us, pretty much, while the HGP are all in white robes).  It's an impressive effort and one that affords some truly deep writing in addition to the still-to-my-mind-unnecessary rhetorical hoo-ha that colors some of the pages.  Of course, that's just in the writing.  You put these words into the mouths of actors and something else entirely might well happen - I guarantee it.

Rating: 4 out of 5.  But even that is a fluctuating notion.  I've read the script yet another time (3 total, for those keeping score at home) and I keep seeing interesting things in it.  I don't know that Mr. Young manages to achieve the full engagement with the ideas here - there's a lot of good work but I think the play remains a little cool, a little insular.  But it has intrigued me immensely as a theatermaker, which might well be the greatest compliment I could give it.  I can see a way in which this play is augmented by its staging, a way in which it more fully achieves the potential on the page.  And isn't that the idea, in the end?  That a play only fully comes alive when it lands on the stage?  (I realize, looking at the Plays Inverse website that they're all about the reading-experience of the play too.  And while I dig this... well, I'm about the doing, too.)

Drew Broussard reads, a lot. When not doing that, he's writing stories or playing music or acting or producing or coming up with other ways to make trouble.  He also has a day job at The Public Theater in New York City.

Indie Book Buzz: Hawthorne Books

It's the return of the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few months or so, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks comes from Liz Crain, 

editor and publicity director at Hawthorne Books

I LOVED YOU MORE, Tom Spanbauer

(Released April 1, 2014) 

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Tom Spanbauer’s first novel in seven years is a rich and expansive tale of love, sex, and heartbreak covering twenty-five years.  At the heart of the book is a love triangle: two men, one woman, all of them writers.  The first chapters are set in the mid–eighties in New York City.  At Columbia, Ben forms a bond with his macho friend, Hank.  Their bond is deep and ostensibly formed around their love of writing.  But they soon find out their love is more than literary.  As C.S Lewis says, friendship is homosexual.  Hank is straight, though, on the Kinsey scale a zero, which means no men.  Ben is a five, which means an occasional woman.  But both are artists, and this affection between them is a force. How do you measure love?

Set against a world of writers and artists, New York’s Lower East Side in the wild eighties, the drab confining Idaho of Ben’s youth, Portland in his middle age, and the many places in between, the complex world disclosed in I Loved You More, written in the poisoned, lyrical voice of Ben, is the author’s most complex and wise novel to date.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: If you have a heart and are human there are miles and miles of emotional terrain for you to travel and connect with in this passionate, searching novel about intimate relationships and the complicated lives of writers set primarily in New York City in the eighties and Portland in the late nineties. I don’t know how much polyamory is a part of the fabric of modern relationship culture in other cities but here in Portland, Oregon – where Hawthorne Books is based and a good deal of Tom Spanbauer’s novel is set – polyamory, as well as other less traditional and less socially acceptable ways of navigating and understanding intimate relationships be they gay, straight or anything in-between is strong and has been gaining ground in recent years. Spanbauer’s I Loved You More moves about some of these less socially acceptable and less-easy-to-define sorts of relationships and sets its course on a long and winding years-spanning road of a non-traditional love triangle between two men and one women. I Loved You More is for anyone with a heart -- particularly those who have or want big, big love in all its messy, heartbreaking, beautiful glory.

THE END OF EVE, Ariel Gore

(Released March 2014) 

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: At age 39, Ariel Gore has everything she's always wanted: a successful writing career, a long-term partnership, a beautiful if tiny home, a daughter in college and a son in preschool. But life's happy endings don't always last. If it's not one thing, after all, it's your mother.
Knock knock.
Her name is Eve. Her epic temper tantrums have already gotten her banned from three cab companies in Portland. And she's here to announce that she's dying. "Pitifully, Ariel," she sighs. "You're all I have." Ariel doesn't want to take care of her crazy dying mother, but she knows she will. 

Darkly humorous and intimately human,The End of Eve reads like Terms of Endearment meets Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Amidst the chaos of clowns and hospice workers, pie and too much whiskey, Ariel’s own 10-year relationship begins to unravel, forcing her to reconsider the meaning of family and everything she’s ever been taught to call “love.”

WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT: I’ve been a fan of Ariel Gore’s ever since she started the smart, alternative, zine-like Hip Mama Magazine in the early nineties. Since then Gore has gone on to write several nonfiction books including Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness and Atlas of the Human Heart: A Memoir. The End of Eve is one of Gore’s most dig deep and personal books and I know I’m not alone in wanting to get as close to Gore as humanly possible. When she was in Portland recently – where Hawthorne Books is based – for The End of Eve book launch all of us at Hawthorne were struck yet again by the black humor of the memoir. It taps into that old adage – if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. Well, you’ll cry a little bit too I’m guessing while reading The End of Eve but let’s just say that there’s a whole lot of funny in all that death and dying too. It’s ok, laugh. We want you to. It’s good for you.

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

Liz Crain is editor and publicity director at Hawthorne Books where she’s worked since 2009. She is also a fiction writer as well as the author of Food Lover’s Guide to Portland which has a second edition coming out from Hawthorne this September 2014 as well as Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull published by McSweeney's in 2013. A longtime writer on Pacific Northwest food and drink, her writing has appeared in Cooking Light, Budget Travel, VIA Magazine, The Sun Magazine, The Progressive, The Guardian and The Oregonian. Crain is also as well as co-organizer of the annual Portland Fermentation Festival.

The Indie Spotlight: Kate Vane

In today's spotlight, author Kate Vane discusses a couple of topics that I sometimes find myself mentally chewing on... where writers find the inspiration for their story ideas, and what sort of day jobs they hold.

And I bet you'd be surprised how often the day job, or something tied to it or through it, turns out to be the thing that influences the writing.

Kate shares with us her time at the local cemetery and how her experiences there shaped her latest title, Not the End:

How working with death helped me write about life

Most of us don’t think too much about what other people do all day. While our jobs are complex and involved and full of surprising skills and esoteric knowledge, we tend to assume other people’s are straightforward.

When I started working in a local authority cemeteries department, I didn’t really know what to expect. But I found it a fascinating world, incorporating history, law, horticulture – you could say, all of life.

We had burial records dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. These give invaluable insights into both family and social history. On one occasion we were contacted by a man whose sister was stillborn decades earlier. We were able to locate the grave for him. He told us this helped him face up to a loss he had never discussed with anyone, even his parents.

In the UK, the right of burial in a grave (though not the land itself) is an asset with a legal owner. This can make for some difficult situations. What if a man’s last wish was to be buried with his late wife, but her son from a previous marriage owns the right of burial and is refusing permission?

Cemeteries are beautiful outdoor spaces, full of mature trees, hedges, nesting birds – and grass. Grass-cutting can lead to endless controversy. Should we give precedence to neatness or nature? One person’s tranquil wildlife meadow is someone else’s unsightly mass of weeds.

At the heart of all these issues is how we deal with death. We focus on the details because we can’t face the loss. Although, as with any job, I mostly dealt with the task at hand, I couldn’t help but be affected by the work.

This was particularly the case when someone died without friends and family and the local authority had to take charge of the funeral arrangements. In many cases they weren’t poor, or a loner. They had just outlived everyone who was close to them.

Often all that we had was their possessions and a few basic facts, like their date of birth or marriage. It’s human nature to try and impose a narrative on these few scraps, to form a picture of who that person was. This led to the idea behind my latest novel, Not the End.

In Not the End, a woman drowns after swimming in the sea off the coast of a Devon seaside town. Three people who never met her have their lives changed by her death. Little is known about her, so they each tell themselves a story, which in turn influences how they behave in their own lives. They are the woman who finds the body, the cemetery manager who plans her funeral and the probate researcher (‘heir hunter’) who looks for her heirs.

There was a fourth main character, a psychiatric nurse. She survived for an entire first draft, but I felt that she wasn’t working. Her story was about the challenges people face in the caring professions. But I felt I’d covered that before, not least in my first novel, Recognition, which is about a therapist working with the family of a murder victim.

So I rewrote the novel without her. It was hard work but I didn’t feel my time had been wasted. She had shaped aspects of the story. Other characters took on some of her insights and her role in the plot.

In a book which partly deals with themes of absence and things that are ‘not’, it seems appropriate that Not the End is haunted by a character who isn’t there.

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

Kate Vane lives in Devon in the UK. She is the author of two novels.

Not the End is a novel about art, life and cemetery management, set against the backdrop of a summer heatwave in a Devon seaside town. Recognitionis a psychological crime novel set in Leeds.

Where Writers Write: JS Breukelaar

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 JS Breukelaar. JS lives in Sydney by way of San Diego. She has work published in Prick of the Spindle, Juked, Opium and Fantasy Magazine, among numerous others, and included in the anthology, Women Writing the Weird. Her collection Ink came out in 2012, and her first novel, American Monster, is out now from Lazy Fascist Press.

Where JS Breukelaar Writes

So this currently is my office. I know how lucky I am to have one. A room with an actual door you can open and close. These are IKEA bookshelves I got for my last birthday and I’ve almost unpacked all my books. I’m lucky the dining table that I use for a desk is so huge because I mark papers on it, write on it, run the household from it. I play some piano but we don’t have one now, so I commandeered this keyboard which allegedly found its way into our home from my son’s high school. I’m a Patti Smith nut, so my daughter bought me Banga and I use it as a music stand.

Before I took over this room we tried to use it as a dining room (it didn’t really work, kind of a Mad Hatters Tea Party feel to it) and before that it was one of the rooms in the flophouse that this place used to be. We got it cheap and have converted most of it into a family home. This room, not so much. It was probably the original kitchen in the house, which was the first one on the street back in 1860. It’s so small that the only way we are ever going to get the huge oak dining table and sideboard out is to knock out a wall. It is a very strange space to work. It has seen a lot of history. We met the little dude who lived in this room. He cooked on a battery stove and grew chick peas in pails.

The room doesn’t have any windows unless you count the old kitchen window that once probably overlooked a vegetable garden and which now looks into a bathroom the slumlord added on later. We nailed this bulletin board over the window so I don’t have to watch people on the toilet and I have my headphones so I don’t have to listen to them. The window thing was very important to me until I moved my office in here. But now I have maps instead. Lots and lots of maps. The walls are so old and damp that the maps periodically fall crashing to the floor. Ominous, right?

Above my desk are some black and white postcards which an editor mailed to me as consolation for a rejection. It was also my first submitted short story, so to have someone go to that kind of trouble, to send me those postcards, meant that I was in good company, that these were my people and I better get some stuff out there, so I did. I also have about a hundred pictures of my kids and lots of art and photography by friends and family, including this print of a photograph by my great friend, agent and mentor, Matt Bialer, whose New York pictures wowed me and still do. There is also a Lion Man coaster which my son made in honour of the title of my first published story.

Along with several pieces of oppressive furniture I share this tiny space with Don Quijote, Neil Young, my cat Starvin Marvin who rules from on top of the freezer—I mentioned the freezer, right? And also my Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Eric, who sits at my feet. 

On the wall above the sideboard are two 1950s-era posters I found in my grandfather’s attic in New York. The one on the left is called USA At a Glance, the Authentic Presidential Chart and it stops at Eisenhower. The one on the right is called Five Hundred Years of English Prose, and it’s very cool, much as my grandfather was. He taught me to read, I mean to really read, got me hooked, and I worshipped him in the way of an addict to the pusher man.

I always kind of muster the books I’m going to need for a course I’m teaching, or an article I have to write, separate them out from the pack, kind of let them know what they’re in for. So these books on the sideboard are for an upcoming Science Fiction course. Propping them up is an empty bottle of American Monster Edition Moet Chandon, courtesy of my husband.  

Sometimes it’s all too much, I feel weighed down by the unknowable history in the room, the complexity of it all, the maps to no where. Not to the mention the wheezing farting animals and the running toilet, and I have to throw my laptop under my arm and go write in a coffee shop. Where there are real windows. One of my favourites is a local joint we call Scrambled Lesbians, because it’s run by lesbians who do an all-day breakfast—it’s actually called Scrambled—and who pull the badassest expresso and that’s it. No cakes or muffins or artisan banana bread. Fresh juice pressed from slightly limp-looking produce. Woe betide should you be on the phone while placing your order or paying the check. Kind of like an alternative and much more joyous Soup Nazi. And they play an incredible mix at just the right volume to help you focus on the one thing, that one story or chapter or article, as if its the only one. Because it is. 

Book Giveaway: Romance for Delinquents

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.

It's the first of the month and you know what that means.

It's time to bring you May's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing Romance for Delinquents 

with author Michael Wayne Hampton

Michael and his publisher Foxhead Books are giving us 10 print copies 

to giveaway to US residents. 

Here's the goodreads description to whet your appetite:

In stories that bring to mind Breece D'J Pancake and Harry Crews, but in a voice all their own, Michael Wayne Hampton's characters fight the hard fight—often facing a life and landscape as stubborn and unforgiving as a rusted engine bolt. Told in voices that are remarkable for their authenticity, Hampton's people are memorable, his prose is lapidary in its precision, and his stories are hard to forget. 
-Rob Roberge, author of The Cost of Living

"Michael Wayne Hampton is a born storyteller. And that doesn't just mean he can spin a good yarn, the kind that keeps you ear-stuck and tongue-tied, listening hard. He also has the storyteller's art of absolute authenticity, fidelity to hard-knocked voices - while writing prose that lifts and transcends, that fiercely proclaims that through the ugly, all of us are living some kind of beautiful.”
-Amber Sparks, author of May We Shed These Human Bodies 

"These are bold, insistent stories of people dancing along the edges of epiphany and oblivion. Hampton’s America is ragged, dangerous, and utterly engaging." 
-Ian Stansel, author of Everybody’s Irish

This giveaway will run through April 8th. 

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

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment here or in the giveaway thread over at TNBBC on goodreads, stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book. You MUST be a resident of the US to win.

ONLY COMMENT ONCE. MULTIPLE COMMENTS DO NOT GAIN YOU ADDITIONAL CHANCES TO WIN.

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from May 18th through May 24th. Michael Wayne Hampton has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for him. 

 *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!!