Timothy J Jarvis' Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Back by popular demand, Books & Booze, originally a mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC challenges participating authors 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. 

Today, Timothy J Jarvis gives a detailed synopsis of the his book The Wanderer, its boozey bi-parts, and ends with a strangely voluptuous drink complete with recipe at the end.  

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I slightly dread having to give a synopsis of The Wanderer, let alone a terse summary, as it’s a touch sprawling, and I'm not at all sure what's it's all about. But if forced to offer a high-concept précis, it would go something along the lines of this: ‘The Highlander meets Arthur Machen’s The Three Imposters, meets M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud. With booze.’ Or, as its somewhat fustian immortal narrator might phrase it: ‘With topery, sottishness, and befuddlement.’ I’ve totted up all the instances of quaffing in the text (see below), and, well, there’s a lot. Many, many libations poured down throats in honour of Bacchus.

The Wandereris a strange text, and its provenance is weird also. I found it in the flat of an obscure author of strange stories, Simon Peterkin, after he’d vanished in uncanny circumstances. I read it, and something about it persuaded me I should attempt to get it published. And the wonderful folk at Perfect Edge Books have obliged. I’m not quite sure, though, what The Wanderer is. Perhaps a fiction, Peterkin's last novel, or maybe something far stranger? Perhaps more accountthan story?

Much of it tells of its narrator’s trials in the far-flung future, at the end of the world, of his showdown with an old, old enemy. But another strand of the novel is a portmanteau horror or club story, told in flashback, and set some time in the early twenty-first century. The narrator gathers a group of unfortunate individuals to tell stories of dread, eldritch experiences they’ve undergone. Drink features heavily in these tales, indeed the protagonists of all, including the narrator, are drunk, or half-drunk at least, when they witness the rending of the veil, see the weird world beneath the skin of the mundane. But despite his experience, the narrator choses, as the place where the stories are to be related, a pub in London’s Borough area, just south of the Thames. And despite theirs, the others come.

English pubs are odd places. I came across the following apt quote, from  Kate Fox’s Watching the English, in Paul Ewen’s London Pub Reviews (a book in which, for our hapless ‘reviewer’, various old London pubs become loci of disconcerting, and frequently hilarious, surrealism): “Like all drinking places, [the pub] is in some respects a ‘liminal’ zone, an equivocal, marginal, borderline state.” And I would argue that old London pubs have a particularly strange charge, one that arises from their being crucibles in which different social classes, and various historical strata come together, react, meld, transmute – with alcohol as the catalyst.

And the pub in The Wanderer is distinctly an old London pub, a convivial antiquated boozer. Here’s how the narrator describes it:

“On reaching the Nightingale, I saw fitful flickering behind the frosted panes; a fire was burning in its hearth, and I was glad, because of the cold, the gusting wind, and because it would make the place even snugger. The pub’s board, a painting of the songbird it was named for, squalled as it swung restlessly back and forth. I went inside, looked about. Many of the pub’s appointments dated back to when it first opened, the late-Victorian period. The space was partitioned, by wooden screens inset with panels of etched glass, into a public bar and saloon at the rear; the island bar was mahogany with a pine counter, and had a canopy carved with a row of leering heads, Green Men, foliage sprouting from their mouths, wreathing their faces; and the walls were decorated with a lapis-tile dado and hung with fly-spotted mirrors in tarnished gilt frames. Apart from the wavering glow of the fire, the only source of light was a motley array of standard and table lamps, dim bulbs, but the effect was cosy, not dismal.”

So why the link between drinking and the weird vision in The Wanderer? Well, taking the book as a novel, it could be argued this aspect alludes to Poe’s “The Angel of the Odd”, a story that is specifically referenced at one point. It’s one of Poe’s most comical and grotesque tales. It describes the narrator’s encounter, while in a drunken stupor, with the eponymous entity, a creature described as follows:

“Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outward for hands. All the head that I saw the monster possessed of was one of those Hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a funnel on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk.”

The Angel of the Odd announces to the narrator, in heavy-accented tones, that he’s the “the genius who preside[s] over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it [is] to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic.” The Angel has manifested before the narrator because he’s scoffed at the likelihood of such strange and terrible coincidences after reading a report in a newspaper of a bizarre death which he believes “a poor hoax.” The protagonist pays scant attention to the Angel, his contempt, after a time, driving the odd creature away. As a punishment, the avatar of chance then subjects the narrator to an increasingly absurd series of trials. The Wanderer, if fiction, could be running with Poe’s conceit.

And if it’s not fiction? Well, you can draw your own conclusions, I guess.

And what tipple to suggest, should you read The Wanderer (which I can’t necessarily recommend – I’ve not slept easily since I did)? I’d say it has to be a punch, partly because a diabolical Punch puppet is one of the forms the book’s major antagonist takes, and partly to honour probably the finest description of the concoction of a beverage in all weird literature – the following scene from Arthur Machen’s strange tale, ‘N’:

“‘What chops they were!’ sighed Perrott. And he began to make the punch, grating first of all the lumps of sugar against the lemons; drawing forth thereby the delicate, aromatic oils from the rind of the Mediterranean fruit.

“Matters were brought forth from cupboards at the dark end of the room: rum from the Jamaica Coffee House in the City, spices in blue china boxes, one or two old bottles containing secret essences. The kettle boiled, the ingredients were dusted in and poured into the red-brown jar, which was then muffled and set to digest on the hearth, in the heat of the fire.

“‘Misc, fiat mistura,’ said Harliss.

“‘Very well,’ answered Arnold. ‘But remember that all the true matters of the work are invisible.’

“Nobody minded him or his alchemy; and after a due interval, the glasses were held over the fragrant steam of the jar, and then filled. The three sat round the fire, drinking and sipping with grateful hearts.”

I’ll call my punch “Tartarean”, after Tartarus, the name used in The Wanderer for a dread eldritch realm that abuts this world and which the occultist can enter, and the unfortunate stray into, at certain liminal sites. It is a place, “never the same twice, sometimes lurid, grotesque, sometimes seemingly ordinary, but seething with menace.” As, I think, this drink rightly should be.

So, therefore, what should our punch’s ingredients be? I reckon every  intoxicating drink drunk (and all the coffees and teas, to keep us alert) in The Wanderer, plus a measure of absinthe, with genuine wormwood, for that authentic decadent weirdness, and, for spice, some of the dust that lies thickly over all in The Wanderer’s depiction of a desolated far-future world.

So here goes:

Tartarean Punch

To a large pan add:

A pint of lager

A pewter tankard of ale

Two espressos

More beer (it doesn’t really matter what kind)

Milky tea, two sugars

Whisky

More coffee

More lager and ale

A vodka and lemonade

A gin and tonic

A porter

Two bottles of red wine

More wine (this is where refined drinking happens)

Hipflask of vodka

Vintage port

Yet more coffee (starting to get the shakes here)

Good quality cognac (another classy bit)

Rice wine

Firewater, one gourd

Rotgut (whatever that might be)

Several slugs of la fée verte (sod it, just glug the whole bottle in)

A handful of dust (with apologies to Thomas Stearns Eliot)

Heat gently, stirring the while. Remove from the flame when a pungent steam begins to rise. Leave to stand, for neither too little a time, nor too long. Ladle into punch cups. Settle back with a pipe of the finest aromatic flake. Savour. And await what may come.

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Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer and scholar with an interest in the antic, the weird, the strange. His short-fiction has appeared in 'Caledonia Dreamin': Strange Fiction of Scottish Descent', 'Pandemonium: Ash', ‘3:AM Magazine’, 'New Writing 13', 'Prospect Magazine', and 'Leviathan 4: Cities', and he writes criticism for the WeirdFictionReview.com and Civilian Global. In 2012, he was shortlisted for the Lightship International Short Fiction Prize. He lives in North East London. 'The Wanderer' is his first novel.

Lavinia Reviews: Through the Windshield

Through the Windshield by Mike DeCapite

Pages: 486

Publisher: Red Giant Books

Released: June 2014

Guest Reviewed by Lavinia Ludlow

Through the Windshield is a commentary on resigning to a life of routines, sloughing through the seasons eating, drinking, smoking, engaging in fleeting dialogue with friends and acquaintances, and searching for absolution from loneliness and isolation in cold comforts like fleeting companionship and a day at the race track.

Told through the eyes of Danny, an Ohio cab driver, DeCapite builds and maintains a dismal tone throughout the book with stream of consciousness prose, and often draws on things such as weather patterns and inanimate objects to frame his protagonist’s morose and hopeless state of mind with:

“After a six-month diet of blues and greys I was back to white. I was an empty plate.”

“In the center of the room the heavy-bag hung still, in a kind of quiet conviction. There was a silence about the room that seemed never to have broken.”

Danny’s approach to life is classically evasive. He exhibits thinking and behavior widespread in contemporary society such as numbing himself with mundane errands rather than confront his lackluster life head-on. His dark and honest passages often reveal how a lack of ambition and fear of failure can lead to one of the most toxic states of mind in the human condition, which only further stunts him from rising to any potential and consequently, sets off a cycle of stagnancy.

“There’s that brief moment of guilt when you realize you’re alive and don’t know how to live, and you look at the sky and sun and feel like you should be doing something spontaneous or fulfilling . . . until you find one of the convenient excuses that’re always waiting for you to do nothing but go shopping or do the laundry or whatever.”

Occasionally, Danny breaks from his everyday mundane to make beautiful and often evocative observations of his world. They are; however, always through a layer of glass: his cab windshield or his apartment window. This segregation from his surroundings, and ultimately reality, gives the impression that he’s observing and living life through the distant view of a telescope.

The 486-page text was tough to conquer as much of the content is bogged with drab descriptions, list-like narratives, and inane dialogue between characters in a sort of “I walked here, I saw this, I thought about that, Ed said this, I ate that, made more coffee,” which left little to be interpreted by the reader. The narrative also sporadically switches from first-person narration to informal journal entries written in lowercase, and dialogues intermittently contain uppercase lettering, apparently depicting shouting, all of which breaks the somber and poignant tone DeCapite worked so hard to create.

Through the Windshield is one man’s depiction of how debilitating and spine-crippling loneliness can be, and how withdrawing into an unfeeling and mechanical state of mind stunts any possibility of personal, professional, and emotional growth.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician, writer, and occasional contortionist. Her debut novel alt.punk can be purchased through major online retailers as well as Casperian Books’ website. Her sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven was signed to Casperian Books and will release in the distant future. In her free time, she is a reviewer at Small Press Reviews, The Nervous Breakdown, American Book Review, and now The Next Best Book Blog. 

Book Review: Deep Ellum

Read 6/29/14 - 6/30/14
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to those who believe you can never go home again but say fuck it and do it anyway
Pages: 120
Publisher: Calamari Press
Released: March 2014


No one comes from a perfect family, no matter what those cheesy 80's tv sitcoms would have you believe. The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Family Matters - pah-lease. Whose family actually sits around the kitchen table bemoaning what's fair and what's not? Who has parents that are skilled in not only talking you out of doing something stupid, but could do so in a way that utterly convinced you, all nice and clean-like, without any yelling or cursing or throwing of things or verbal humiliation, like those god-awful shows managed, in a swift half-hour segment?

We are not the results of a happy, healthy, normal household. We are children of divorce or mentally and physically abusive parents. We are the unappreciated, unwanted offspring of dope-heads and meth-heads and alcoholics. We raised ourselves while our depressed, unemployed or underpaid, unhappy mothers and fathers struggled to make ends meet, children of parents who constantly reminded us of the hardship our needs and wants had placed upon them.

We got ourselves off to school every morning and relied on our older siblings to make sure we had some food in our stomachs and scrubbed under our armpits and behind our ears. We hung out with friends until late at night, hoping to sneak in unnoticed as our parents lie there on the couch, passed out in front of the television. We were one teeny tiny misstep away from becoming one of the wild, caged animals you see in the zoo, pacing back and forth across our small, familiar bit of land, puffing out our chests and snarling and snapping if strangers circled too close.

Brandon Hobson's Deep Ellum is very much a sentimental look back at that broken childhood, at family relationships gone bad (and getting worse), at why they say "you can't go home again", and rightly, who the fuck wants to? It also details, more specifically, a reluctant last-gasp attempt to pull the pieces back together when three siblings are called back home after their mother's most recent failed suicide.

Gideon, our narrator and middle child, leaves his Chicago life behind and crashes at his older sister Meg's apartment to be closer to his mother and step-father in their time of need. Though he finds, within the very first day, that this is going to require a heck of a lot more energy than he is willing to expend. Meg, for her part, appears to do everything she can to avoid being around, preferring to lose herself in whatever dark and drug-induced corners of Dallas she can tuck herself into while Basille, the youngest and most conscientious of the threesome (though that's not saying a whole lot), is relied on for the day-to-day hang outs at the parents' place. Family obligation, freedom, and the fucking aggravation that goes along with all of it, right? Someone always gets to disappear while the other(s) are left, grudgingly, to pick up the slack.

Hobson is at his best when creating wholly uncomfortable familial situations - the Flowers-in-the-Attic wrongness to Meg and Gideon's relationship, the unspoken mounting tension between Gideon and his step-father, the increasing drug abuse of all three siblings, and the overall disinterest they show towards their mother and her current state of mind. What's the saying? The family that incessantly picks at each other's wounds stays together? Hobson is also a master at word economy, expressing only what's necessary and trusting, or simply allowing, his readers to infer the rest. He isn't afraid to hold a mirror up to all the ugly shit families are famous for pulling on each other, either. Whether you've lived a similarly messed up life or not, you certainly know someone who has, or can relate to some of the circumstances here.

Deep Ellum is one of those books you happily, unexpectedly, fall into. I'd been meaning to read it for awhile now, ever since the publisher sent along the digital file, quite a way's back. And for some reason it just kept getting pushed farther and farther down the review pile. Until, two days ago, when I was caught out and about without my current (paper) read, and pulled this up on my phone. Within minutes, Hobson's writing sucked me in and refused to spit me out until I'd read every last word. And as I read, every so often, I bent over and kicked myself in the ass, wondering what the hell took me so long to get started on it. But then again, I always feel the right books come to you at just the right times. I think Deep Ellum knew it was time. And I'm glad that I listened.

Dysfunctional families for the win!

David Hayes' Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. And just to spice it up a bit, each author gets to ask their own Would You Rather question to the author who appears after them....

David Hayes' 

Would You Rather

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue? 
With my tongue. Feet disgust me. I know, I know… I wrote a book about foot fetishism (Pegged) but, in my defense, it was a horror book.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers? 
I am a career guy. In films I had a long string of smaller parts in horror films that provided a living. I don’t need the big one, but a series is great.

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?
Logically, if I’m well known now then the propensity for genius posthumously is pretty large. I’ll go with now.

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one? 
Ahhh. Conjunctions. I would much rather write a book without them. It may seem simplistic, but too freaking bad. Wait. I just used one. Shit.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life? 
Good question. My favorite novel is The Lord of the Rings. So, no, I would not like to sit through the 700 hours of tattooing over my entire body (and I’m fat and still probably won’t fit). Can I have it read by Bette Davis?

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success? 
Just once? The overnight success. Then that could pay for the rest of the brilliance. I’ll use a pseudonym for the good stuff.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated? 
Real answer: character. I hate a lot of my characters and they earn it. Most of them are based off of me anyway. Self-loathing is no big deal.

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink? 
Skin as paper would just be too much work. Lots of skin. Lots of cellulite. I’ll go with blood. I can run out of blood and take a break.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life? 
Oh, shit. If my characters escaped the books then there would be some very bad mojo in the world. Some seriously deviant shit would perpetrate itself on good ol’ Earth. We’d be screwed.

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E? 
I hate Twitter. I will forego ‘E.’

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book? 
Ban. Definitely ban. All of the best books have been banned!

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas? 
What’s the difference? Afterwards you’ll have to clean your ears out with turpentine.

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?
Arguably, critics have determined that / I only write in haiku as it stands / Why change a winning combination?

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read? 
I don’t read ovary-inspired misogynistic douchebag already, so the point is moot.

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publically or never talk about it at all? 
Public! Public! Public! One critic wrote, regarding one of my films, “Saying the plot of this movie out loud will cause a wing full of babies to burst into flames.” I love it.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move? 
Hmmmm. If everything I thought appeared on a Twitter feed then I would be arrested.

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper? 
Pens and paper. Screw those Ludites.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back? 
Tippy toes. Flat on your back is another profession that I’m not very good at.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading? 
No one show up, please. I don’t need the ridicule of appearing naked anywhere. On the plus side, sasquatch sightings will rise by 200%.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well? 
Written poorly with an excellent story. Weak content is a weak mind. Grammar, punctuation and voice can be developed.

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David C. Hayes is an author, performer and filmmaker that also teaches these subjects at the university level. His films, like A Man Called Nereus, Dark Places and The Frankenstein Syndrome (and approximately 70 more) can be seen worldwide. He is the author of several novels, collections and graphic novels including Cherub, Pegged, American Guignol, Scorn and Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Ed Wood, Jr. On stage, he has been active with The Community Theatre of Howell since appearing as Victor Velasco in 2013's production of Barefoot in the Park and stage managing the recent Inherit the Wind. He will be directing It's a Bird, It's a Plane It's Superman in the show's Midwest debut in 2015. As a playwright, David's full-length and one-act plays have been produced from coast to coast with a run Off-Broadway for the comedy Swamp Ho and sell-out performances in Phoenix for Dial P for Peanuts(winning a 2011 Ethingtony for Best Show). He is a voting member of The Dramatist's Guild and the Horror Writers Association. When not creating, David teaches film production, creative writing and communications as an adjunct instructor at Siena Heights University, Kaplan University and Grand Canyon University. He holds bachelors degrees in psychology and English as well as a master of science in forensic psychology and a master of fine arts in creative writing. Locally, David is a frequent contributor to WHMI 93.5FM, the Livingston County radio station, and speaks frequently at book signings, comic conventions and gatherings of geek-culture. 

Book Review: The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone

Read 6/24/14 - 6/25/14
2 Stars - Recommended Lightly - to fans of extreme bizarro literature, cause this one is fucked up in some weird ass ways. Not recommended as an entry novel to the genre.
Pages: 94
Publisher: Bizarro Pulp Press
Released: 2013


I've read my share of strange shit over the years.

I mean, being a fan of bizarro literature, that kinda comes with the territory, you know? After a while though, you get to picking and choosing books and publishers that are a perfect fit for your specific tastes, because lord knows there's a wide variety of subgenres under the Bizarro umbrella, and if you're not careful, you may end up reading some shit that'll have you throwing up a little (or a lot) in your mouth. It's like the equivalent of accidentally purchasing a death metal CD when what you were looking for was a soothing rock ballad. Sure, the howlish grunts of death metal music tortures your ears, but that's nothing compared the pain and suffering the freakish words of hard-core bizarro will inflict upon your brain. Permanent scarring. I kid you not. You will never be able to unsee the images those words painted behind your eyes. Not ever.

Even still, as careful as I am, I sometimes find myself reading a book that starts off pretty ok, and little by little pulls back the thin veil of normalcy it had hid behind, the wicked smile on its face growing brighter and brighter as it shows you more and more of its seriously fucked up shit, but sloooowly, so as not to scare you off. Cause, that way, it knows you'll be like:

"Huh. A story about a boy and his beloved pet pig. That sounds cute. And when it gets slaughtered it possesses its honey glazed ham parts and causes the people around it to become ham-hungry zombies? I think I can get into that."

And then:

"Weird, that van driver's nose leaked some green gooey shit when he picked up the boy and his hammy BFF. Oh hell, I'm already waist deep in the shit, I might as well just keep on wading through, how bad could it get"...

And then:

"Uh. The kid's aunt and uncle dress the meat up with pineapple ring eyes and deer antler ears? And start singing thrash metal songs with ' ham ' as lyrics before they start puking green shit on each other? And the haunted pig meat is sending subliminal memories straight to the kid's head? Aw hell, up to my chest in it now and it's really not that bad, I mean, I can handle this, as long as it doesn't get any weirder"...

... and then, with a sudden whoosh, the weirdness plunges you completely under, your eyes stinging with the rush of it, mouth and nose sucking it all in and bubbling it all back out as you silently scream at its betrayal:

"Damn you book! Your description didn't say jack shit about an oozing honey glazed ham meat mask. Or meat tenderizers tied to guys' dicks? And a drag queen with WHAT in her crotch???? What the fuck IS this shit?!?!

In The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone, MP Johnson covers so much ground so fast, that at times I felt like I was suffering from literary whiplash. I hung in there for awhile, open and receptive to some of the stranger shit that was he laying down, willing to forgive some of the more gross and disgusting parts, but the final third of the book just completely lost me. Chapters 17 through 22 felt like a totally different book. I guess I just saw other directions he could have taken the story, and was bummed that he had chosen to take it in the direction he did.

Ah well. And with such a pretty, tame cover to boot. MP, you sure did a good job hiding your crazy up front. Here's to hoping you haven't ruined ham for me....


Haaaammmmmm...
*licks chops*

Do you smell it too?

Book Giveaway: Above All Men

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 August's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing Above All Men

with author Eric Shonkwiler

The author and his publisher have generously agreed to give away 10 copies of his book...

3 paper copies (limited to US residents only) and 

7 digital ebooks (open internationally)

Here is the Goodreads description to whet your appetite:

Years from now, America is slowly collapsing. Crops are drying up and oil is running out. People flee cities for the countryside, worsening the drought and opening the land to crime. Amid this decay and strife, war veteran David Parrish fights to keep his family and farm together. However, the murder of a local child opens old wounds, forcing him to confront his own nature on a hunt through dust storms and crumbling towns for the killer.

Did I happen to mention that is my favorite book of 2014?! I cannot wait to hear what you guys think of it!

This giveaway will run through July 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on July 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, what format you prefer , and where you reside. Remember, only US residents can win a paper copy!. If you are a US resident, and prefer paper, please also list your consolation digital format (because there are only 3 paper copies available).

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 August 18th through August 24th. Eric Shonkwiler 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!!!!

Audiobook Review: The Three

Listened 6/4/14 - 6/18/14

3 Stars - Recommended to fans of non-linear, non-main-character driven fiction 

Approx. 14 hours

Publisher: Little, Brown, & Co.

Released: May 2014

Where to start... where to start. 

When I requested a copy of the audiobook for review, I did so without fully understanding the style in which the book was written. In hindsight, had I known The Three was a non-linear, non-main-character driven story, composed entirely of conspiracy blog and book excerpts, tweets, emails, texts, and skype interviews, I definitely would have either requested the book in print, or shied away from it completely. I suppose I had expected the book to be something different than what it was. 

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Because I did. Once I got the hang of it - of the way the story was being laid out to us, of how the research was being conducted, of the two audiobook narrators and their ever-changing accents to depict the different characters - I became more comfortable with the format and felt myself, I don't know, sort of relaxing into it and trusting that the narration would make it all come together on its own. 

So four planes crash on the same day, in different parts of the world, within hours of each other. The only survivors? Three children, found alive and mostly unharmed, among the wreckage. And the cause behind the crashes? Terrorism was ruled out almost immediately but that didn't stop the world from working itself up into a frenzy. UFO freaks crawled out of the woodwork, blaming aliens. Religious nutters, following the lead of one outspoken rapture fanatic, believe the simultaneous crashes to be the sign of the four horsemen  - and they are adamant that a fourth child survivor still wanders out there, undiscovered.  Not to mention that those children, once released and sent to live with their guardians, are somehow... different. Changed. They are themselves, but.... not. Is it the trauma of surviving the crash that has affected their personalities so drastically, or something else entirely? 

Elspeth Martin, a journalist, has written a book about Black Thursday (the name given to the day of the crashes) and The Three (the name given to the three children survivors), entitled "From Crash to Conspiracy", and it is from this very book, and all of Elspeth's research, that we learn of the events that took place on and around those crashes. 

So ultimately, Sarah Lotz's The Three is a book within a book. A fictional book within a fictional book composed of fictional research... I know it sounds clunky but it's actually smartly done. 

Some may have a hard time sticking with it in the beginning. The story starts off terribly slow, but that's understandable because there is a lot of set-up that has to take place, so many 'characters' that have to be introduced and outlined - Bobby's grandmother (guardian of the child survivor of the Florida crash); Jess's uncle (guardian of the child survivor of the UK crash); and Hiro's cousin (guardian of the child survivor of the Japan crash), and all of those who have had contact with them; as well as Pastor Len - the man behind the four horsemen and rapture conspiracy, and a handful of his closest followers; along with taxi drivers, on-scene police and emergency personnel, and on and on... 

But once the first pass is made, and details of the crash starting coming to light, we start getting to know everyone on a more intimate level, and we begin to learn more about their current situations, their interaction with and concerns regarding the survivors. We being to question their and Elspeth's ability to remain objective and honest with us. Are they sharing all of the facts? What are they hiding? Why does so much of what we're hearing not make sense? 

If Sarah Lotz was going for a "scare you so bad you can't sleep at night" creeper of a story, it either (a) didn't come across well in the audiobook or (b) I'm immune to her style of creepy because it really didn't unsettle me in any of the ways some of the other reviewers claimed it had. And there's also the matter of the loosely open ending... one of my pet peeves, especially in a book that hinges itself specifically on the 'hook' factor. I couldn't help feeling kind of cheated right there at the very end. 

I definitely would not classify this as a horror story. Though if pressed, I'm not sure what I would actually classify it as. And for anyone considering picking it up, I strongly suggest grabbing it in print. 

Eat Like an Author: MP Johnson

When most people get bored, they eat. When I get bored, I brainstorm new series and features for the blog, and THEN eat. And not too long ago, as I was brainstorming and contemplating what I wanted to eat, I thought how cool it would be to have a mini-foodie series where authors share the things they like to eat. Photos and recipes and all. And so I asked them, and amazingly they responded, and I dubbed it EAT LIKE AN AUTHOR. 


Today, MP Johnson shares his love of all things sugar and sweet! Holy moly, that's a lot of candy!!!

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Last weekend I went to the biggest candy store in Minnesota. It’s a giant yellow barn out in the middle of nowhere. It’s filled with candy. There’s more than 100 kinds of root beer and more than 100 kinds of licorice. They even have root beer flavored licorice. I bought a big box full of candy and soda or, as I like to call it, writer fuel.

I got some old favorites, like Bottle Caps, which are becoming increasingly difficult to find around here, and Cow Tails, a weird, cream-filled dough candy that has always been hard to find, probably because it’s absurd. There’s something not right about a candy that lists its primary ingredient as flour. Anyway, I love Cow Tails.

I had to try some new stuff too. I bought banana soda because I love bananas. I also got some crazy ass imported candy from Denmark because it had a howling werewolf on the package. Weer Wolven Drop. It’s black licorice with some sort of caramel ooze injected inside. It’s gross as fuck. I’ve eaten half the bag.

Sugary junk food is the only thing I consume while writing, outside of the occasional glass of water. This has been true since I was a kid. I think it helps me tap into the spazzy part of my brain that my stories come from. And I type faster when I’ve eaten a lot of sugar too. Although sometimes it also makes me keep standing up and jumping around my apartment, so it kind of balances out.

As a special bonus, I find that if I eat a ton of candy before bed, one of the following happens: 1) I lay awake for hours thinking about stories, or 2) I fall asleep and have really fucked up dreams that I can turn into stories!

MP Johnson’s Recommended Writing Candy:

Bottle Caps

Cow Tails (The vanilla or caramel apple kind. The strawberry kind sucks.)

Junior Mints

Laffy Taffy (Throw away the apple ones. Banana is best.)

Root beer (Either Virgil’s or Bull Dog. Fuck that A&W shit.)

This is not a complete list.

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MP Johnson’s short stories have appeared in more than 35 publications. His debut book, The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone, was released in 2013 by Bizarro Pulp Press. His second book, Dungeons & Drag Queens, is out now from Eraserhead Press. He is the creator of Freak Tension zine, a B-movie extra and an obsessive music fan currently based in Minneapolis. Learn more at www.freaktension.com.

Also, check out his latest novel Dungeons & Drag Queens on Amazon.

Book Review: Sirens

Read 4/26/14 - 5/3/14
2 Stars - Recommended Lightly to fans of the bizarro-horror genre, and to those who don't mind the occasional strange sentence structure
Pages: 270
Publisher: Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing
Released: April 2014



I first discovered Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing through a happy accident on twitter about a month before reviewing this book. They've got a certain bizarro-horror charm to them and I had  a lot of fun browsing their catalog and getting to know their publisher.

Sirens jumped out at me in a way the other books did not. Something about the pulpy cover, the drippy 1970's sex and rock-n-roll description, called to my inner noir-child. And I decided this book was a must-have.

Upon reading the first few pages, I immediately became aware of two things: One - I definitely made the right decision by starting with this novel because I could totally see myself getting into this rompy sci-fi subtle-horror literary mishmosh. And  Two - I was going to have to fight the urge to cringe at the somewhat clunky and awkward writing style of its author Kurt Reichenbaugh. So much of what you'll find within its pages screams of 'first time novelist'. Though I am sure, as he matures as a writer, and works with stronger editors (no offense Max!) much of the sentence-structurey strange-nuancey stuff will work themselves out.

So here we are, in Florida in the late 1970's, hanging around with a pack of horny high school boys kicking around town, looking for something to do. A mismatched motley group, for sure. And when they are joined by the slightly older Benny, who spreads the promise of a bad-ass party happening out in the middle of nowhere, the boys reluctantly agree to accompany him there.

They enter into a familiar horror-typical situation when they turn down the deserted dirt road towards the dilapidated old house, meet up with red headed Suzie - a siren if ever there was one, and head down towards the lake for some good, clean fun. The sense of foreboding is a strangling one and we the reader find ourselves itching to warn them to get back into the car the moment they arrive. But of course, we can't do that. The story's already written. We are helpless, merely puppets, with eyes glued to the page, prepared for the worst, unsure at the moment of the exact type of hell Kurt is about to create for them. And oh what a hell it will be.

Suzie's other-worldly sex appeal is hypnotic and their lakeside conversation has a calming effect on the group. Almost calming enough to lull the boys into a false sense of awe, unable to believe their luck, to be hanging with such a gorgeous girl. Almost calming enough to cause them to wearily regard the unnatural glow at the bottom of the water and the lumbering twin henchmen and their strange scorpion-tailed dog with curiosity instead of fear. Almost calming enough to convince them into ignoring that feeling of concern and uncertainty that creeps into their very pores and threatens to send them scurrying.

And scurry they will, the moment they witness Suzie and that dog tear their ole bud Benny to shreds, the moment their entire world changes forever.

In the days that follow, as they gather their wits about them and set off on a mission to make sense of the events that took place at the lake, Kevin, Brad, Nick turn to their schoolmate Otto, an unlikely resource who thrills at the chance to unravel a mystery. The foursome end up investigating strip clubs and skanky bars, while fending off  Suzie's redneck henchmen; their dead friend Benny, who's apparently up and shuffling around again to do Suzie's bidding; and a duo of vapid, brainwashed cheerleaders who try to distract the group by practicing their own otherworldly siren skills.

Part every-80's-horror-movie-ever-featuring-teenage-leads-in-the-history-of-ever, part campy Killer Klowns From Outer Space (only replace the klowns with sexy ass sirens and replace the circus tent in the middle of the woods with a space ship sitting on top of a strip club), Sirens pokes fun at the horror genre while adding in elements that haven't existed anywhere else. I got the sense, as I finished it, that Kurt was attempting to woo the serious reader while engaging those who are just looking for a fun read. And while I don't think he completely nailed it, I certainly believe he gave it one hell of a try. So while I might not have been blown away with the book, something tells me this would make one pretty amazing film. It's definitely got that "better to see it" quality to it.... Someone should get on that. ASAP.

Drew reviews: World of Trouble

World of Trouble by Ben Winters
4.5 Stars - Very Strongly Recommended
320 Pages
Publisher: Quirk Books
Releases: July 2014


Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: The end of the world is, quite literally, nigh - but Hank Palace has one case left to close.  As he tries to run down his sister (who thinks she's going to save the world), the clock is dwindling and loose ends are everywhere.  But the last policeman can't let the world end just yet.

The Review: Man. 

Give me a minute.

For one thing, I'd recommend reading this trilogy as back-to-back as you can.  There is something to be said for binge-reading this kind of apocalypse - in fact, I think it might be preferable.  Over the course of all three books, the question looms: what is going to happen at the end?  And I think it's better to try and address that question all at once instead of dragging it out.

And I don't mean "what's going to happen" in terms of the destruction and mayhem that will inevitably ensue upon impact - but rather what's going to happen to us?  How will we be at the end of all things?  In The Last Policeman, we saw society going on pretty much as usual - the edges only just starting to fray.  Countdown City saw the tipping point, the moment when it seemed like everyone woke up and realized that this was not a test but rather the real deal.  And now, in World of Trouble, we face the last week before impact and you cannot escape this book without looking deep inside and asking yourself what you would do.  Would you be like Hank?  Would you be like the trucker couple he meets?  Would you be like the kindly, if slightly deranged, Amish gentleman?  Or would you have checked out a long time ago, cashing in while you still had a choice?  

It's a deeply personal thing for a book to ask of a reader, especially a book that comes wrapped in an ostensibly genre package.  After all, isn't this a trilogy of mysteries?  But these stories were never about the crimes that Hank was trying to solve; they were about something more fundamental, something more elemental.  They're about the human reaction to adversity.  

On the one hand, Hank's decision to go after his sister rings deeply true with me.  Faced with the end of the world, I would absolutely want to know that my sister was okay.  And I would do a whole lot of things to make sure that she was okay.  But then you have to ask yourself... what does okay mean, in those circumstances?  Nico being alive and okay is important to Hank - but, honestly, for selfish reasons.  He wants her to be alive and okay because he wants that.  He needs it, in the waning days of humanity.  In this, Hank is perhaps no better than any of the darker variations he comes across on his trek out to Ohio.  Would it not have been kinder, in a way, to stay with the other cops in MA?  
But it is the case that drives him, of course - and the possibility, however faint, that his crazy sister just might be right.  Hank Palace would've, in another universe, made a pretty great policeman.  

As the book dwindles to a close, I don't think it spoils anything to say that we come right up to Impact Day.  October 3rd.  A Wednesday.  And that's where Winters' talent as a writer really shines: he makes the last chapters so authentic and real and horrible and beautiful that, again, you're forced to wonder what you'd do.  Where you would be.  As I fought back a tear or two on the train (the idea of such well realized destruction frightens me as it might a small child), I pondered this - and I don't know what I would do.  I really don't.  Would I stick it out - hope to ride out the ensuing global cataclysm as best I could, fight on to what would inevitably be a nasty and brutish end, regardless of whether I survived the immediate devastation?  Or would I have checked out early?  I don't believe it's cowardice to take the latter option, reader - and I think, between the lines, you see Hank considering this throughout the entire second half of the novel.  But, then, what are we (humanity, that is) better at than hoping?  Striving?  Staying alive? 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.  The "case", as it were, means even less here - although, somewhat paradoxically, it also matters more.  At this point, though, we readers are simply on board the train to the end.  Because, let's face it: everybody wants to know what's going to happen.  How it will happen.  And lunchtime on Wednesday, October 3, comes way sooner than we want it to - but that's the trick of inexorability.  The triumph of this trilogy is not so much in the individual crime stories but rather in the profound examination (both by the author, in his characters, and by the author's material, in the reader's mind) of humanity in the face of inescapable doom.  What makes us human, what it means to survive and have a purpose - and how to cope, when the end does come.  A stunning achievement.

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.

Vincenzo Bilof's Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Back by popular demand, Books & Booze, originally a mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC challenges participating authors 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. 

Today, Vincenzo Bilof assigns each of the main characters from his books a drink. Bottoms up!

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“Let’s have a drink somewhere.” The sentence may imply a lot of different things, from a sexual encounter to resolving a conflict with your nemesis. In fiction, characters who don’t abuse alcohol may often use a drink or two for the same purposes, and we figure that if the author included a scene in a bar, well, then, it’s important. Every word is important. Think about the scene in X-Men: First Class when Xavier and Magneto attempt to recruit Wolverine in a bar. That’s a great scene. We get one line from Wolverine…

If our characters are going to use alcohol, then it must be purposeful; characters who smoke or drink are in these situations where they use substances because it suits their character or drives the plot forward. A lot of convenient and inconvenient things happen in a bar (especially if you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons). But what if we take these characters outside of their fictional world? Would their “beverage of choice” say something about who they are? Here are some characters from my novels who might like a drink or two…

  

NecropolisNow (Severed Press)

The heroine in this book, Amparo Vega, is a hard, damaged woman. She loves guns, sex, and blowing things up. She’s a mercenary whose screwed-up sense of morality is challenged by zombie violence. She loves to drink; she’ll take shots of hard liquor over beer, but she’ll settle for anything in a pinch. She’s spent a lot of time drowning her guilt with bottles of Jack Daniels; someone offered her a shot of Everclear, or Bacardi 151, she wouldn’t hesitate.

GravityComics Massacre (Bizarro Pulp Press)

Brian Powers hates drinking and doing drugs. He’s driving through the Arizona desert in his van filled with people he loosely associates with; so when he takes his drug-addicted friends to a deserted town to check out the site of a legendary comic store where the owner murdered people and decorated the walls with their skin (and what could go wrong for a bunch of teenagers on such a journey…), he gives in to peer pressure and drinks Jack Daniels out of the bottle, which is unfortunately laced with some “extra” stuff. Even though Brian doesn’t like to party, Jack, Kurt, and Jamie are hard drinkers, and they bring more than a couple bottles of liquor into the ruins of a ghostly town.

  

JapaneseWerewolf Apocalypse (Severed Press)

Sake! This novel takes place in two different timelines (yes, there’s time travel involved), and since we’re in Japan, somebody has to drink sake… But during the contemporary segments of the novel, we see the world through the eyes of Edmund Grant and Morgan Brand, two werewolf hunters with completely different tastes. Grant will enjoy several cheap beers at a time, even when he’s on the prowl for a “fleabag.” Brand isn’t much of a drinker; he’s a fast food junkie, and he loves soda. If Morgan had to choose, he’d go with a mixed drink, but he’d much rather just crack open a bag of Doritos.

The HorrorShow (Bizarro Pulp Press)

The protagonist (who is nameless) in this poetry-narrative is a narcoleptic-amnesiac poet with sociopathic tendencies. His wife, Connie, has given him things to drink and has slipped sleeping pills and ecstasy into his beverages, but those are on “doctor’s orders,” because our protagonist becomes the subject of a wild psychological experiment. The poet, when he’s semi-conscious, enjoys Long Island Iced-Teas while he’s wearing dark sunglasses in seedy establishments.

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From Detroit, Michigan, Vincenzo Bilof has been called "The Metallica of Poetry" and "The Shakespeare of Gore". He likes to think Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Charles Baudelaire would be proud of his work. It's possible the ghosts of Roberto Bolano and Syd Barrett are playing chess at his dining table. Vincenzo is the co-conspirator behind the "Anti-Poetry" poetry movement. A member of the Horror Writers Association, Vincenzo is the author of nine novels, including the Zombie Ascension series and Gravity Comics Massacre. A novel written as a collection of poems, The Horror Show, is another one of his nonsensical works. When he's not chasing his kids around the house or watching bad horror films, he reads and reviews horror fiction, though his tastes are more literary. Forthcoming projects include the horror-satire Vampire Strippers from Saturn, and the meta-fictional novella, Vincenzo Bilof Must Die. He hopes that all of his readers are aged 18+. You can check out his blog here: http://vincenzobilof.blogspot.com/

Gonzo is his favorite Muppet.