Can anyone out there on the Chocolate Supa Highway, as Spearhead once said, recommend a story collection made up of sci-fi stories? I'm not looking for an anthology, just a single author book of stories.
Update: Thanks everyone who emailed and commented...I am now fully loaded! Seems this Ted Chiang fellow is the call, since about fifteen people sent his name my way.
Lakers in 6. And I hope to god they wear longer shorts. I can actually see Bird's nest.
While adjusting my fantasy baseball roster this afternoon, I made a startling discovery: Marlo Stanfield is now a reliever for the Milwaukee Brewers...except he's going by Salomon Torres:
Here's Marlo, right before saying some scary gangster shit.
Here is Salomon Torres, right before doing some gangsta shit...like saving a bunch of games for me. Word on the street is that Avon Barksdale is coming up from the minors, though, so some shit could go down directly...
Generally, I think wagering on things is a fine way to spend your free time. There's something particularly American about placing undo value on stupid things. For instance, as a college man, I recall betting on whether or not someone could drink 100 shots of beer without throwing up. It was something called the 100 Shot Club. As I recall, there was a set amount of time to drink these 100 shots -- maybe until the girls showed up, or maybe until we realized there had to be something on television more entertaining than watching other people drink, or maybe it was just until the first person vomited, though I could be wrong. It might have just been about the shots. I never bet on this myself, feeling like my money was better wagered on things like, you know, whether or not someone would hook up with a particular Tri-Delt. It wasn't a very exciting college experience, in retrospect, but at least it was filled with games of chance.
Later, when I lived in Las Vegas, I learned to not bet on too many things since the opportunity presented itself everywhere you looked -- I always liked watching people smoke and play video poker at the grocery store and Rite Aid, personally -- and, plus, once I had money, I didn't really want to lose it on something trivial. Better to bet metaphorical things. Like we'd see Vern Troyer at Cheetah's and I'd say, "I bet he grabs that stripper's ass," and then, five seconds later, sure enough, Vern would have a handful of a stripper's ass and everyone, except probably the stripper, would view themselves as winners. Today I beg more than wager, like with God -- "Please, god, don't give me any more student manuscripts in second person about cancer!" -- and with my email -- "Please, don't let this email be from some fucktard asking me to review their self-published book in the LA Times!" -- and occasionally with Wendy -- "Please, can't we watch The First 48 marathon? I'll totally clean the backyard if we can!" -- or, today, with romance author extraordinaire HelenKay Dimon -- "Please, tell that title stealing whore she's a title stealing whore!" and, usually, it comes to no avail. I get 2nd person manuscripts about cancer, someone emails me to review their horror novel about an infected laptop that holds the devil inside of it (really), Wendy opts for E! and HK chickens out and just sits nicely beside said title stealer at a BEA signing.
Living your life on bets and wagers and even prudent reasoning is no way to exist. Why? Because you end up taking it too far. You end up sending in some letter caked in the jizz of fucktardery to Parade. You end up NAME REDACTED DUE TO GOOGLING SELF AND REALIZING THE HORROR, FOLLOWED BY A KIND EMAIL ASKING FOR REDACTION of Sanford, FL. Actually, you end up as SEE ABOVE and her fiance:
I say R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe has romanced women. My fiancé insists he’s gay. Weekend chores are riding on your answer. Who wins?
Who wins? No one. No one win. Hope dies. Russia gets stronger. Bin Laden laughs. The Minutemen lay down their weapons and our borders are flooded. Who wins? Fucktards, that's who. I think it's sad that your fiance insists he's gay and you put that in a national magazine. Is that any of our business? I mean, I think it's great that he's gay, I'm totally in support of that, but why did you feel like you had to put that in the question? Oh...wait...I think I misread that...well, never mind, the point is still the same: What the fuck is wrong with you and your fiance, SEE ABOVE? Do you guys really sit around betting household chores on Michael Stipe's sexual persuasion? How fucking nasty must your house be? I can see it now: "I'll wash the toilet, honey, if you can tell me whether or not Neil Diamond likes to be on top when he's making a girl a woman soon." "I think Rick Springfield has had a dirty sanchez performed on him. What do you think? I'm not doing the dishes until we have definitive proof!" "So, what do you bet that Neanderthal looking guy from Nickelback wipes back to front? I'm not folding the whites until we know!" I mean, SEE ABOVE, what the fuck is wrong in your household that this is how you guys conduct life? Who wins? Satan. Jesus dies again and Satan rises up. That who fucking wins. You have brought on the end of days. I hope you're fucking happy.
Nevertheless, it is of vital importance that this is settled so you and your fiance can finally clean up after your 34 cats, so we'll let Walter Scott have his say:
Share the vacuuming. Stipe, 48, has taken lovers of both sexes and once described himself as “an equal-opportunity lech.”
Well, that settles nothing. Who wins?
The good people at Bookgasm have posted a flattering review of Las Vegas Noir this afternoon which finally confirms what I've always thought: I'm totally LOL.
A complete opposite of characters make up David Corbett’s “Pretty Little Parasite,” which tells the story of a low-level drug dealer and what she thinks will be just another deal — leading to a great reveal. Tod Goldberg has an enjoyable little tale called “Mitzvah,” with a former hitman who now has to work as a rabbi in Vegas. It’s a very dark comic tale that made me laugh out loud a good many times. “Babs” by Scott Philips is another story of drug operators — this time with the narrator looking back on a simple pick-up that could have gone wrong in a big way.
For those of you in Southern California who've been wondering when you'll be able to get your copy of Las Vegas Noir signed, there's going to be a battle royale pitting Las Vegas Noir vs. Los Angeles Noir next month in a no-holds-barred-cage match for noir supremacy. Fighting for Las Vegas will be yours truly, Lori Kozlowski and Christine McKellar. Figthing for LA will be the punk Gary Phillips, the coward Denise Hamilton, the snitch Emory Holmes and a man who once had green hair, Jim Pascoe. Here's the details:
When: Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 6pm to 8pm
Where: Imix Bookstore, 5052 Eagle Rock Blvd., Los Angeles, CA (323) 257-2512
(I've never actually even heard of this bookstore, so if I'm not there it's because I'm lost, not because I'm afraid Gary will beat my ass.)
One of my absolute favorite books of 2007 was Ron Currie Jr.'s God Is Dead, which I reviewed in the LA Times last July and said things like "Currie's strength rests in his ability to focus humanity's conundrums on the smallest physical particles" because it was a book review, but, had we just been sitting around and talking, I would have said, "Man, fuck Ron Currie. This book is awesome. Fuck that guy. You know? Where does he get off being all talented and shit? Fuck that guy."
At any rate, Ron is answering questions this week at the new blog Three Guys One Book and if you've read the book, you'll find the conversation very interesting. If you haven't, you'll want to go out and get the book and learn to hate him on your own...
The day rap music died.
I just composed a lengthy post about all of the fucktards in Parade, when, well, I accidentally deleted it all. But what I meant to say, in honor of the men and women who've died to protect our freedoms, can really be boiled down to one very simple statement, first seen here on a lovely t-shirt from the Tod Goldberg Holiday Shoppe:
Now, before anyone starts saying "You can't copyright a title...and isn't it also the title of a Rob Zombie song...and there must have been a French horror film of the same title...and really, do you think anyone who reads her books reads your books?" understand that I am aware of all of the above. Nevertheless: What the fucking fuck?
The image to the left there is the cover of Elizabeth Scott's YA novel Living Dead Girl. Some of you might recall 
my award-losing novel of the same name, pictured to the right. I know I do. I know others do, too, since, not to get all proprietary or anything, but, you know, it's kinda synonymous with me, since it lost a bunch of really nice awards. Perhaps had it won a few, well, we'd not be having this conversation. (Oddly -- or perhaps not so oddly, knowing how these things work -- the cover is actually really reminiscent of a cover I rejected.) Anyway, I hadn't heard of Elizabeth Scott prior to this morning when a friend of mine emailed me to say, Yo, someone is biting on your mad style, you better get them to recognize, G (or, you know, something like that) and sent me a link to her book. Intrigued, I also visited the author's website to find out if her novel was about a missing woman, a dead child with weird tumors and an unreliable narrator dealing with life among the ruins. Alas, no:
Once upon a time, I didn't know how lucky I was.
When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends--her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.
Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she wants.
She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.
This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.
Sounds interesting, I gotta say. I'm not sure what is more terrifying than death, however, apart from maybe that one time I was getting gas at the ARCO station in Banning and 200 Hell's Angels pulled in at the same time. I never felt more Jewish. Anyway, I poked around Elizabeth's site some and found something interesting: Living Dead Girl isn't the only book she's written that shares a title with another book...or books. Her current release is called Stealing Heaven, the title of a popular novel by Madeline Hunter, which came out originally in 2002, but also, oddly, the title of a book by Marion Meade released by Soho (the publisher of Living Dead Girl) in 1994, the title of a Jaclyn Reding novel from 1996, and the title of a book by Heather Von Prondzynski in 1998...and then there was 1995 romance by Kimberly Cates as well, which makes me think there's probably a storage bin at Harlequin filled with books titled Stealing Heaven.
I can't think of anyone I know who has released a book and had another book come after it with the same exact title, particularly not when the book has been around for only a few years, is at least somewhat known and is still in print and selling. There's the case of two books with a very, very similar title being released at the exact same time, as was the deal with Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan, both of which were released within weeks of each other in 2004, but I can't think of any others immediately.
So, to answer the obvious question: Yes, I find myself angered by this. Not impossibly so, because there are larger things to be angry about in the world than someone else using the same book title as me -- and in some cases, like when the punk band Riot Like Words named a song Fake Liar Cheat because they were inspired by the book to write a song, I'm more flattered than anything, even if I do have real dominion over those three words together -- but in just a regular business sense, I have to wonder: Why use a title someone else has already used for your book? And why do it more than once? You'd think the sheer confusion factor from having one book with the same title as another 10 books would be enough to keep you away from other such issues.
On the upside, I pray to Dave Navarro that some angst filled YA readers order the wrong book and find themselves asking their parents about whether or not it's possible they have the traces of their unborn siblings festering in their bodies...
A huge afternoon of authors, including yours truly, his older, less attractive brother and scores of others.
For ticketing: (714) 778-4114.
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