Letter from a friend

A friend of mine (finally) read Bad Attitude (when did I publish that, 2007?) and wrote me this little review. I like hearing what people think of my books, whether they like it or not (as in this case.) Anyway, I thought I would share it with you:

I just wanted to tell you that I read your book “Bad attitude”. And…

Well, you really are too much of a communist. I always knew it, you non-catholic, false Irish!

No seriously, that wasn’t my (main) point. But I’ve got to tell you honestly:

Yes I read it but I’ve got to tell you that I wasn’t really content with it (not that I HAVE to be satisfied of it, I’m fully aware that you didn’t write a book for me). I did really prefer “Game Quest”. Maybe I missed something but this one was a bit too straightforward: always in the store, few characters, too much of a good vs evil plot and a very unappealing main character.

What a punk he was, though I have to admit Tom was also an appealing hatred magnet and I’m always for anything that’s against Future Shop.

Anyways, I wanted to tell you that I read it and that I did have a good time reading it but that I was a bit disappointed because you really rocked my world with “Game Quest” and not so much this time.

If there was some kind of superb irony about it, please tell me.

A little Christmas procrastination

Produced this semi-story. Like most things I write it will probably never go anywhere, or grow much beyond this. But who knows? It was fun writing it anyway, enjoy.

For the Children (not for children)

Santa’s arm tumbled out of bed before he did, knocking over a half-finished and flat-for-days glass of pepto-bismal to the floor. Somewhere in the house the Claus’ cat pricked one ear back and the sound of water trickling off the bedside table stirred yesterday’s breath from deep within the mountain buried beneath the avalanche of St Nick’s beard. Mrs. Claus was nowhere to be seen, but the tale-tale sounds and smells wafting up the stairs foretold her presence in the kitchen, baking as usual. Yet one more day where the sweet fragrance of desert wafted into his nostrils well before he’d even contemplated breakfast...a smell that aroused him due to years of its association with, well, you know...that early morning feeling.

St Nick rubbed his face and didn’t bother to turn towards the clock. He couldn’t face it and had it permanently turned away from the bed. He hadn’t looked at it since last Christmas. Or a few months after. However long ago that was.

It took much effort to roll his hefty frame into the upright position and place his feet – almost – on the floor. The upright pressure on his noggin was the unneeded reminder that he’d been drinking again last night. Guilt radiated out through his toes and he just sat on the bed for minutes, starring at the wood slat wall and a crude painting some kid – Walter or Charlie or something – had left him for Christmas one year. Maybe 30 years ago now. He wondered what happened to that kid. What did he wish for Christmas now? Did he have his own kids? He’d never know. The Dungeon Green kept that.

Mrs Claus, on days when she was irritated, would leave the evidence of the previous night’s debauchery lying around for Santa to clean up in the morning. An empty beer can here, a lukewarm tumbler of brandy there. She was not irritated this morning, he could tell as he slowly took himself down the stairs to the living room. His heart sank at the thought of her cleaning up after him for his favourite morning hangover cure was to take quick sip of the leftover hair of the dog. And then another, if it fancied him. Until he felt better and was waking up the next morning again in search of a cure.

Luckily she’d missed a martini glass he’d absentmindedly left behind the easy chair. The olives were gone, and it was a bit of a stretch to reach down and pick it up, but as he raised with it pinched between his nimble fingers the smell, like sweet ambrosia, of warm gin and dry vermouth caressed his nostrils. He licked his chops, put the glass to his lips and then thought about the children. He struggled for a moment with the rim on his lips...but guilt and the children won, for the first time in months and he put the martini glass down on the hope chest.

Stumbling into the kitchen he found Mrs Claus, fat as ever, bent over the oven in apron strings and oven mitts. For a brief moment he pictured her with just those two articles of clothing, and hair still bedraggled, tumbling down around her shoulders and not up in that asexual bow she insisted on wearing. (Ostensibly to keep it from catching fire, but really!) But stood up with a tray full of cookies and the fantasy was gone (a fantasy was all it could ever hope to be) and he gave her a kiss on the cheek. She paused he duties for a moment, smiled and continued while Santa went to the island sink and poured himself a healthy glass of water.

“You going to the toy mine’s today dear?” she asked, dusting something on the fresh batch.

Was this a trick question? Did she want him to carry something down? Or a subtle-reminder that it was blankity-blank days until Christmas. 5? 4? He had no idea. It was really close. Really, really, terrifyingly close and he hadn’t done anything. He was going to miss it this year. That was it. It was going to be cancelled. Those Christmas day powers the Dungeon Green gave him were spectacular...but they couldn’t save the holiday season from how bad he’d butchered it this year.

Santa mumbled something approximating a yes.

“That’ll be nice. I’m sure the elves will appreciate it.”

Santa laughed to himself. Appreciate it? What world did she live in? The elves were happy about everything. They lived in a lightless cavern, for Christ sakes, clanging and banging all day and night, endlessly singing cheery songs over and over, sweating and breaking their fingers to make toys for other people. And they never complained. Appreciation denoted a change in mood. The elves were too satisfied with anything to appreciate anything. Thank god for that, though. At least some children would get some toys.

But he’d been avoiding it for months. He hadn’t been down there since July. He was going to get his shit together. Today. For the children. He had to at least try. He took a long look at that foreboding wooden door at the back of the kitchen that led down into the caves. Then he looked at the lovely white archway leading back into the living room and that last sip of yesterday’s martini. He thought of the children, he thought of Walter or Charlie or whatever that kid’s name was. He thought of how few days he had and how it would just be easier to just wing it. And then he headed for the washroom.

A Personal Appeal from Red Fez Founder Leopold McGinnis

My name is Leopold McGinnis and I approve of this message:

Hear the Red Fez!

Red Fez.net, the beloved and mayhaps crazy literary website I've been running for the last nigh 10 years, has started a radio program! For our inaugural broadcast Red Fez radio host Tim Murray will be speaking with Editor in Chief Michele McDannold.

Don't miss this moment in indie-undie-writing history! Tune in this Saturday!

And if there's anything you'd like to hear on the show in the future (interviews, readings, etc) let us know here, or better yet call into the show.

Two in the bush!

I just stumbled across 2 poems published in 34th Parallel last year that I had no idea were published...and barely remembered submitting! Going about Their Lives, and How Many Poems is it Going to Take.

Been a while since I put anything up, so I thought I'd share them with you.

Zeus Revealed! (and some publishing fun facts)

ZOT!

That's the sound of Zeus sending down a wonderbolt and making this the most amazing cover for a collection of poetry EVER!

Although, I suppose you could blame book designer Natalie over at kisscutdesign.com for the amazing cover design and idea, but Zeus probably wouldn't be very happy with that. Either way, I thank them both for their amazing work! If the hip cover makes even one person who wouldn't normally look at poetry pick it up and give it one quick chance, I'll be happy.

Why a giant Mexican, Zeus Word Voltron? The cover was inspired by a quote of mine from the introduction of my book, as listed on the kisscut blog here.

I'm excited to get into the process of ramping up promotion for the book... Promotion is something I've never been particularly good at - I rank it down there with clipping my toenails. It has to be done...but you could probably get away with not doing it for a long time...but you're really only hurting your pride. Wait...was that the metaphor I was looking for? Anyway, I'm not very good at it, and could use all the help I can get (especially yours, if you're excited about the book - tell your friends! Enemies! Local grocer!) Thankfully it's not just up to me this time: I had the chance to meet with the publicist for my book last week and she had loads of good ideas, so expect more on this blog (finally!), especially as I document this little book going from just a cool cover to a real live book out there on its own.

But for now, just imagine that giant robo-zeus shooting poetic laser beams into your eyeballs. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Now THAT'S poetry!

Zeus and the Word Voltron!

Voltron

So after a few months delay things are starting to roll again on my latest collection of poetry, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea. Just a few days ago, in fact, I got an email from the designer who will be working on my book.

She had this crazy idea about putting a Voltron made out of words on the cover ‘with a zeus-like beard and possibly a mexican-like mustache, holding a beverage. Maybe inside a beverage?’ My first thought was ‘that’s pretty damn cool’ followed by ‘but how the hell is all that going to work together?’ So she sent me a sketch and I have to say it looks freakin’ awesome!

I’m really excited about it. Not only because it looks so damn good and hip, but how many other poetry collections have a giant Zeus Robot on the front with a Mexican moustache? Maybe only 2 or 3?

What I’m most excited about is how forthright it is in presenting what I really hope to say about poetry through my work – that it can be fun, hip, modern, interesting, funny, philosophical. Now this should not come as a surprise to anyone who reads, for lack of a better term, ‘underground’ or ‘alternative’ poetry, but to the general reading public poetry is seen generally as old, delicate and inaccessible. Publishers can get stuck too marketing to ‘poetry types’ because they are the ones that buy the books, however if you don’t break beyond that poetry never evolves, and we continue to accept and published the same poetry that still isn’t resonating with the wider world. I think that’s a disservice to the form, because before I started writing it I definitely fell into the category of ‘poetry is not for me, I don’t understand it, and won’t touch it with a ten foot pole except to mock its pretensions and phoniness.’

My point being, people DO judge books by their covers, and this cover promises to be cool and different enough that even non-poetry lovers will pick it up and crack its cover to see what’s inside. And if they read a couple of poems about Mexicans or robots I feel (hope!) they will see that poetry is bad enough to punch them in the teeth and buy them a beer afterwards. And even if they don’t buy the book that’s a success.

Of course, I could just be another deluded poet waiting for the ‘poetry revolution’. But, you know, we all gotta have dreams!

Look for more news about Zeus as it happens...

My e-books now available on Kindle UK!

Yep, Kindle isn't just for gringos anymore. If you're one of them euro-stars, you can get in on the hot ebook action RIGHT NOW!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003EYW1IS
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00368B6YM
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00375LYE6

So Long, Mr. Pekar

So Mr. Harvey Pekar, much loved (by many, but also by me) for his American Splendor comics (and for the movie, which I highly recommend if you have not seen it) has passed.

I suppose for most, this is sad news. However, aside from the fact that I'll be sad there won't be any new American Splendor comics out, I prefer to take the opportunity of his passing to appreciate the fact Harvey was here, and lucky enough, to bless us with his fascinating and entertaining take on the world.

Enjoy the journey beyond Harvey. I'll look for your books in hell.

Dear Chinese Robots

Please stop commenting on my blog. I have not transgressed humanoid quarantine law b-34fg. Thank you.

Bombshell

Bombshell...

They don't use that word much anymore
to describe girls like you
As if your kind just disappeared
when excess fell out of fashion
Though how they managed to lose a woman like you
in a sea swell of dainty girls
eating yoghurt in petite pants
I’ll never know.

Bombshell.
the sound of it
Rolling…
Exploding!
suggests ships of steel and gun powder
docked in the port and overpowering the horizon
with bulk and shape...
conjures up the fat arc of depth charges
rolling off starboard sides
and teasing a voluptuous fragroom of fish into the air
scattering the self control of men to the wind like seed
It’s the sort of nickname that causes uncomfortable creases in pants
like images of lingeried girls straddling planes as they fly over base
to the salute of sailor suits
and an extra helping
of thigh and breast and arms and lips and lots of it

Bombshell.
That’s the sort of powderkeg you marry
knowing
and maybe even hoping
it will end up in divorce
and not caring
because bombshells are meant to go off.
That’s part of their excitement
Like curling irons and high heeled shoes
and words you don't really mean
thrown against the wall in a hotel room
Like the sound sex being had in the flat one over
while you curl your finger around a red phone cord
Like you walking into a bar and everybody noticing
but no one saying anything because
lust and hunger
have been tamed by sex on TV
and a burger on every corner
because the war is long gone over and
they just don't make
bombshells anymore

the Thief and the Cobbler update

Just a quickie.

A while ago I posted about Richard Williams animated film, The Thief and the Cobbler (you can read it here) which I found was a fascinating story about creativity vs profit in the art world.

Anyway, filmmaker Kevin Schreck is looking to put together a documentary on this film and looking for some support. If you're interested in this, I encourage you to check out his project here: http://kck.st/cwepzM

Zeus delayed!

Yes, he got held up at the airport, and coffee got spilled on his brand new tunic, dammit, and then, well, you know they took issue with him packing his lightning bolts as carry-on. So he’s on the next available flight, which should arrive Spring 2011-ish.

That’s a ways away, sadly, but sometimes books take up to 2 years from acceptance to publication, so I’m still short of that. Its giving me time to work on new stuff, though, which is nice.

But there’s also some good news. A while I ago I mentioned that Zeus got overwhelmingly positive feedback from the reader reviews (Athabasca sends out manuscripts they’re considering to other published authors for their opinions before making a decision) and that I’d share them here if I could. Well, I’ve been given the ok to do so, so from now until the book is out I’ll put up some quotes.

Starting with:

‘McGinnis is funny, witty (he says he’s facetious and thinks he might go to hell for his Gandhi poem(…)I don’t think he will go to hell, at least not for this, and if Gandhi’s there then hell is a hell of alot different than we are given usually to think), but he’s not cynical. He has bite and performs irony right to the end, to a good end, which is to say it’s not all simply irony. The language (..) is crisp and witty and entirely appropriate to the narrative intent, its allegorical or logopoeic purposes.’

Bad Attitude a 'Successful Self-Published Novel!'

You read it here first. Well, it was actually written here first, but if you didn't read it there before, now you are reading it here now before then!

Yes, Bad Attitude has been recognized as a successful self-published novel, ranking amongst such other novels as Legally Blond (yes!) and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It may not be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and I'm not sure if much of what happens in it is technically legal. But it's nice to make a list nonetheless.

To quoth:

So I went online to identify successful self-published novels. Here’s a starter list of 20 from many I found in a quick search on the web. Measuring success, of course, is subjective, and I’ve not read most of these books, but reviews by way of Goodreads.com, LibraryThing.com, Kirkus and Amazon seem fairly consistent.

1. Nat, Nat, the Nantucket Cat by Cheryl Barnes & Peter Barnes
2. Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown
3. The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant
4. One of Ours by Willa Cather
5. Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort of) by Will Clarke
6. Fifth Life of the Cat Woman by Kathleen Dexter
7. Queenmaker: A Novel of King David’s Queen by India Edghill
8. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
9. Blinking Red Light by Mister Mann Frisby
10. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
11. The First Forest by John Gile
12. Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
13. The Last Open Road by Burt S. Levy
14. Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
15. Bad Attitude by Leopold McGinnis
16. Mama by Terry McMillan
17. Temptation by Victoria Christopher Murray
18. One More Moment in Time by Elizabeth Anne Ryan
19. Let That Be the Reason by Vickie Stringer
20. 23 Shades Of Black by K.J.A. Wishnia

Thanks http://writersrainbow.wordpress.com!

The Morning After...

A new poem, Weird, up on YouTube. Check it out!



(Special thanks to Aidan for artistic help and camera work. Read his Traumatic(ly Random) Reviews here: http://traumaticreviews.blogspot.com)

Ok so...
last night
was weird
Wonderfully weird
Beautifully weird
and every awkward moment of it
broke me somehow
Tore the mile high brick wall
of my confidence
down
in one soundless breath

And as you lay there
naked
the taste of my cum still on your lips when we kiss
having unravelled the entire universe
with just the sound of your voice
you stare at me
daring me
with those dark eyes
like two burning constellations
to put it all back together
before you.

As if all this was just a game!
As if the need for oxygen
was just a myth!
You smile at me
nonchalantly
while inside Im Fumbling
Asphyxiating
Burning
in the vast expanse of your bed
clinging to you in the dark
for fear that if I let go
I might just drift away
into nothingness

I love that you break me
into a million little pieces
I love that you can just so carelessly pull apart
the fabric of space and time and
my pitiful little place in it.
Though it scares me
Though it terrifies me

Last night
was weird.
It was exactly everything
I didnt expect it to be
And just when I thought
Id got it all figured out
Just when the world began to bore me
It was something new again
Something Strange
Wonderful
Confusing
Weird
Scary
and awkward...

But wonderful.
Wonderfully weird.
Beautiful.
and beautiful
and wonderful
wonderful in ways
I hope I never understand.

Game Quest on Kindle!

If ever there was a book meant to be read electronically...this is it!

And that's about all I have to say about that.

Check it out here.

Beware the Edmonton Poetry Festival!

I will be reading this year (my third) at the Edmonton Poetry Festival. The EPF is a steadily growing festival in this city of festivals and brings out some pretty decent poets. I'm particularly excited about this year for two reasons.

1) it seems a lot more hip and with it this year than in the past (I mean...check out that poster!) Those of you have heard me rant and rave about poetry being boring and inaccessible...well, this is a good sign. Maybe things are spicing up?

2) They're bringing back the Poetry Sweatshop this year! Sadly absent from last year's festival (perhaps due to lack of venue? The Sweatshop was not allowed, in its second year, to return to its first year venue due to rowdiness!) the sweatshop is like theatresports, but with poetry, in a drinking establishment...with punishment. It's pretty wild, and if you ever wondered if poetry could be exciting, naughty and reckless all at once...well come out and find out!

This year the EPF runs from April 19-27th (seems to be getting longer and longer). Check out their site for all the scheduled events.

I will be reading at:

• The Blinks (80 poets, poems in 30 seconds or less!) on Monday, April 19 at the ARTery (Edmonton's coolest venue?), 9535 Jasper Avenue. 7pm-10.30 pm.
• The Poetry Sweatshop on Saturday the 24th, also at the ARTery. 3-5 pm.
• and Three Bananas Café, 9918 102 Avenue, Sunday, April 25th. 3:30 pm.

I hope to see you there!

Bad Attitude now available for Kindle!

Oh the bittersweet irony! Bad Attitude is now available on a widget! If you’ve read the book, then you’ll savour this quirk of fate. And if you haven’t…well, you need to follow the mis-adventures of Jesse Durnell, world’s most bitter widget-salesman as he tries to navigate the spurious employee policies of Electronics Pit and the nebulous void of wage-slavery in the BRAND NEW KINDLE EDITION!

Yes! Bad Attitude is available in all its digital glory for Amazon’s ebook reader. It’s cheap - $5.99 - and illustrated. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you laugh again, it will make you never look at the world of retail the same again!

But don’t trust me – here is a review from one of the readers on Amazon:

McGinnis has done an astounding job of capturing a sense of alienation from consumer culture, and at the same time providing a dead-on account of working for a mind-numbing corporation in retail. It'd be great to see this find a cult following behind cash registers across the country.

Tim Burton at MoMA

One of my favourite directors, Tim Burton, whose films I would say have been significantly influential on my writing, has an exhibition on at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from November 22, 2009-April 26, 2010.

I, and most of the people reading this blog probably, live nowhere near New York so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to attend. HOWEVER, you can view much of the exhibition online here and even better, there is also a great behind-the-scenes interview with Mr. Burton over here where he talks about his influences, the correlation between drawing and film, and what’s the deal with his love of stripes?

Definately worth a look-see.

Scientists discover MERCH!

For the man or woman in your life who has everything...but Red Fez merch!

Yes! Just when you thought poetry couldn't be turned into a t-shirt...or artistic sensibilities into a beer stein...Red Fez has done it! Our secret labs have been at work for months on a very serious question: How do we improve the state of underground and independent poets and authors everywhere, spread the good word of the Fez and maybe even create some revenue stream to support this wild-eyed volunteer run website which loses money every year?

So those lab-coated scientists went away to their cave of science, smashed some particles together, poured some blue liquid into some yellow liquid and then measured their toenails with some expensive caliper-thingy and then hypothesized that Red Fez was drastically short of the chemical element MERCHANDISE!

Emergency action was, of course, needed and so our graphic design/zoology department was immediately set to the task to creating t-shirts, mugs and more. Which are now available at the Red Fez store. We’re hoping you’ll like and buy them, because otherwise we’ll have to let our science staff go.

Sincerely yours,
Leopold McGinnis
Founding Editor of The Red Fez

Athabasca University Press to publish my new book!

Yes! I have fooled another publishing house into believing my work is ‘visionary’*! Oh frabjuous day! Oh supercalifragilisticexpialidotious!

This is good news indeed! AU Press is a pretty good feather to have under your cap – not only are they one of the few academic presses in the country to publish fiction/poetry, but they are also very well regarded for the quality of their publications. It will be an honour to be part of their list. I’m fairly certain they have good distribution too, so you may even see Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea in a bookstore! Wild.

Actually, I received word sometime last week that the press had decided to publish my second collection of poetry, but knowing the small press, and considering my previous history, I didn’t want to say anything until the papers arrived and I had signed them for fear of jinxing it all. They still need to be signed off by the press, but…well, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I have confidence that they will go ahead with my book, though, because of the quality of the assessor reviews. Before accepting a book, AU Press sends it out to two or three experts in the industry (other authors, etc…) and asks for their feedback. Based on that feedback, they either accept the book, or ask the author to respond to the assessments and then make a final decision. In this case, though, they didn’t even ask me to respond…which is something of a literary slam dunk! Both assessments were VERY positive, and it was kind of surreal reading almost full essays on my work - a book that’s not even published yet. Weird, too, because I’ve never even had one essay written about any of my published work. Very cool experience.

Anyway, I’d like to post some of that here, but I’m not sure what I can and cannot share at this point. I’ll be talking with the fine folk at AU Press over the next few weeks to figure out how we go ahead…and give you some updates and maybe a few poems from the collection and what the reviewers thought, if I can.

*Yes, this word was actually used in one of my assessments! I’m going to inflate my head right now to maximize my ego before it gets popped.

The Thief and the Cobbler

I remember at some point in junior high, not long after Disney’s classic Aladdin was released, coming across advertisements for an animated film called Arabian Night. For me at the time is was a transparent knockoff riding and my initial reaction was disgust. What about producing good original art? It saddened me to see so much money and talent dumped into derivative rip offs. Sadly, at the time I was not aware of the true tragedy of Arabian Night, and I use tragedy in the artistic sense of the word.

Arabian Night, rather than a case of Hollywood screwing up by producing a knock-off, was in fact the very opposite. A rare case of Hollywood taking a breathtakingly original idea, and a man’s life work, and…screwing it up. It was only until I very recently stumbled across the film trailer for The Thief and the Cobbler on You Tube that the true story of Arabian Night unfolded.

To quote the wikipedia article on the film:

Richard Williams' magnum opus, a painstakingly hand-animated epic inspired by the Arabian Nights and with the production title The Thief and the Cobbler, was begun in 1968 and was initially self-funded. As a largely non-verbal feature meant for an adult audience, The Thief was initially dismissed as unmarketable. After over twenty years of work, Williams had completed only twenty minutes of the film, and following the critical success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams sought and secured a production deal with Warner Bros. in 1990. However, the production went over deadline, and in 1992, with only 15 minutes left to complete, The Completion Bond Company, who had insured Warners' financing of the film, feared competition from the similarly themed Disney film Aladdin and seized the project from Williams in Camden, London. Completion Bond then had the animation completed in Korea under the direction of animator Fred Calvert. Calvert's product was released internationally in 1994 as The Princess and the Cobbler. Miramax then acquired rights to the project and extensively rewrote and reanimated the film to include continuous dialogue and to add several musical interludes. Miramax's product was released in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight.

Having not seen Arabian Knight, I can’t make any claims to the quality of that film, the (lost) backstory to the film is tragic – but what makes the story all the more magical and, yes, uplifiting is that fans of William’s work have pieced together much of William’s original vision from Arabian Night and the cutting and designing room floor to create a ‘recobbled’ version - a film much truer to Richard Harris’ original concept. A look at the trailer for the ‘director’s cut’ should convince you it’s worth watching. But better yet, the entire recobbled film is available on You Tube in 11 parts.

It’s really a lovely film in its novel and unusual approach to animation and its willingness to spend time experimenting on pain-staking details such as backgrounds, and optical illusional camera pans. The film is all the more remarkable on this front in the land of computer animation - that this is all hand done is really quite remarkable and charming.

Check it out, it’s a great film in its own right, with the added interest of its cematic history, and art vs. commerce narrative giving it that much more artistic pull.

So first of all, I have a very big announcement to make soon (some of you who are facebook friends probably already know what that might be), but, the way things work in the biz, I’m hesitant to say anything until it’s an actual ‘sure thing’ (if there ever is such a thing in publishing.) Anyway, I’m hoping to have something more to say on that in the next couple of weeks.

But so as to not leave you empty handed, I thought I’d share some other big news! The Red Fez (the book, not the site) is now available for Amazon’s ebook reader Kindle.! How freakin’ neato is that? Now all the intrigue, mystery and moustachio wax is available in e-ink. Habibi would be proud (or more likely amazed since computers didn’t really exist in his time) and steals yours and hide it YOU KNOW WHERE (well, if you’ve read the book you do!)

It’s pretty cheap: $4.99. Not my pricing (my pricing was $2.99, but I guess Amazon thought it was worth more...or not worth selling if it didn’t sell for more...I don’t know.) Anywho, that’s still a steal for this gem of a book - less than a heart-disease inducing burger meal and healthier for you. It’s also good because I’m starting to run out of physical copies of the book and I won’t be printing any more...so Red Fez can live on digitally.

So yes! If you’re lucky enough to have a Kindle, go check it out!

P.S. My other books are (hopefully) not far behind: Bad Attitude (also running out of copies) and Game Quest (not running out of copies.) If and until I get clearance from the publisher, I'll also hopefully have Poetaster up there, but I really have no plans to do that any time soon.

Red Fez Phones Home!

Picture this:

You're at a bus stop and you just broke up with your girlfriend. You're a strange combination of mad, sad, bad and rad. You're frustrated. You're done crying, you're done punching the pillow, and there's nobody around who wants to hear about your relationship troubles anymore...but you still need something...you need...a poem...about a messy breakup, to make you relate, to make you feel better! But where do you turn?

Red Fez to the rescue!!

You whip out your mobile phone, go to m.redfez.net and skim through the poetry by theme section and skim through the 'love/romance' category. Reading through a few amazing poems on the subject you flip your cell shut and, feeling better, say Bah! Who needs relationship anyway? When you have RED FEZ ON YOUR PHONE?

Or picture this!

You're waiting at the mall for your friend. She's late again. But she'll be there at any minute...you just don't know when. You don't want to just sit there looking uncool, you want to seem cool, like you have friends and a purpose for sitting on a bench. And you've been feeling kind of nostaligic for your childhood lately. So what do you do?

Red Fez to the rescue!!

You whip out your mobile phone, zip over to m.redfez.net and skim through the 'childhood/nostalgia' section of the fiction page. Lo a behold, pages after pages of sweetly scripted stories on childhood. Then your friend shows up out of nowhere. Dammit! Why did she have to show up so soon... I was reading RED FEZ ON MY PHONE!

But wait! Surely such deeply meaningful entertainment at my fingertips costs money!

Bah! Bah, we say to you! This is free! Yes, stop being so cynical! Stuff is still free and the universe has so conspired so that you can have free entertainment at any place where there is wifi or cell reception!

Hell, how great is that? I'll tell you how great. It's as great as m.redfez.net