Welcome to the future

Hey, do you live in the 21st Century? If so, you'll be glad to know that my latest book, NEVER DIVIDED, is now available in Kindle format from Amazon. That means that you can scientifically inject the book directly into your eyes using the internet. Plus, it only costs $4.95. Buy it now and become part of the "wired' generation!

NEVER DIVIDED has arrived!

I am positively giddy at the news that Never Divided, the third and final novel in my SF Punk Trio, is now available for purchase in paperback form from Amazon, with an eBook soon to follow. As always, I've endeavored to make it available at a reasonable price, so check it out, why don't you? And if you have a strong opinion about it, one way or the other, why not review it there and/or on Goodreads?

Readers in the Bay Area may be interested to know that I will be signing books and reading excerpts from Never Dividing at San Francisco's much venerated Green Apple Books on Thursday, August 29th at 7pm. There's no penalty for not having read the book, so if you want to just stop by and say hello, and maybe discuss the global implications of Magic Lizard, please feel free.

How to be cool

I have long said that Teleport City’s Keith Allison is one of the best film writers on the internet, and now his talent has bled onto the page with his new book Cocktails & Capers: Cult Cinema, Cocktails, Crime & Cool. The book is a perfect expression of Keith’s unique and highly personal take on pop culture, flitting from subject to subject in a way that might seem disorganized in another writer’s hands, but in Keith’s yields one unexpected insight (or, in the case of the cocktail recipes, buzz) after another. It’s also a lot of fun.

How fun, you ask? Well, let me just say that the chapter on lucha cinema contains contributions from your truly—that’s right, me. So it would behoove you to jet on over to Bezos’ place and buy it right now! And while you’re at it, why not throw your support behind another worthy up and coming author? It will make you feel good about yourself.

You can't burn an eBook

The eBook version of my new novel, So Good It's Bad, has just been made available on Amazon/Kindle. This means that it is that much closer to being downloaded directly into your brain, making it, once all of the books are burned, your solemn obligation to travel from household to household, disseminating its contents. This means that you will one day be responsible for creating a new society based entirely on So Good It's Bad, making life like one of those Star Trek episodes where they didn't feel like spending money on futuristic costumes.

But, for now, I'd just like to mention that the eBook is priced at a very reasonable $4.99 and you can download it here.

It's all on video.

I am well aware that I am a slouchy, soft spoken monster, a point that is mercilessly driven home whenever I have to watch a video like the one below, which chronicles my book event at Oakland's Great Good Place for Books last Friday evening. However, once your revulsion at my misshapen form subsides, you might actually glean some useful information about my new book, So Good It's Bad; for instance, that it is full of "rape, incest, torture and murder", a point that is brought up several times, and that it is in no way appropriate for your precious little bundle of joy, as it might stunt him or her and prevent them from growing up to be the unique and very special person they are destined to be.

All moribund humor aside, I owe a debt of thanks for what was truly a wonderful event to Midlife Mixtape's  Nancy Davis Kho, as fine an interlocutor as one could ask for, and to Kathleen Caldwell at A Great Good Space for welcoming us into her fine establishment--all of which is evident in the video.

Enjoy it, won't you? And if it makes you curious enough about either of my novels to actually read them, just click the cover images in the sidebar to buy the hell out of them.

SO BAD IT'S GOOD is GO!

Just about a year ago, I published a little book called Please Don't Be Waiting for Me. It concerned a bunch of teenage punk rockers who went to Berkeley High School by day and went to punk rock shows in San Francisco.by night. Hey, that sounds like me and my friends back in the early 80's, which is when the book is set. Then one of their friends gets brutally murdered and they end up getting chased around by homicidal Hells Angels and meth addled, racist skinheads. Ok, that never happened to me and my friends... but it could have.

Anyway, it turned out that people who read the book liked theses made up people of mine, as did I, so I decided to put them through their paces again, this time in a book called So Good It's Bad. This book starts out with a disastrous DIY band tour (something I know a lot  about) that leads to our protagonist Scott and his band mates being held hostage by a family of dangerous loonies, one of whom is a serial murderer popularly known as The Jackpot Killer. Chaos and bloodshed ensues.

Plot synopsis aside, what's most important about So Good It's Bad is that, after months of me teasing you with it, it is finally available. In fact, you can purchase it right now from Amazon by going here (though you don't necessarily have to fuck off.)

It's also important--and dreadfully so--that the book's release will kick off a flurry of promotional activity on the part of your truly. This will include a launch event that will take place in Oakland on August 10th, at which I will read from the book and write my name in your copy of it whether you want me to or not. There will likely also be interviews, podcast appearances and publicity stunts involving varying degrees of public nudity. Watch this space to keep pace, because I'm sure you'll want to witness them all, no matter how much cross-country or international travel it involves.

That's all in the future, of course. For now, all I would like for you to do is read the book', hopefully enjoy it, and recommend it to a friend or two. (Also, Good Reads and Amazon reviews are always nice, but I won't ask for those outright, because that would be unethical.)

Finally, if you are someone who likes to look at and touch things--and I mean that in the most innocent way imaginable--I think that you will find the book to be a pleasing physical artifact, as it was once again designed by my talented friend Andrew Nahem. Then again, if you find the idea of confronting an actual book in all its stark physicality utterly nauseating, there will be an eBook version, though you will have to wait a few weeks.

In summation: MY NEW BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE. PLEASE BUY IT. I HAVE MADE THIS ENTIRE PARAGRAPH AN AMAZON LINK SO THAT YOU CAN DO SO MORE EASILY. THANK YOU.

The PLEASE DON'T BE WAITING FOR ME book trailer is punkalicious!

PLEASE DON'T BE WAITING FOR ME is HERE!

I'm ecstatic to announce that, after a long series of hurdles that ended with a surprisingly generous proposal from the Sex Pistols' publishers, my first novel, Please Don't Be Waiting For Me is finally available to the public. In fact, you can at this very moment buy it for the very reasonable price of $7.95 by using either the link at the top of the sidebar, or by following this one here:

https://www.createspace.com/6971097

I'm asking you to purchase the book from Create Space because, while it is available from Amazon and other online retailers, I receive a larger percent of the proceeds if you buy it from there--and you get your book just as quickly. Brother got bills, people!

Of course, you're not obligated to buy it at any particular place, or at all, for that matter. Nor are you obligated to write a review of it on Goodreads and/or Amazon once you've read it. Although, you know, it would be nice.

For those of you who live in the Bay Area--or who are inclined to travel great distances for obscure reasons--a launch party for Please Don't Be Waiting For Me will be held at Oakland's A Great Good Place For Books on Wednesday, July 19th. I'll fill you in on details as they develop.

In the meantime, enjoy the book!

Please don't be missing my new book

From almost the instant that Funky Bollywood was published, people have been asking me what my next book project would be. Would it be a survey of Indian action movies from the 80s? Or perhaps an overview of an entirely different genre of Indian films? I very soon started to feel like I was being pushed into a somewhat confining, South Asian cinema-shaped box. Seeing as I fancy myself to be something of a wild card, it was not long before I was greeting these queries by testily hissing "you don't know me, maaan!" at my interlocutors. Clearly, some kind of break was in order, some means of confounding my readers' perhaps justifiably narrow expectations of me--and what better way to do so than write a novel?

Okay, that's not the actual reason that I wrote my first novel, Please Don't Be Waiting For Me. The truth is that it's an idea that's been kicking around in my head for quite some time. I just felt obligated to justify myself to those of you who might be disappointed that I didn't follow up Funky Bollywood  with another film-related book. I will definitely be writing another film book, and sooner than you think, but I just had to get this one out of my head first. And if it's any consolation, there's much in this book that will appeal to fans of fringe pop culture like yourselves.

Please Don't Be Waiting For Me is set in San Francisco in 1980 and follows a close knit band of teenage punks as they negotiate the ins and outs of that city's legendary early punk scene. In the aftermath of a particularly riotous Avengers gig, one of their friends is found brutally murdered and another is accused of the crime. Faced with an openly hostile police force and a local media intent on demonizing them, they set out to prove their friends' innocence on their own. Along the way, they become enmeshed in a nasty criminal conspiracy involving Hells Angels, fascist skinheads, and a missing satchel full of methamphetamines.

Now, in case you were wondering, I was a teenager during the early days of the SF punk rock scene, and I indeed have used my own experiences and observations as background for my story. This does not, however, mean that the book is autobiographical. It isn't. But if you insist on thinking that one of the characters in it is me, I only ask that that character be the one you consider to be the coolest.

I'll openly admit that Please Don't Be Waiting For Me was a bit of a tough sell. I intended it to be a kind of Young Adult/Crossover title, but the amount of swears, violence, drug use and implied underage sex it contains makes it unlikely to receive the endorsement of many school librarians. As a result, I've opted to self publish--which, along with guarantying that I won't have to compromise on  content, also means that I'll be able to offer it to you at a reasonable price. The book is currently ready to roll but for some lyric copyright issues that need to be cleared up, and I think you can expect to see it available within the next four to six weeks.

In the meantime, I've set up an official website for the book at pdbwfm.com There you'll find a lot of background and historical information, a sample chapter you can read, a YouTube playlist of classic punk tracks, and even a fun contest you can enter yourself into. Do check it out, won't you?

Turkey tome

As wide of an audience as the internet offers us, we bloggers know that we're nothing until someone wants to pay money to read our drivel in a bloody bewk.* Thus I am proud to announce that the Turkey edition of the Directory of World Cinema, to which I contributed, is now available from Intellect, Ltd.

Somehow I lucked out by being asked to review 3 Dev Adam and The Deathless Devil, which, to me, are the first and last words in Turkish cinema. Given this, I'm surprised that they were able to find so much other good stuff to put in the book, including a surprisingly comprehensive Science Fiction and Fantasy section. Check it out, won't you?

*That's a Hard Day's Night joke, which means that, if you got it, you're probably old.

Fletcher Hanks pours the hate-o-rade

As soon as I finished I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!, the 2007 overview of the work of golden age comic book madman Fletcher Hanks, I found myself pining for more of Hanks' patented stew of rage, paranoia and technical incompetence. Luckily for me, the gods, in the form of Destroy editor Paul Karasik, heard my prayers and responded with a new volume of Hanks' fevered four-color fulminations entitled You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!

Apparently -- and thanks to Karasik's efforts -- being a Fletcher Hanks completist is one of the more low maintenance manifestations of obsessive compulsion you could adopt, because this latest 224 page volume contains pretty much everything by Hanks that wasn't already included in Destroy. As such, we get to see a wider range of the artists' stable of recurring characters -- Destroy being pretty heavy on the adventures of Stardust, The Space Wizard and Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle -- including the likes of half-hearted Flash Gordon knock-off Space Smith; Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle (who basically just seems to be a male version of Fantomah, though without the whole transforming-into-a-flaming-skull business), and Big Red McClane, who's the type of thuggish, strong-arm enforcer for corporate lumber interests that any boy could look up to.

This broader view of Hanks' work also really underscores just how much his inspiration was fueled by fantasies of vengeance. His attempts at conventional, plot-driven narrative tend to be cursory and prosaic, and it is only when depicting his villains' nihilistic schemes and the karmic retribution they provoke that his imagination really takes flight, pouring on the perversely elaborate detail with obvious relish. What also struck me particularly with this volume was the staggering isolation of Hanks' heroes. With the exception of a few serially-imperiled damsels, there are seldom sidekicks or supporting players here, and while there is the occasional villain with an actual name and recognizable countenance, these never hold their place on the stage for very long, with the hero's nemesis just as likely being depicted as a faceless horde, often seen only in long view as insect-like huddles drawn with no attention to individual detail. It is almost as if the presentation of any kind of one-on-one interpersonal relationship was beyond Hanks' capabilities.

All of the above -- as well as much of what has been written elsewhere about Hanks' comics -- might lead you to believe that a collection like You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! would not be your type of thing -- that it would, in fact, be kind of a downer. And it's hard to argue with that. This is indeed a hard look into the mind of a man consumed by bitterness, rage and despair, albeit one rendered in brightly colored splash panels and emphatically worded speech balloons. I myself find it absolutely compelling. Because of its broader scope, it lacks the focus of the previous volume, but still provides a vivid portrait of a jarringly distinctive artist, one whose emergence might only have been possible during the "Wild West"-like formative years of his medium. Recommended.

Crime does not pay

My passion for the obscure and underappreciated in pop culture is seemingly boundless, extending well beyond just the world of film--and no less ardent on even those occasions when I have to begrudgingly share its objects with a large number of obviously cooler people who discovered them long before I did. Case in point: While I left comic book fandom behind me in my teens (when I sold my Spider-man collection to buy my first bass guitar, thus beginning my own journey to obscurity and underappreciation) I still found myself irresistibly and wholly predictably drawn to the work of Fletcher Hanks, a sort of comic book auteur who briefly both wrote and drew comic stories for lower rung publishers during the beginning of that medium's golden age, between 1938 and 1941. I'm obviously far from alone in that fascination, because soon after I stumbled across samples of his work over at the Stupid Comics website, I learned that Fantagraphic books had published a collection of Hanks' comics, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, way back in the glorious summer of '07. Despite this overwhelming evidence that I did not personally rediscover the work of Fletcher Hanks--which, if I had, would have had to have been simply floating entirely of its own accord out there in that complicated system of tubes called "The Internet"--that won't stop me from crowing on about it like a clueless old man.

It's tempting to compare Hanks to Ed Wood, but while Wood hitched his technical incompetence to a palpable and infectious enthusiasm, Hanks combined his equally epic artistic shortcomings with an equally palpable paranoia and rage. Fletcher Hanks' comics, it seems, were his revenge against the world. The typical Hanks comic features an omnipotent and all-seeing super hero (such as his Stardust, The Space Wizard or the skull-faced Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle) who boasts powers that are both limitless in scope and wholly unexplained. Since any villain that appears in these comics is completely powerless against these god-like beings, the usual cliff-hanging exploits are dispensed with, freeing up panel space for what Hanks really excels at: Feverishly imagined and tortuously involved scenarios of grimly enacted karmic retribution. The intermittently microcephalic Stardust, for instance--whose nemesis is usually some kind of enormous, globe-spanning consortium of nihilistic racketeers or "gigantic fifth column"--will often use his amazing space powers to simultaneously project hundreds of his foes through space, perhaps to be frozen for a waking eternity within arms' reach of a fortune in gold, or combined into one man to be more easily fed to a golden octopus. Or, he might just take the gang's leader, make his body absorb into his head, then hurl that head toward a gigantic headless space creature who will then take that head and absorb it into his own headless body. Which is what happened this one time.

Fantagraphics' I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! is a lovingly packaged tribute that presents 15 of Hanks' complete stories in all their astonishing ineptitude and alcoholic fury. Editor Paul Karasik also provides a comic afterword that includes what scant biographical details about Hanks he was able to unearth--and it's almost as starkly depressing as Hanks' comics themselves. Yeah!

Fletcher Hanks I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! official website.