Cameron Pierce's Blog, page 6

Crab Town

Carlton Mellick III has a new book out. It's called Crab Town. A new book by Mellick is always a thing to celebrate, and this one is a bank heist story. Count me in.

Here's the synopsis:

Five desperate criminals are robbing one of the last remaining banks in Freedom City, a town devastated by the previous nuclear war. But these are no ordinary criminals. They are members of the House of Cards, an organization designed to help the less fortunate citizens of the city. In a place where the poor are separated from the rich, jobs are as scarce as clean water, and even the doctors are as corrupt as the politicians, the House of Cards are a final beacon of hope in an otherwise hopeless world.

Featuring: radiation fetishists, balloon people, mutant crabs, sail-bike road warriors, and a love affair between a woman and an H-Bomb. This is one mean asshole of a city.

Welcome to Crab Town.

Book Roundup

This week, I read Big Baby by Charles Burns, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec: Pterror Over Paris/The Eiffel Tower Demon by Jacques Tardi, about 1/3 of A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell, The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman, The Frog and Toad Treasury, and also revisited some Donald Barthelme.

Big Baby is about a weirdo kid who likes comic books and monster movies. He lives in the haunted world of his imagination, as many kids do, where ghosts, mole people, and eyeball-shaped sex friends from outer space are real, but whether or not they exist beyond his imagination is sort of beside the point. Through these monsters, he's learning about (and being exposed to) many real life horrors: murder, domestic abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. I read Big Baby in one sitting and enjoyed it. Charles Burns is really good.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is also a story where the actuality of the monsters (in this case, a pterodactyl and a demon) is sort of a mystery. I recommend this to people who like French New Wave cinema and dinosaurs and who feel like reading a mystery. I look forward to reading more work by Jacques Tardi, especially The Arctic Marauder.

What I read of A Common Pornography is really amazing. I'll probably go back to Powell's tonight and buy it so I can finish reading it. Anyone who has ever felt that their family was fucked up should read this. And if you don't think you like memoirs, pick it up anyway. You'll learn that you do like memoirs. I feel sort of bad and behind on books for not having read this sooner. I went to the release reading last year where Kevin Sampsell proposed to his girlfriend and I really liked the excerpts he read then, but I didn't have any money to buy the book.

The Frog and Toad Treasury is probably the best book ever.

It's only the end of January, but if I end up making a Top 10 Books list at the end of the year, I'll be surprised if The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman doesn't find a place on it (same goes for By the Time We Leave Here, We'll Be Friends by J. David Osborne). The Tiny Wife was published by Madras Press. Madras has quickly become one of my favorite publishers. In addition to publishing amazing tiny books (the books really are tiny) like Sweet Tomb by Trinie Dalton, they go one step further by donating all proceeds of each book to a charity of the author's choice. And after The Tiny Wife, I'll be reading everything they put out.

Here's the synopsis of The Tiny Wife from the Madras Press website: "A thief charges into a bank with a loaded gun, but he does not ask for money; what he asks for, instead, is the object of greatest significance currently in the possession of each patron. The thief then leaves, and the patrons all survive, but strange things soon begin to happen to them: One survivor's tattoo jumps off her ankle and chases her around; another wakes up to find that she's made of candy; and Stacey Hinterland discovers that she's shrinking, incrementally, a little every day, and nothing that her husband or son do can reverse the process. The Tiny Wife is a fable about losing yourself in circumstances and finding yourself in the the love of another."

It's a magical little story that you can read in one hour. I highly recommend it.

In other book news, Lazy Fascist Press will be releasing its first two books of the year within the next few weeks: Sinister Miniatures by Kris Saknussemm and Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill you by Bradley Sands. Here's the cover of Sinister Miniatures:

Kris Saknussemm is the author of Zanesville, Private Midnight, and Enigmatic Pilot (forthcoming in March from Random House). I'm very happy to welcome Kris to the Lazy Fascist family.

Lazy Fascist is also now participating in the Mud Luscious Stamp Stories Project. We'll be giving away stamp stories by Riley Michael Parker and Sean Kilpatrick with book orders from now until whenever they run out. The stamp stories arrived in the mail today and they look great.

Mud Luscious also just announced a new imprint, Nephew. You can read about it here.

Possibly the most awesome thing on this list, though, is Featherproof's new venture, Storigami.

Between Sinister Miniatures, the tiny books put out by Madras, the Stamp Stories Project, and Storigami, I realize the fiction things I'm most excited about are all tiny. And right now I'm preparing to send off the manuscript of what will hopefully be my next book, which happens to be tiny as well. The book is called No Children, after one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs. I'll hopefully have some good news to share about it by the end of February.

And next Monday, Kirsten Alene and I are getting married. Keeping with all things small, we chose the tiny parlor room of the church instead of the gigantic cathedral. We also live in a tiny apartment, where I'm writing this update from a tiny desk.

Time to walk the tiny dog.