Andrew Shaffer's Blog, page 12
October 21, 2013
October 15, 2013
"What About the Guy Who Wrote Confederacy of Dunces?"
These lines from the movie Sideways are just spot-on....
: Well, the world doesn't give a shit what I have to say. I'm not necessary. Had. I'm so insignificant I can't even kill myself.
: Miles, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
: Come on, man. You know. Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can't kill yourself before you're even published.
: What about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He killed himself before he was published. Look how famous he is.
: Thanks.
: Just don't give up, alright? You're gonna make it.
: Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. I'am thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.
: See? Right there. Just what you just said. That is beautiful. 'A smudge of excrement... surging out to sea.'
: Yeah.
: I could never write that.
: Neither could I, actually. I think it's Bukowski.
via IMDB quotes
October 14, 2013
Edward Snowden Erotic Fanfic: Chapter 3
In Andrew Shaffer's new satire, technical contractor Eddie Snowjob leaks top-secret details of the FDA’s massive surveillance infrastructure — codename: GISM — and becomes the target of a global manhunt. He also totally gets laid.
Snowjob shook his head at the sad little red package of "cookies" in disgust. He knew that the attendants would be serving a full meal later, since the flight was something like sixteen hours long. He'd planned months in advance for his escape, and everything was going according to planned (except for the part about his girlfriend leaving him). No matter. He was on the plane, en route to meet the journalist he'd pre-arranged a meeting with in Hong Kong...but one question dominated his mind at the moment.
“What happened to the bags of peanuts?”
The attendant shrugged her shoulders as she poured a Coke out for the man in the seat next to him. Snowjob got a good look down her shirt at her pillowy bosom. Pretty decent rack for a woman his mother's age. Something for the spank bank later.
“Some people are allergic to peanuts," she said.
“Then tell them not to eat peanuts,” Snowjob said.
“Just opening a bag of peanuts releases a cloud of microscopic peanut dust,” she said. “Imagine a hundred bags being opened at once. It’s enough to turn the cabin into a gas chamber for some people.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered.
“Believe what you want,” she said.
Read more of chapter 3 here....
or catch up on previous chapters:
October 2, 2013
Obligatory Obamacare Blog Post
I recently shared my riveting story about staying up past midnight to sign up for Obamacare w/ the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Shaffer signed up for a plan for himself for $350 a month, $100 less than he was paying as someone who is self-employed. He said he skipped the option to check whether he was eligible for discounts or tax credits because he assumed his income would make him ineligible for subsidized care.
Of course, I now realize this sounds like a total humblebrag. "Oh, Shaffer thinks he makes too much money as a writer for subsidies! Isn't he special!"
Continue reading on the Lexington Herald-Leader's site....
October 1, 2013
Five Stars for Five Dollars: Buying Reviews, Reviewed
"For $5, I'll leave a five-star review of your Kindle ebook, purchase it (up to .99), 'like' it, and vote down negative reviews!" -- Fiverr.com listing
Sounds great, I thought. What could it hurt? Everybody's doing it, apparently. That's how at least one self-published author helped juice his sales and defraud readers. Recently, an anonymous blogger purporting to be a Fiverr whistleblower has promised to out dozens more bestselling authors for the same practice (although there's zero evidence at this point that any of the accused are guilty of any wrongdoing).
After signing up for the help-for-hire site Fiverr, I clicked the "Order Now" button and was redirected to Paypal. I entered my Paypal information, and was then re-directed back to Fiverr to enter the URL of my ebook on Amazon. For this test, I used a dummy ebook I self-published under a pseudonym.
Eight hours later, I checked my ebook's page on Amazon and there it was: A glowing, five-star review! Four paragraphs in length, even. And it appeared the reviewer had actually read my ebook.
Continue reading my harrowing tale on the Huffington Post....
September 25, 2013
In Honor of Malcolm Gladwell's New Book...
...here's an old story I wrote about burying him in a basement. It's a mash-up of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and was originally published as a standalone ebook (which you can download for free here, if you like to read things on e-readers).
THE CASK OF DIJON
by Edgar Allen Pole
The thousand injuries of Malcolm Gladwell I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. I had reached my tipping point. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity.
He had a weak point—this Malcolm Gladwell—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship of mustard. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in mustards myself, and bought largely whenever I could.
It was about dusk one evening during the supreme madness of the spring conference season that I encountered my friend at the Gilded Lilly. This was no serendipitous meeting, mind you—he was in Chicago speaking at a statistics conference (one that I had headlined many a time), and I had heard rumors that Malcolm Gladwell had been seen getting tanked nightly at the Gilded Lilly, the posh bar on the 27th floor of the hotel where the three-day conference was taking place. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore a tight-fitting Italian dress suit, and his head was surmounted by his trademark unkempt curls. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have stopped shaking his hand.
I said to him, “My dear Malcolm Gladwell, how remarkably well you are looking today!” We discussed some light matters of the day for a spell. It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed did I give Malcolm Gladwell cause to doubt my goodwill. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. I said presently, “I have received a cask of what passes for Dijon mustard, and I have my doubts.”
“How?” said he. “Dijon? A cask? Impossible! And in the middle of conference season!”
“I have my doubts,” I replied, “and I was silly enough to pay the full Dijon price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain.”
“Dijon!”
“I have my doubts.”
“Dijon!”
“And I must satisfy them.”
“Dijon!”
“As you are engaged, I am on my way to Steven D. Levitt. If anyone has a critical palette, it is he. He will tell me—”
“Steven D. Levitt cannot tell Dijon from deli.”
“And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own.”
“Come, let us go.”
“Whither?”
“To your vaults.”
“My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Steven D. Levitt—”
“I have no engagement. Come.”
“My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp.”
“Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Dijon! You have been imposed upon. And as for Steven D. Levitt, he cannot distinguish deli style from Dijon.”
Thus speaking, Malcolm Gladwell possessed himself of my arm and we took a cab to my house on the upper North Side. I removed two flashlights from a kitchen cabinet, and, giving one to Malcolm Gladwell, led him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Amontillados.
The gait of my friend was unsteady.
“The cask of Dijon,” said he.
“It is farther on,” said I.
He broke into a coughing fit.
“How long have you had that cough?” I said.
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
“It is nothing,” he said, at last.
“Come,” I said, “we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved, best-selling; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Steven D. Levitt—”
“Enough,” he said. “The cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough.”
“True—true,” I replied; “and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily—but you should use all proper caution. A swill of this NyQuil shall defend us from the damps.” Here I unscrewed the neck off a bottle of cough syrup that I carried at all times in my jacket.
“Drink,” I said, presenting him the bottle.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly. “I drink,” he said, “to the buried that repose around us.”
“And I to your long life.”
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
“These vaults,” he said, “are extensive.”
“The Amontillados,” I replied, “were a great and numerous family.”
“Your family clearly loved to procreate,” he said. “Say—this isn’t really some sort of sex thing, is it? Dragging me down into the catacombs...”
“Ha!” I laughed. “Of course this isn’t a sex thing. Let us continue.”
“Very well,” he said. The green liquid sparkled in his eyes. My own fancy grew warm with the NyQuil. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks of mustard stocked to the ceilings, into the innermost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Malcolm Gladwell by an arm above the elbow.
“We are below sea level,” I said. “The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough—”
“It is nothing,” he said. “Let us go on. But first, another swig of the NyQuil.”
I handed him the bottle, which he downed in a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and handed me the nearly empty bottle, which I stashed back in my jacket.
In a measured tone, he said, “Psychologist Claude Steele and his colleague Robert Josephs believe that alcohol’s principal effect is to narrow our emotional and mental field of vision. Alcohol causes, they write, ‘a state of shortsightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion’–”
“Get to the point,” I said, in no mood to hear another one of his tangent-filled diatribes. Especially one that he appeared to be reciting verbatim from one of his New Yorker essays.
“The point is,” he exclaimed, “I am exceedingly drunk. Let us proceed to the Dijon.”
“Be it so,” I said, offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Dijon. We passed through a range of low arches and, descending again, arrived at a deep crypt.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared a small nook, less spacious than the crypt. This smaller crypt’s walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no special use itself, but merely formed the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
It was in vain that Malcolm Gladwell, raising his flashlight, endeavored to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
“Proceed,” I said. “Herein is the Dijon. As for Steven D. Levitt—”
“He is an ignoramus,” interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had roughly shoved him to the granite floor. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too bewildered by the turn of events to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
“Pass your hand,” I said, “over the wall. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power.”
“The Dijon!” shouted my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
“True,” I replied. “The Dijon was but a ruse.”
“So this is a sex thing. I knew it,” he said.
“Do not be a fool,” I countered. “If my intentions were at all sexual, I can assure you I would not drag you this far below ground to act on them.” As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Malcolm Gladwell had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flashlight over the masonry, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my machete (which I carried with me at all times, naturally), I began to grope with it about the recess: but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I re-approached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamorer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Malcolm Gladwell.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!—he! He!—a very good joke indeed—an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the hotel bar—he! He! He!—over our mustard—he! He! He!”
“The Dijon!” I said.
“He! He! He!—he! He! He!—yes, the Dijon. But is it not getting late? If you’re planning on doing some kind of sex thing to me, then do it. I must get back to the hotel.”
“For the last fucking time,” I said, “I am not going to do any ‘sex thing’ to you, whatever that means.”
“For the love of God, then, Amontillado! Unchain me!”
“Yes,” I said, “but was it not you who said that we learn more from extreme circumstances than anything else? I cannot wait to read the lessons you learn from this one, old chap!” I found the NyQuil bottle in my jacket and tossed it into the tomb. “In case your cough comes back,” I said dryly.
I waited for him to beg for his life once more, but no reply was forthcoming. I grew impatient. I called aloud—
“Malcolm Gladwell!”
No answer. I called again—
“Malcolm Gladwell!”
No answer still. I thrust the flashlight through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up and re-piled the bones as decoration. I stepped back and shined the flashlight on the new wall to admire my handiwork. It was crude, no doubt. But, as my old friend was so fond of saying, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be perfect!
September 23, 2013
Talking Creativity and Mental Illness w/ WHYY
I was recently a guest of WHYY's Voices in the Family, talking creativity, mental illness, and Literary Rogues w/ the host, two guests, and some callers with unique perspectives. The audio is below!
September 20, 2013
Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology
Honored to be part of this upcoming New Adult anthology from Avon Impulse, alongside Julie Cross, Sophie Jordan, Carrie Ryan, Lyla Payne, Roni Loren, Hannah Moskowitz, and a dozen other YA/NA/Romance authors. The book goes on sale December 10, 2013.
What's my story about? All I'll say is it's about two college boys at an orgy. It's funny, it's sweet, it's a little naughty. If you've only read my nonfiction, you're in for a treat.
Description: Fifty First Times is a collection of fictional short stories from variety of published Young Adult, New Adult, and Adult Romance authors aimed at a New Adult audience. Each story magnifies a moment in two characters’ lives that shows the reader their decision to take physical intimacy to a new level, the events leading up to this moment and in some cases, the events that follow.
September 19, 2013
Never Respond to Reviews...Unless...
Although authors are told to never respond to reviews (advice we freely ignore, often to our own peril), if you're a comedian you can do whatever the fark you want. Here's Aziz Ansari not only responding to a negative review, but rating his own DVD five stars on Amazon.
Hi,
I'm Aziz Ansari, one of the creators and stars of Human Giant and I can't recommend this show enough. Unfortunately, the Amazon editorial review is the only bad review of this DVD I've really seen. Don't listen to Bret Fetzer. He went to elementary school with me and I remember him being pretty racist.
(found on Amazon.com)
