Edward Lorn's Blog, page 33

I’m Thinking of Ending Things Review

Review:

Dig it:

This book is a perfect example of negative reviews selling a book. Specifically Shelbs’s and Kells’s reviews. I had to see what all the fuss was about. So, yeah, the negative reviews of this book sold me. I paid money for this book based solely on negative reviews. Some authors need to hear that. They need to let that shit sink in. Are Shelbs and Kells stupid for not getting this book? Nope. And I’ll explain why.

Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things is 224 pages in hardcover. The audiobook (which I suggest you listen to instead of reading the actual book) is five hours and twenty-two minutes long (5:22). If you read it at x2 speed, you can listen to it in the time it takes to watch one of The Hobbitmovies. There’s a reason this book is as short as it is. Reid wants you to read his book twice, and not necessarily in the same order in which you first read it. He’s a tricksy hobbitses, and we shall discuss more in the Spoiler Discussion.

This book is utterly fascinating, and I believe that’s why so many people are torn over it. All too often we’re lulled into a sense of normality. We think things should happen one way and we get locked into that mindset. So much so that we cannot see the forest for the trees. The frustrating part about this book is that is seems to have been written for audio. In the audiobook, when you come to the “twist”, there’s an obvious change and everything becomes clear as day. I relistened to the book right after listening to it the first time and I read an entirely different book. Simply put, this is kinda (but not really) like The Sixth Sense. Second time around, you will see .

Do I think you’re going to read this twice? No. Do I think you’re going to reread this to see if I’m right? No. But I did, and my experience was vastly improved the second time around.

In summation: Some of you like long(er) books. If you can dedicate yourself to 500 pages, there’s no reason you can’t reread this (maybe in a different order?) right after you finish it. You’ll likely see what Reid did in the first readthrough, but there’s so many goodies in the reread. Simple stuff you would never have paid attention to, like, say, a red door knob.

Final Judgment: Two experiences in one book

Spoiler Discussion: Wherein I spoil I’m Thinking of Ending Things, by Iain Reid.

[spoiler]

Reid gives clear instructions in the very last chapter of this book. The unnamed duo who’ve been talking between the chapters are discussing the book found next to Jake’s body, and the guy tells the woman that he thinks she should read it once and then read it again, only backward. This is a pain in the ass to do in audio, but I did it. I suggest you do the same. You know, if you wanna.

Yes, Jake killed himself because he was struggling with schizophrenia, as most super-intelligent folks do. No, there never was any girlfriend. It was always him. He made up, in his mind, everything that happened after the night he met her in the bar. This book is a very sick man playing in his own head. It’s sad and disturbing and even a bit beautiful. Madness usually is.

Jake did work in a lab. He left that job to take a job as a janitor. Somewhere he could just blend in and do his own thing and, even though he was around people, he kinda wasn’t. How many of you remember your high school janitors? Did you hang out with that person or did they just kinda exist on the edge?

I understand why people didn’t like this book, but I fucking loved it. Reid made the book just short enough that you can reread it with ease right after reading it the first time. Bravo. Good on him for trying something unique with his fiction.

Lastly, in the audiobook, right at the repetitious part at the end, when he says that one line over and over again, the narrator switches from female to male. I don’t know how they pulled this off in the book, but in the audiobook it is chilling and makes the twist clear. That’s my favorite part of the book, really, but don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the entire experience.

Thanks for joining me.

[/spoiler]

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1436394/i-m-thinking-of-ending-things-review

Live YouTube Interview with Gregor Xane @ 2pm Eastern

Starting @ 2pm Eastern Standard Time today, July 17, 2016, I’ll be speaking with Gregor Xane, who will be with us live for the first time ever.

 

Please join us here: http://youtu.be/nhlw8TY_p1w

 

 

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1436085/live-youtube-interview-with-gregor-xane-2pm-eastern

A Head Full of Ghosts Review

Review:

Green vomit, violent masturbating, naughty language… Doesn’t schizophrenia Satan have any new tricks up his sleeves? Because, you know, a woman masturbating and cursing is definitely a sign of evil. How unladylike unholy!

First, I must say, I might just raise my rating of Josh Malerman’s Bird Box after reading this book. At least Malerman tried something new. On to the review…

There’s this fad going around where reboots change the endings of the source material to be the exact opposite of the source material. If the source material (in this case The Exorcist) is supernatural, the reboot will make it non-supernatural, or perhaps it will imply supernatural along with the plausible real-life scenario.

And because I’m bound to get people who say I’m hating on someone who’s been successful, let me prove my points. I give you…

Exhibit A:

Tremblay took the easy way out and rebooted The Exorcist for a modern, blogger-friendly, internet age. He does nothing new. To cover this up, he plays the meta card. “Oh, look! I reference all the shit I steal from, so it’s okay that I stole from them. Right? I’m so cute and self aware!”

Exhibit B.

In my opinion, the blogs ruined the book. Every time I started to enjoy the subtle horror, or even the overt scares, he jumped into this hipster-speak blogging bullshit that murdered all forward momentum. Then, in the end, he uses the blogger bullshit to effectively reveal that he believes all his readers are morons without any reader comprehension skills. Peep this:

You’re a grown adult with life experiences and an above average IQ (a.k.a. your average adult reader) and someone gives you a rudimentary puzzle to solve. The puzzle pieces are perfectly square and number eight. The picture is of, say, the Pokemon logo, the title image of POKEMON in that garish yellow-and-blue font. As long as you can read, you’re good. This puzzle will take an adult of average intelligence (anyone literate) about ten seconds to complete. If that. Then you notice the pieces are numbered. Top row: one through four. Bottom row: five through eight. Now you don’t even have to be able to read. All you have to do is be able to count.

THAT is THIS book. It insults your intelligence. Tremblay explains everything that happens in the final exorcism scene and then switches to these blog posts to SPELL EVERYTHING OUT FOR YOU BECAUSE HE THINKS YOU’RE:

A) Dumb

B) Illiterate

C) At the VERY least, not as clever as him.

D) All of the above.

If you picked D, you win and lose at the same time because you’re likely right.

He tries to make up for this assumption that you’re somewhere between dinosaur and caveman on the IQ scale by leaving one last hint in the final chapter. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, talk amongst yourselves.

But the implied ending makes zero sense. None. It is the literary equivalent to the ending of Paranormal Activity, when the possessed chick jumps at the camera. Or perhaps the hand reaching from the grave at the end of Carrie. Makes no sense, but it sure is spoooooooooky!

In summation: The tragedy is, had Tremblay left out the blogger sections, I would have given this three stars or above. It does have some creepy shit going on. Nothing you haven’t seen before, but it might raise the hair on your bush. Problem is, it’s not enough; nowhere near enough to excuse his attitude toward his readers, the implication that he’s writing for morons. The best piece of writing advice I ever got was this: “Always assume your readers are smarter than you, because they probably are.”

Final Judgment: Robocop (2014)

Spoiler discussion: Wherein I spoil Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts:

 

[spoiler]

I know some of you are thinking, Marjorie wasn’t schizo. I know she wasn’t. Her father was the crazy one and blah, blah, blah. My opening comments are a riff on the reality of possession. I don’t believe in gods or devils. But I do believe in mental illness.

There will be some that say I missed the whole point of the unreliable narrator here. I fully accept that you think Merry could have made up this entire thing because she was the one that was possessed instead of Marjorie. But she couldn’t have, because of the reality show. Unless we assume that the reality show wasn’t real, and the entire book is a lie. If that’s the case, it still doesn’t work, because it takes away the horror of the novel because nothing actually happened. It was all the product of some possessed writer with nothing better to do that to write a book. No matter how you look at it, one-star. But I’m not giving up on Tremblay and here’s why:

I did like the poisoning scene at the end. Really dug how Tremblay described everyone dying. Dude is capable of great description. He simply needs to trust his readers more.

Thanks for joining me.

[/spoiler]

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1435801/a-head-full-of-ghosts-review

Question for Librarians (You fine folks who work in brick-and-mortar libraries around the country)

How do I get my ebooks in your libraries? I can only donate so many real books due to costs, but I give you as many ebooks as you want. 

 

Comment below, email me at edwardlorn@gmail.com, or message me on social media. I’m some of everywhere.[image error]

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1435169/question-for-librarians-you-fine-folks-who-work-in-brick-and-mortar-libraries-around-the-country

Live YouTube Interview with Gregor Xane on Sunday, July 17, 2016

Thanks to brand new Pokémon GO technology, I’ve captured the elusive Gregor Xane. For the first time ever, the weirdness among us will be breaking his silence and allowing himself to be interviewed live on air. 

 

Mark your calendars. Sunday, July 17, 2016, on YouTube, we find out what’s up with his new book, TABOOGASM, and other important questions. 

 

If you have anything you want me to ask of him, drop your question in the comments section.

 

 

 

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1435043/live-youtube-interview-with-gregor-xane-on-sunday-july-17-2016

Ruminating On: The Rat Race

Being an author is a rat race. We do the same thing over and over again, and while it can be fun and the tracks may change, the process can become monotonous. But what I’ve grown exceedingly tired of is the doublespeak (sorry, I’m currently reading 1984) that exists in the review-procurement sector. I’ve thought long and hard about this. I’ve been sitting on this post for almost a month. In the end, I feel it needs to be said, if only for my own work’s protection. More on that at the end of this post.

 

Publishers won’t work with you unless you job yourself out for reviews. Simple enough and understandable, right? They want your book to sell so they can make back the money they crammed into their prize turkey and earn a profit. I do not hold that against them. They don’t want their turkey to sit around and go rotten. No one likes rancid stuffing. But what if no one’s in the mood for turkey? Therein lies the dilemma. You still gotta sell books or both you and the publisher lose. 

 

Ze prollem iz ziss: You get vague comments like “You’re not KNOWN for seeking reviews” or “You’re free to submit if you SHOW AN INTEREST in seeking reviews”. So I jump through hoops and ask people for reviews and play this game legitimately without doing shady shit, but that’s not enough. I’m still “not interested in getting reviews.” I’ve literally been told this twice in the same day by two different publishers, even though, just last week, I posted here (Booklikes) and several other places that review copies are available. I got one response. One. I have almost fifteen hundred followers here, and 800 hundred plus followers on WordPress, and 600 followers on Twitter and 100+ on my Facebook Author Page, and I haven’t a clue how many friends and followers on Goodreads, and I got one review request for the books I offered. In truth, I got three other review requests, but they were for my indie released work and not my published material. Still can’t figure out why one is more popular than the others. I like to think that this is because everyone who likes my stuff has read all my stuff. I know that’s not the case, but it helps me sleep at night. I told one publisher, I would do more, but I refuse to do unethical things to procure reviews and sales. I will ALWAYS refuse to do so. 

 

But then I’m surprised to hear that they are surprised to hear that some of their writers are doing review swaps and paying for reviews. Hell, I thought they knew because more than half of their authors are doing this. Time to slap some wrists and save some face!

 

You built this monster. Honestly, what did you expect? If you constantly demand a certain unattainable and vague level of something from your underlings, it’s some human’s nature to break the rules to make their superiors happy. You’ve created an ecosystem where authors feel like they’re a failure if they do not have ALL THE REVIEWS! As if that’s even something that’s attainable. They will always want MORE REVIEWS! You feed and breed the idea that someone isn’t doing everything they can if they aren’t out there every day doing SOMETHING! But don’t spam people, because that’s not what you said!

 

Look at me. I do my best. Everyone who knows me knows that I do everything BUT the shady shit. I deny at least two review-swap requests a week. I work mainly with word of mouth through my social media presences. If readers like my stuff, they will talk about it, they will share it. If they don’t, then I have to change what I’m writing, because it’s not good enough to talk about. You used to understand this. That’s one of the biggest reasons why I trusted you with my work. But when you tell me that going through the motions like I’ve BEEN DOING, like I have the proof that I’ve BEEN DOING, I gotta ask, “What else you want from me?” What are you asking of me by telling me I don’t do enough when I’m over here emailing bloggers and posting everywhere I have a presence? You’re telling me I should DO MORE. And then when I ask what more I can do, you point to the people who do shady shit. BUT DON’T DO SHADY SHIT BECUASE I SAID SO!

 

Sigh…

 

I write under different names and have used a dozen publishers over the course of the past three years, and each and every one of them are like this. Do EVERYTHING you possibly can to get reviews, but don’t let me find out you’re doing ANYTHING shady. The rules are simple:

 

#1. If you don’t get reviews, we won’t work with you in the future.

 

#2. If you only do what you can do with the audience you have, we won’t work with you in the future.

 

#3. If you do shady shit, we won’t work with you in the future.

 

Doublespeak. The lot of it. Be as vague as possible so no one can hold YOU accountable. And then when one of your authors does shady shit, throw them under the bus and say, “I didn’t ask them to do this!” Not really, but you kinda did. You’re still innocent here, but you kinda aren’t.

 

This post is not aimed at any one publisher. Three of you have said much the same thing to me over the course of the past month. I literally got back-to-back emails from one publisher and then another, both saying I wasn’t doing enough to procure reviews.

 

And then there’s the book community saying, “It seems like every other post from Edward Lorn is about needing reviews. What a bastard. I thought he was cool! What happened to him!”

 

Yeah. What the fuck happened to me?

 

Publishers don’t want to work with me if I don’t do more to get reviews? Fine. The feeling’s mutual. You may now follow through with your threats.

 

Many thanks to everyone who’s ever taken a chance on my work. But I’m not bending my ethics to suit anyone’s needs. Not even my own.

 

*hugs and high fives*

 

E.

 

(Author’s note: I’m bound to be inundated with emails from people trying to explain themselves and offer excuses and blah, blah, blah. But I do not want to hear from you. I made this public and unprofessional for the following reason. Just in case my books disappear, my readers will know why and where to point their fingers. Those few of you who know the other names I write under, keep an eye on those, too.)

 

 

 

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1434698/ruminating-on-the-rat-race

The Wolf Road Review

Review:

Novel is pert-near perfect. One slight complaint I got is that some parts is a mite hard to read. Made my head spun, they done did. Cruise willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I might give ‘er another read one day. See what alls I might of misunderstood cuz it’s writ all broke-like.

Writing that first paragraph hurt my heart and soul. I cannot fathom writing an entire novel like Beth Lewis wrote The Wolf Road. I once wrote a story called “Smitten” in this style, and to this day, I want to go back and rewrite it. In both my story and Lewis’s novel, the first-person hick-speak is warranted, but Tom Cruise wept, it’s hard to read at times. I honestly would’ve given this five stars if I hadn’t needed to reread entire paragraphs to figure out what the silly-fuck Elka was saying.

Halfway through this novel it changes from The Road meets True Gritto The Revenant meets Calamity Jane. I liked the first mash up better. Now, now, brown cow, I dig the fuck outta Doris Day and her goofy little western, but I wasn’t expecting the shift. It was a wee bit jarring. For 40% of the book I was left waiting for the story to switch back to the awesomesauce that was the first 50%. Lewis finally brought everything home in terrific fashion, but that doesn’t change the fact that she had me worried for almost half the run time. I actually look forward to rereading the novel just because I know what’s coming now and I can sit back and enjoy the book for what it is instead of what I expected it to be.

The ending is both emotionally powerful and fantastically written. I was hovering around three stars until the final pages. The novel paid off and left me wanting flip back to page one and start all over again the minute I flipped the final page. Can’t say that about many books.

In summation: While the narrative style can be difficult to read at times and forced me to slow down or to reread certain sections, I loved the characters and the chances the author took. Elka was far from perfect, and the Country Mouse/City Mouse interactions in the middle were fun, if a little unexpected and jarring. But that’s kinda my fault. I expected one tone throughout, and I got about three different tones. Not necessarily a bad thing. Just unexpected.

Final Judgment: Finger lickin’ good.

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1434313/the-wolf-road-review

Update to Yesterday’s #blacklivesmatters Post

Facebook never fails to bring out the best in people (the sarcasm drips…), so I don’t know why I am so shocked that Mr. Kevin Latham decided to drop by my post and challenge the veracity of the claims I made in yesterday’s article. He obviously didn’t read the piece, because every time I mention old Walmart parking lot in my post, I call it exactly that: “old Walmart parking lot.” I even say in the post that it was 1997 and not current events.

 

My point is, this is the kind of disbelief I’m talking about. It’s a kneejerk reaction in most white people. “This can’t be true!” And then the burden of proof falls on the victims. 

 

Oh, and him saying he’s sorry he liked my post at the end is a load of crap. I never got a notification that he liked it, nor did it say he liked it before I started responding.  

 

But I’ll leave it to everyone else to decide. Did he have a right to get angry? Am I really a prick for calling him out? 

 

 

I have since been blocked by Mr. Kevin Latham, that’s why his name is in blue in the first picture and in black in the second picture. I think him blocking me speaks volumes. 

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1433151/update-to-yesterday-s-blacklivesmatters-post

Ruminating On: Scared White People and #blacklivesmatter

EDIT: I had a huge typo in the last paragraph. The line should read “Silence is a reaction, and it’s NOT the right one.” Sorry about that. Please don’t remain silent. Just a typo. Thanks.

There are people, white and black and otherwise, who will read this blog post and automatically dismiss it. Some might even say it’s not my place. I cannot do anything about them. All I can do is tell my story, and maybe someone will understand. Nowhere in here do I mean to shirk my privilege or put myself outside the broad stroke of “white people”. When I say “white people”, I am including myself in that statement. I don’t dig labels. Never have. But the rest of the world does. So, yes, I am White People. But I have a little more, just a tad more, experience dealing with systemic racism, and that’s what I want to talk about today. Because the biggest problems with white people are fear and disbelief. “There is no problem,” they say. “It’s blown out of proportion by the media, by race-baiters.” Nope. You’re wrong.  I’ve seen systemic racism firsthand. And, while there is a problem with today’s media, scared white men shooting black men is a problem that needs to be addressed.

 

I moved to Troy, Alabama, in 1996. I started working for the Burger King on Highway 231. That’s where I met the man whom I would, almost twenty years later, name my son after. My buddy’s name is Christopher McCord. He’s a black man. That didn’t matter to me then. It doesn’t matter to me now. But, in this story, his race does matter.

 

Though we came from much different backgrounds—he from Birmingham, Alabama, and I from southern California—we shared a love for music. All kinds of music, man. Metal, classic rock, R&B, hip hop, even a country song or two. We’d roll through Troy in his Dodge Daytona, a car by the name of Rudy, blasting everything from Bone Thugs & Harmony to Matchbox 20. And I mean blasting. Chris had a killer sound system. Not one of those bullshit rattleboxes. He dressed Rudy to the nines. Only the best. We spent a lot of time inside that car and on my back porch. Chris was there for me during some rough times, and he remains the only friend I have who remembers the waste of life that was my father. Chris soon became my brother in every sense of the term other than blood. I would do anything for the guy.

 

One night in 1997—this was late, probably almost midnight, if not after—Chris pulled into the old Walmart parking lot on 231. He killed Rudy’s Engine and we sat listening to a Bone Thugs album. Chris was laughing at me trying to skip over singing the N-word and still keep up with the rapid-fire lyrics. We were having a good time. We were not hurting anyone. There were no posted signs. Nothing to tell us the parking lot was off limits, because it wasn’t. There were two semi trucks parked off on the other side of the lot with their running lights going. Truckers trying to catch some sleep.

 

I’m not sure how long we were there, but soon enough the cop cars showed up. I know you know it’s coming, so we’ll jump right into it. Three cop cars, four cops, all for a Dodge Daytona sitting in the middle of an open, all-but-empty parking lot. We were, of course, either having sex or doing drugs. I’m sure these officers thought that anyway. Hell, maybe we were having sex AND doing drugs! I jest, but my point is, I know why they stopped. It’s how they reacted to Chris and then me that changed the way I saw things.

 

Chris got out, revealed himself to be black, and the cops lost their shit.

 

“Put your hands up! Don’t move!”

 

First, which is it? Which one was he supposed to follow? “Put your hands up!” or “Don’t move!”? Given those commands, which one would you do?

 

Next thing I heard was one of the cops tell Chris, “Lemme see your ID.”

 

The cops, all four white, didn’t know the race of the other person in the car. Namely, me. The cruisers were parked behind us and Rudy’s back window was tinted. And, as I’ve said, it was dark. They could obviously see me moving around inside, but there was no way they could’ve seen I was white. Thinking we were in some serious trouble, I got out of the car to try and help explain why we were here and what we were doing.

 

I popped the door open and I might as well have drawn a gun. Shouts and barks for me to stay in the car or stay where I was exploded all around me. But I was already pulling myself out. Besides, these were cops. They weren’t going to shoot me for no reason. That doesn’t happen. Right?

 

Well, they didn’t shoot. But I’ll never forget the change in those officers’ demeanors when they saw who, or more importantly what, I was.

 

Three of the four officers visibly deflated when they saw me. They couldn’t see my hands, only my face over the top of the car. They relaxed completely. Even took on jovial joking tones. The questions were then directed at me, the passenger.

 

“Why’re you guys out here?”

 

I told them and they relaxed even more.

 

Not one of them asked me for my ID. I’m four years younger than Chris. I was 17 at the time this happened. But not one of them asked me for my ID. But I’ve always looked young. At my best, I could’ve passed for fifteen. Now, you can say that they didn’t ask for my ID because I wasn’t behind the wheel, but that doesn’t change what I saw.

 

I saw three men who were scared to death of Chris and were not the least intimidated by me. I saw three men on the verge of violence solely because of the personal appearance and not the actions of the person they were faced with. Chris didn’t make any sudden moves. He didn’t pose any threat. He sure didn’t argue with them. But they were still terrified of him. Of him. Not me.

 

Before that night, you might have made me believe that the recent rise in black men being shot and killed by police was something trumped up by media outlets. But the truth is, my fellow white people, is that the media didn’t used to focus on this. It’s always happened: scared white men, who’re scared for no other reason than they’ve been taught that black men are vicious animals, putting down what they perceive to be vicious animals. And when it did hit the news, white people would say, “They must’ve done something to deserve it.” Even now, just a few days ago, a black man with a conceal and carry permit was shot to death after following instructions. Those instructions being, “Show me your permit.” Philando Castile, a man who was just following orders, was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her daughter while reaching for the permit the officer asked for. Why? Because of a scared white man.

 

I firmly believe that the only reason that Chris went home unscathed that night was because I was there. Hell, two days later, when I went back to work, all of Chris’s friends came up to me and thanked me for being there. All I did was be white at the right time, and here I was, a hero. That’s crazy. If I hadn’t been there, I would not have believed it. Had you seen the way those officers’ faces changed when they saw that Chris the Scary Black Man had Edward the Safe White Person with them, you might understand instead of fearing and disbelieving. But seeing is believing. You just have to open your eyes.

 

All I can ask is that you do not dismiss this. White people do not talk about our roles in systemic racism enough. The way we act and react when faced with these tragedies speaks volumes. Silence is a reaction, and it’s not the right one. I don’t know how to fix this, but I’ll continue to educate myself.

 

Take care of each other,

 

E.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1432971/ruminating-on-scared-white-people-and-blacklivesmatter

Taboogasm eBook Giveaway

Reblogged from: Gregor Xane

I’m giving away 2 eBook copies of Taboogasm on Booklikes.

 

Enter to win!

 

 

Pssst! If eBooks aren’t your thing, and if you are one who still frequents a site that shall not be named, you can click HERE for a chance to win a paperback copy of the book.

 

Original post:

edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1432515/taboogasm-ebook-giveaway