Edward Lorn's Blog, page 39
February 17, 2016
Randomized Randomocity #182
The Hipster Dilemma
Hipsters love being the only ones who know about certain stuff.
“I love Johnny’s Crotch Punch. They’re so underground. But I bet you’ve never heard of them. They play afterhours at the zoo, so you have to be a zookeeper to have heard of them. Luckily, my nephew’s uncle works the sloth tanks, so I totally get to watch them play every night. Their first video is only available on BetaMax, and their first single uses lyrics from cave paintings.”
Then when everyone starts listening to Johnny’s Crotch Punch, hipsters stop, because hipster reasons.
In Hipster Paradise, everything would be unknown to all but them. Meaning nothing would exist for long. No support from larger audiences would likely kill the smaller performers who cannot afford to make it to gigs, or buy strings and drumsticks, or even afford to eat.
In summation: Hipsters don’t support starving artists. They create starving artists. Hence, The Hipster Dilemma.
#satire
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1345052/randomized-randomocity-182
February 15, 2016
Death Instinct Review
Review: 
Bentley Little loves cock. He’s obsessed with it. Stephen King writes about small towns. Dean Koontz has his uber intelligent doggies and blond chicks. Richard Laymon doled out the rape-y-ness in his work until his death on, go figure, Valentine’s Day. And Bentley Little loves writing about big ol’ swingin’ ding dongs. It’s a passion really. I’ve been reading Little since 2000 or so, and damn near every one of his books has the description of a swollen fuck stick flappin’ in the breeze. I think he finds them scary, too. What’s the name for a penis phobia?
(Google, here I come…)
Phallophobia. Hmmm… The more you know. Now to clear my browsing history.
Anyfuckeroo, here I am, at the end of Death Instinct, and I’ve reached my limit for the words ‘retard’ and ‘retarded’. If this book were a “product of its times”, had it been published when ‘retard’ was an acceptable bit of nomenclature, I wouldn’t have minded. But, when Little first uses the word, it’s a mother describing her son. “He’s retarded,” she says. Our MC, Cathy, is shocked and appalled at the woman’s use of the archaic term. How dare she! AND THEN THE MOTHERFUCKING AUTHOR USES THE WORD ELEVENTY BILLION TIMES TO DESCRIBE THE KID. How the fuck do you go from acknowledging that the word is offensive and outdated to using it as the main descriptor for a character? “The retarded boy did this” and “The retard did that” is used over and over again. Then, there’s a second mentally-challenged person added to the mix and Little has three (count them: 1… 2… goddamn, motherwhoring 3!) characters think the exact damn thing. “The man was retarded.” It’s fucking repetitive and unneeded.
Breathe…
Okay. I’m better now. The book is B-movie stupid without the B-movie charm. It takes its subject matter far too seriously for a Bentley Little novel. Far too seriously for something so dumb, too. How dumb is it? Oh, darling, lemme count the ways. Spoilers ahead.
Woman kidnaps Down’s Syndrome man from mental ward by dressing him up like staff. As if no one will recognize the guy’s not part of the roster. She goes on the run, doing “menial jobs for menial pay”, but somehow manages to mortgage a fucking house in the suburbs. The man with Down’s has a condition known as Savant Syndrome (formerly known as being an idiot savant, because, you know, Little is sensitive to politically-correct terminology when he’s not calling everyone retarded), and the guy’s talent is sex. Yes, you read that right. He’s the Rain Man of orgasms. He can fuck like nobody’s business. Good for him. The problem comes when the son they have together, the aforementioned ‘retarded kid’, ruins everything because he has Savant Syndrome too. Only his talent is murder and…
You know what? Never mind. I’ve said enough. Bentley little, I love ya. You’re normally my go-to guy for silly, over-the-top horror with a hidden moral/social message. But this? This steaming pile of offal crinkled my nose hair one too many times.
Oh, and hospital windows above ground-floor level are made of double-plated glass as a suicide precaution, rendering your ending inane and impossible.
In summation: Idiotic premise with unbelievable characters and leaps of logic that could cross the Grand Canyon utterly ruined this book for me. It’s one of Little’s earlier novels, so he gets a pass. Everyone has a skeleton in the closet that no one should see. Little’s just happens to have a boner. Recommended for Bentley Little completionists and no one else.
Final Judgment: Goes full potato. You never go full potato.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1343525/death-instinct-review
February 13, 2016
Randomized Randomocity #181 (Update on my health)
I decided to make this a Randomized Randomocity because I wasn’t planning to write a post about it. For those of you who care what’s been going on in my personal life, you can find out below.
I’ve been slightly inactive as of late, but I’m slowly getting my groove back. First, I went on vacation in November. I came back in December, but only at about 25% my normal presence. I was enjoying what time I had left with full mobility with my family, because I knew I might soon be permanently bedbound. My back had begun deteriorating at a rapid clip. Almost daily my pain was increasing and the things I could do on my own were decreasing. I was depressed, and the best medicine for that is not being alone. Company does not help or fix depression, but it does keep the depressed from doing something stupid. So I prescribed myself more family time and less internet. It helped. I was finally willing to accept paralysis if that should be my future.
Some of you know that I’ve struggled with back problems since 2005. I’ve had disc decompression surgery every three years during that period (2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014). The last surgery in 2014 didn’t stick for several reasons. One, I’m too fat. My belly tugs me perpetually down and forward and my back never truly recovers due to the constant tension. Second, it was my fourth surgery. L4 and L5, the affected lumbar discs, were tired of being decompressed. I had multiple tiny fractures running through both discs due to them weakening after so many surgeries. Third, I should have had a fusion after the second surgery, but I couldn’t find a doctor willing to do it because of a) my weight, and b) my age. I was too obese and too young for their liking. Fourth, I went straight back to work after my fourth surgery because I had to finished editing and rewriting Cruelty. I don’t regret doing that. I’m proud of that book, and the pain I went through added to the emotional quality of the second half. But all those hours in a chair post-op was not smart. I fucked myself up. Oh well. Because I really liked that book.
Anyfloop, January saw me back in the emergency room. I was finally referred to a doctor who had the balls to try a fusion. (Dr. Timothy Holt, thank you.) I had my fifth back surgery on January 25th.
Now recovery is my number one goal. I’m walking without the use of a walker, or when out and about, a shopping cart. I’m doing more for myself, even though I still can’t put on my own socks, underwear, or shorts (Thanks, Chelle, you’re a trooper, and I love you), and I’ll be in this brace for the next two months, but I’m actually doing better. Dr. Holt says that most people return to 70-80% mobility after a fusion. He’s warned me that, because of my previous surgeries, my percentage might be lower, but I’m hopeful.
Welp, there you have it – an update. I didn’t post about this while it was going on because the last thing I wanted was a bunch of sad faces in the comments. It’s nice to know you guys care, but the real result is bringing those around me down because they cannot actually help. I have a positive outlook and I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. Besides, paralyzed or not, life goes on. It’s my choice to smile or frown while it’s going down. And I choose to smile.
Many thanks to my good friend Gregor Xane, who lent an ear when no one in the house was around to listen to me bitch and whine. He always had some silly shit to say or share that made me smile. My wife and Gregor have never met, but they were the team that kept me bright during the darkest moments. Not really sure how this would have ended without them.
*hugs and high fives*
E.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1342678/randomized-randomocity-181-update-on-my-health
February 12, 2016
Randomized Randomocity #180 (Indie Author Edition)
Amazon must makes loads off all these authors who agree to buy each other’s books for the rating/rankings boost. Let me explain.
If your book is priced under $2.99, Amazon only allows you to collect 35% royalties. So if your book is $0.99, you get 35 cents and they get 65 cents. Authors who price their books over $2.99 can choose to get 70% royalties. But Amazon is still getting 30% of your sales.
Meaning, all these authors who’re boosting each other are doing nothing but lining Amazon’s pockets. Because ranking boosting does not work unless it is on a major scale. You’d need hundreds of sales in a single hour to make a significant enough difference to hold a top spot in a top genre, like Romance or Thriller. Sure, you might hit something obscure like Top 100 in Feline-themed Cookbooks for Doglovers, but we all know that doesn’t mean a damn thing. At the end of the day, the only winner here is Amazon.
No real point to this, and that’s why it’s a Randomized Randomocity post. I just find it funny that authors are still doing this, thinking it helps, when all they’re really doing is lining Amazon’s pockets.
*hugs and high fives*
E.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1342248/randomized-randomocity-180-indie-author-edition
February 11, 2016
Song of Kali Review
Review:
Dan Simmons is known for his massive novels. This is not one of them. Why? Well, it’s rare that you’ll find a horror author who started out their career with a massive tome as their debut novel. Why? Because money, that’s why.
Straub had Julia, King had Carrie, McCammon had Baal, and Simmons had this one. What do they all have in common? They’re all debuts that are around 300 pages long from authors known to write gargantuan books. Horror is a risky business. Publishers are frugal when it comes to taking a chance on my poor, beloved genre. No one wants to push out a 600-plus-page flop for a debut and lose their shirts over it. Longer novels are notoriously hard to market, and almost impossible to find reviews for. To succeed as a horror author in the literary community, you should have at least two novels under your belt before you reach into the realm of the Tome/Doorstop, and one of those two novels should have won some kind of award: a Stoker award is good; a World Fantasy award is best. Then, and only then, will Penguin Random House or HarperCollins allow you to publish that epic horror novel concerning shapeshifting, post-apocalyptic ferrets hellbent on creating a great, stinking plane known as Musk-World, wherein a band of quirky heroes must defeat High Lord Fear-It and bring a jasmine-and-vanilla-Glade-scented freshness back to their once proud land!
Song of Kali can be mistaken for a xenophobic outing. I guess, anyway. If you actually read and digest the text, I believe you’ll find the exact opposite. Because there are several places where Simmons ruminates on the ugliness of Calcutta. But there are just as many sections where Simmons riffs on the nasty underbelly of America, too. In one such section, two men are discussing how Calcutta isn’t so much different from some cities in America: Flint, Michigan being one such place. A woman chimes in that there is a supernatural evil overtaking Calcutta; that, at its heart, the city is evil. The local laughs it off and explains that the atrocities found in Calcutta are no different from the atrocities found in America. How exactly is a book xenophobic when it shows both sides of a coin? Are we to say that Simmons is intolerant of India AND America? If so, what land does Simmons favorite? It is Simmons’s unbiased approach to this story that I appreciate more than anything else. He could have taken the Indians-and-Arabs-are-all-evil! approach, but he did not. Instead, he showed that any place can be evil, no matter the social order, and that India’s class system is no better or worse than America’s own class-based system. It is blind faith in any god or religion that Simmons is attacking. The power of indoctrination.
I have a hard time reading Stephen King’s Pet Sematary because of Gage’s fate. This book has a similar scene that is all the more soul-rending due to its brevity. The scene of which I speak could have been handled numerous ways, but the way in which Simmons handles it is nothing short of genius. Still, due to this scene, I’ll likely not reread this book. When I got to this crushing chapter, I was sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting to hear the bad news about my back (I ended up having my fifth back surgery a week after completing this novel), and upon reading this scene, muttered out loud, “Oh, fucking hell.” The people in the waiting room didn’t appreciate my outburst. I apologized, but I wasn’t really sorry. Because I felt that “Oh, fucking hell” was the perfect descriptor for my feelings at that moment. The father in me couldn’t handle the scene. “Oh, fucking hell” was my way of coping without crying in public.
The scurrying-Kali-in-the-dark sequence is disturbing as hell, too. I’ll not forget that one for years to come. I don’t quite know how Simmons pulled off that scene. It’s a true mystery, that level of atmospheric mastery. Such scenes authors spend entire careers hoping to accomplish, but Simmons did it in his debut. Bravo.
Overall, I think Simmons knew what he was doing here. He created a pretentious poet of a main character, one who muses that Stephen King novels are “trashy”, even though King and Simmons have a great respect for one another. They’ve even blurbed each other’s novels on more than one occasion. To attach the MC’s viewpoints and xenophobia to the author is to ignore the rules of fiction. This story is fiction, and a good author can inhabit anyone and see all sides of a story without subscribing to those beliefs. I mean, are we to believe that Simmons thinks it is possible to reanimate the dead for the purposes of writing a poem in the hope of pleasing a multi-armed goddess? No. Because he and we know it’s fiction. If you can ignore the blatant racism of H.P. Lovecraft, a racism that runs rampant throughout both his life and his work, then you should be able to get through this novel without frying a circuit. Or maybe not. To each their own, I suppose.
In summation: A brief excursion to a truly disturbing place. It’s nice to see how Simmons has grown since his debut, and I feel I have a greater respect for his journey now that I’ve read where he started. Three stars because it’s not something I would read again, but I do not regret reading it.
Final Judgment: Divisive.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1341674/song-of-kali-review
February 6, 2016
The Vegetarian Review
The Vegetarian is my first real disappointment of 2016. Too bad, too, because it was going so well.
Here we have a story that starts off creepy and interesting. Then, about 60 pages in, it slams face-first into a tree and, like Sonny Bono, never recovers. (Too soon?) The first third of the book (the novel is broken up into three 60-page sections) is told in first-person past tense. The second part switches to third-person past tense, and while still an interesting part of the story, caused the narrative to come to a grinding halt while we have to get to know a whole other person only to relive entire sections of the first sixty pages. And then, finally, in the third part, the author swings into third-person present tense and completely shits the bed. We’re forced to get to know someone else that doesn’t matter and relive certain aspects of both the first and second parts.
This is a novella stretched into a 188-page novel. Supposedly it is an allegorical study of present-day Korea, but I cannot comment on the accuracy of that statement. All I know is, I was onboard until the author started switching POVs and tenses and repeating shit ad nauseum, as if this were the novelization of Vantage Point. Anyone remember that movie? The non-crazy Quaid brother plays a secret service officer, or some shit? The entire story is only about 15 minutes long, but it’s told from the perspectives of like eight motherfuckers? Oh well. It’s an all right movie. Better than this book, at any rate.
Holy kitten nipples, where the fuck was I?
Oh yeah. Shit book. Well, that’s not fair. It’s not a completely shit book. The first 60 pages are rad. The next sixty pages are okay. The last 60 are pointless and boring. Overall, a very unbalanced read. Had I paid for this one instead of getting a review copy from Crown Publishing in exchange for the review you are currently reading, I probably would’ve been pissed.
In summation: Allegorical or not, this book failed on certain levels for me. The last time I saw something go this bad this quickly was when we found out Jared from Subway was forcing underage boys to eat his footlong. Not recommended.
Final Judgment: I wanna like you, but you’re you, and I don’t like you.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1339226/the-vegetarian-review
NEW RELEASE – MARGINS
Now Available!
Click on the cover image for Amazon.com. Scroll past the cover image for international links.
Share if you see fit. Thank you for your support.
E.
Have you ever truly loved a book?
One day, while perusing the stacks of her favorite used bookstore, Jaime comes across a book by an author whom she’s never heard of. After an awkward encounter, she rushes home with A RENDEZVOUS WITH RICHARD in tow.
It’s in the margins that Jaime finds and falls for the mysterious Joe. Because A RENDEZVOUS WITH RICHARD isn’t a normal book. And MARGINS isn’t your average love story.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1339000/new-release-margins
February 5, 2016
MARGINS
MARGINS should be ready for upload by tomorrow or the next day. I’m really proud of this one.
Synopsis:
Have you ever truly loved a book?
Jamie loves to read. She lives alone, and her only friend, or more accurately, only known acquaintance, is Ms. Marsh, the owner of Jaime’s favorite bookstore, Secondhand Books.
One day, while perusing the stacks, Jaime comes across a book by an author whom she’s never heard of. After an awkward encounter, she rushes home with A RENDEZVOUS WITH RICHARD in tow.
It’s in the margins that Jaime finds and falls for the mysterious Joe. Because A RENDEZVOUS WITH RICHARD isn’t a normal book. And MARGINS isn’t your average love story.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1337855/margins
February 4, 2016
The beauty and tragedy of a falling star is that its flig...
The beauty and tragedy of a falling star is that its flight is a rush of life and light while its ending will no doubt be disastrous and dark. A falling star is the epitome of the fleeting nature of humanity. Light and dark. Here and gone. Notice me before I fizzle and die. Notice me before you blink.
E. Lorn
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1337649/post
January 25, 2016
NEW RELEASE – "COME"
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to a man I call Geyser. He’s nasty and offensive and darkly comedic. His story is now live on Amazon. Click on the cover for Amazon US. International links are listed under the cover image.
This is an odd story about an odd man…
When Geyser’s dying sister beckons him to her death bed, he has no other choice but to come.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1331664/new-release-come
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