Stephen Colegrove's Blog, page 9
March 5, 2014
Book Giveaway (Ends March 31st, 2014)
I’m giving away five paperback copies of The Amish Spaceman!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Amish Spaceman
by Stephen Colegrove
Giveaway ends March 31, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Book Giveaway
I’m giving away five paperback copies of The Amish Spaceman!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Amish Spaceman
by Stephen Colegrove
Giveaway ends March 10, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
March 1, 2014
The Denby Files––Acclaimed Male Model Now Missing in Action
HOLLYWOOD, CA––The elusive Robert Denby, well-known catalog model and face of the recently published novel, The Amish Spaceman, disappeared from his loft apartment in West Hollywood yesterday. According to alleged girlfriend Carol Alt who was living in shame with Denby and wished to remain anonymous, Denby left the apartment at 11 a.m. to purchase a box of wine and three cases of Pedialite from a colorful local cooperative called “Seven-Eleven.” When Denby failed to return seven hours later, the ex-model girlfriend contacted authorities.
Denby’s dazzling, meteoric rise to fame as cover model for the bestselling book, The Amish Spaceman, has plunged ironically like a meteorite in the last few weeks. The actor was offered starring roles by at least three studios and most recently recorded a guest spot on Hello Faceboy (a live-action Chinese remake of The Simpsons), but a spate of drug arrests and declining physical health have dimmed his value to Hollywood’s most powerful. The night before he disappeared, Denby was arrested for public intoxication, stealing food from a teenager, and urinating within 500 feet of a police dog. A late-night patron of a Sunset Boulevard Jack in the Box found the lower half of Denby hanging from a dumpster behind the restaurant, his legs plastered in taco wrappers.
“It didn’t look human,” said the pudgy and sad woman, who from the look of her subsisted entirely on cream pies. “And when it started screaming Mexican, I called the police.”
Several dark-suited individuals milling about the entrance of Denby’s apartment refused to be quoted or identified in this story as Denby’s friends, and repeatedly claimed to be from something they called “Eff-Bee-Aye.” They were either photographers or just morbid fans of Denby’s, waiting for the debauched star to appear with a bag over his head, dropping a trail of used tissues, shoes, or hair samples behind him like a golden brick road to Ebay.
Blocked from entering Denby’s apartment by a line of these celebrity hounds, I ran to the local Internet cafe intending to give these “Eff-Bee-Aye” charlatans the worst Yelp review of their lives, but it was obviously a fake name.
Watch this space for updates!
February 22, 2014
My Pants Are On Fire
In the past week I’ve spent several 28-hour days at a peculiarly popular southern California theme park. I am happy to inform everyone that visiting theme parks as a ‘thing’ is not dead, and neither are yoga pants.
“Welcome to 2009,” you might say. “Were you locked in a broom closet the past five years?” you might ask. The answer, sadly, is yes.
I was definitely aware of tight spandex trousers and how they’ve escaped from the sweaty abode of spin classes, but the presence of so many stroller-hefting moms and vacationing teenagers wearing this apparel was a surprise akin to a hitchhiker being given a lift by a bus full of supermodels. Feminism may have been in atrial fibrillation, but this humble fabric from DuPont Laboratories has shocked it back to life. How else to explain the male slaves pushing double-decker strollers of children behind the tightly-panted females? Drugs? Not possible, and believe me, I tried. Uncle Walt is everywhere.
February 13, 2014
Sexy Post of Valentine Fornication
I’ve been told by an elderly relative that sex sells, but in my particular case it’s always been a net drain on the old bank account. Who can tell? Life’s a funny old dog. Well, funny until he gets rabies. It’s all downhill from there. Let’s be honest––life is downhill from the start, that’s why men are constantly trying to crawl back inside and women are constantly buying curtains so the neighbors don’t see.
A little-known holiday called “Valentine’s Day” is fast upon us. Therefore, let the gratuitous gender display and “Genome-Transmission Selling” begin!
Now for the ladies …
February 11, 2014
Meme Overload, Quote Destruction
What’s worse than padding a blog post with overused Internet memes? Nothing.
Here’s another favorite quote from my book, The Amish Spaceman:
“Shut up and listen, former ex-boyfriend.”
Joanie turned, and her blonde hair fanned in a flat, golden circle: the mirror image of Dean’s favorite Pantene commercial. This never failed to disrupt the electrical impulses in Dean’s sinoatrial node, and she knew it.
Dean clutched his chest and gasped. “Former … and ex … That’s a double negative.”
“Quiet. I’m trying to explain why I never brought the three lumberjacks that I met at the Blue Onion back here: we got a room at Quality Inn like decent human beings. Everything stays out of the home, Dean. Do you think the eye exams I had every week with Dr. Goldhammer were real? That all the police johnnies use my first name because I clean the department every Friday? Isn’t it strange that our phone goes out at night and the repairman needs me to go out to his truck and help fix it? You can’t be that dumb. Or are you?”
“I … uh … I thought you were just being nice.”
“No, I sleep around. What I don’t do is have sex where I sleep. You broke that rule, Dean, and I want you out.”
February 5, 2014
Author Simulator 2014
Do you have too much free time? Do you gape in awe at the glittering piles of treasure surrounding the famous authors of our time, and think, ‘That could be me!’ It’s definitely NOT going to be you, but the boffins at Intersect have the next best thing: Author Simulator 2014! A whiz-bang PC game with modern 3D graphics and all the bells and whistles of last year’s Ben Murphy Simulator!
Customize every aspect of your author’s personality! Balance amazing writing talent with crippling disadvantages!
Author Talents
Grammar Guru––knows where a transitive verb goes
Punctuation Perspicacity––speaks for itself
Spelling Saint––doesn’t need spell check
Sally Sitwell––can write forty-eight hours without stopping
Cover Designer––book cover looks like a human made it
Non-hermit––Ability to Speak to Other Humans
Tee-Totaler––writes without the aid of coffee, tea, alcohol, and illegal drugs
T-1000 Cyborg––uses the power of the Interweb to market books successfully
Pretty Paul––takes good author photos
Sugar Daddy––a spouse who supports your failed writing career and pays the bills
Author Disadvantages: Must choose one for each talent you’ve chosen above!
Purple Prose Perpetrator––never met an adjective or adverb you didn’t like
Grammar Blockhead––Nothing is true, everything is permitted
Front-Matter Felon––foreword, acknowledgements, author’s note, prologue … bored already. BORED!
Cover Criminal––book cover looks like your cat was sick on a newspaper someone left outside in the rain
Nervous Nelly––can’t write five minutes without checking FB LOL
Stan the Coffee Author––can’t write without the aid of coffee, tea, alcohol, and illegal drugs, preferably all of them
Recluse––collects cats, not friendship
Twit the E-Blaster––only markets to other authors who also only market to other authors who also only market to other authors
Robert Denby––unfortunate skin disease
Basement Dweller––Mom and Dad want you to get a job
Choose your author’s sex and skin color! Pick a genre for your first book! Smash the keyboard furiously and in time with the music to finish your first book, and another, and another! Done? Not quite––you have to give those books away for free because everyone else is! Keep writing another series! Use more exclamation marks than recommended!
To reach the end of the game and the piles of treasure, acclaim, and constant adoration of Macy’s catalog models, you’ll need to do more than write. You’ll need to fight through a slush pile taller than Everest and a series of deadly bosses.
Boss Fight!
Mary the Local Writing Group Maven
Billy the Beta Reader
Diabolical Dave, the Literary Agent
CreateSpace
And the final boss––yourself! There’s no person out there who has more power to stop your writing career, than you. Awww.
February 4, 2014
Didney Worl
If you’d like to review The Amish Spaceman in exchange for a Post-Release Advance Review Copy (in other words, the book), then send me a message. Email, carrier pigeon, it’s all the same to me.
I’ve decided to reinvest the massive profits from the book into a trip to what my children call “Didney Worl”. I have no idea what this strange place is, but the expenditure of vast sums of money is a prerequisite.
The Amish Spaceman — $2.99 @ Amazon
The Amish Spaceman – $2.99 @ Amazon
January 28, 2014
Favorite Quote from the Book
An imaginary child I passed in the street today asked me what was my favorite line in “The Amish Spaceman.” It’s difficult to separate out specific lines, much in the same way that it’s difficult to separate television-reality from reality-reality, but I’ve included one of my favorites below. If you’ve got a better line from the book, leave it in the comments!
Congratulations to all who’ve purchased the book! We’ve added another shift to cover demand. If you’re interested in receiving a free copy in exchange for an Amazon review, send a request to colegrov@SPAMhotmailSPAM.com (remove the tasty SPAM).
Quote from Chapter Three of “The Amish Spaceman”:
He’d been struck dumb only twice in his life––once when an Italian girl removed her shirt at a pool party and secondly, upon viewing Trisha Yar in the flesh at a Star Trek convention. For a motivational speaker with a mind like a steel mousetrap like Dean, love at first sight did not exist, was a fabrication before or after the fact by over-romantic high school boys and under-appreciated housewives. Upon seeing this young woman, Dean realized he’d been wrong, as wrong as he’d been about the positive effect of an ice cream bath or the need to check the expiration date on Spam. Dean saw no whizzing traffic or blue sky, felt no rumble in his stomach or pull of gravity. If someone held a shotgun packed with rose petals and Novocaine to his forehead and pulled the trigger, the effect would have been exactly the same.
“Holy action figure,” he murmured.
January 24, 2014
Amish Spaceman Meme Party Deux
Copies are going fast! Hurry and get one before the elves at Amazon put on a strike. They have to type each one by hand, you know!
The classic tale of boy meets girl, although in this case the boy is Dean Cook, an unsuccessful motivational speaker desperately trying to cross the USA in three days for his speech at the National Motivational Speaker’s Conference, and the girl is a Kamchatkan runaway bride named after a clock radio. This unlikely pair of lovebirds are pursued by the girl’s murderous, sock-crazed Russian fiance and Dean’s cross-dressing parents, who see this as the last chance to throw their son a party that doesn’t end in complete catastrophe. Because, after all, it’s Dean’s birthday.
Meme Party Deux:
