REVIEW: Profoundly Erotic by Joe Bob Briggs

When Joe Bob told me that his next book was going to be on erotic movies, my first thought was, "Oh, my God...how am I going to find information on these movies without looking like the world's biggest perv?" My second thought was, "Oh, my God...where am I going to find anything on 'I Am Curious (Yellow)?"

Well, I didn't come off as a perv to anybody, and I did find the information, as proven in the book. So I would personally like to thank everyone who thought that the book was well-researched. I appreciate it.

Research for this book was just as tough as the other. Believe it or not, you can't just go to the Internet for everything. I tracked down books and stood for hours over a Xerox copier and provided files for each movie that were, like for Profoundly Disturbing, two to three inches thick. Some would call it overkill. I called it being thorough.

Researching these books led to researching JB's commentaries for a slew of Z-movies...once again, volunteering, and once again, struggling to find adequate information for movies no one's ever heard of. So if you enjoyed his commentaries on "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter," "Double D Avenger," "Samurai Cop," "Blood Shack," "The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid-Row Slasher," "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies," "I Spit on Your Grave," "Hells Angels '69," "Run, Angel Run," "Hell High," "Warlock Moon," "Blood Sisters," and maybe one or two more that I can't remember...you're welcome! I sweated blood finding all the info that made his commentary so interesting, so I'm happy somebody out there appreciates it.

REVIEW: Profoundly Disturbing by Joe Bob Briggs

I can't really review this book with any kind of unbiased opinion, because...I was Joe Bob's Researcher! (that sounded like it should be the title of a B-movie, so read it in your head as such).

Yep, 'tis true. Check out the thank you's at the bottom of the page and you'll see my name right there in black and white. It's funny, because no one ever thinks about the person who provides all the raw material for the author...and let me just tell you this, you have not worked your ass off until you've tried to find information on movies that are out of print, starring no one you've ever heard of, and that no one has ever really seen (I'm looking at you, "Mom and Dad.")

I'm happy to read the positive reviews of this book, but I feel like I should add my two cents to the pile and let readers know the massive amount of work that went into it. I remember scouring reputable websites and photocopying dozens and dozens of books and providing JB with files of reference material that were at least two or three inches thick. He definitely got his money's worth out of my efforts (considering I volunteered to do it).

I think the book came out beautifully, and I can't say enough good things about the index (I helped with that, too). I give it five stars for the amazing research. (ha ha).

Keep an eye out for the sequel to this review: Profoundly Erotic.

REVIEW: The Cannibals of Candyland by Carlton Mellick III

To be honest, I wasn't sure about this book. I'd stumbled across it while looking for other things, and while the cover was eye-catching and the title is unavoidably cool, I wasn't sure if it would be my "thing." I'd never read bizarro fiction before and didn't think it was my cup o'tea.

But anyway, I gave in and downloaded this one for my Kindle and it sat there for a few months while I went through my "read only true crime/read only biographies/read only nonfiction" phases. Last night, bored with everything else, I decided to read a few pages and see just how 'bizarro' it was.

Well.

My first bit of surprise was that I got into it immediately. I'm unfamiliar with Mellick's writing, but once I accepted his world of men who wear only candy-apple red and keep multi-colored kittens in his pockets while hunting down the candy-men who killed his siblings, I was totally absorbed in the story.

Huh? What's that you're wondering? Candy-men?

First of all, to enjoy this book you're going to have to embrace the absurd. Yes. Candy-men. Men and women literally--and I really do mean literally--made of candy: taffy bodies, cotton candy hair, gumdrop nipples, etc. and so on. They also have really sharp teeth. Think Pennywise from "It." And they use said teeth to eat up little children. Graphically and in great detail. This is not a book for the faint of heart or easily upset, because the kids in this book...they don't fare too well. Apparently they make for dee-licious eatin'.

The great thing about this book is that it has such a simple plot: as a child, Franklin saw his siblings eaten by a monstrous candy-woman and, of course, no one believes him. The candy people grow into a thing of legend, and when he grows up, Franklin makes hunting them down and getting proof of their existence his goal in life. When he wounds one of the monsters and follows it down into the underground caves they live in, he finds a world right out of Willie Wonka's wet dreams: everything is candy. Houses are made of cookies. The ground is chocolate. Everything is edible...including Franklin. I won't give too much more of the plot away--needless to say, he runs into the candy-woman who killed his brothers and sisters--but the details of that world are so interesting and well described that I actually think it made my blood sugar go up.

So will I be reading more of Carlton Mellick's work? Yep, yes, and oh yeah. I've already got two more of his books cued up on the Kindle, and will likely be reading more. I'm in professional awe at his ability to just go batshit crazy with his ideas and take them as far as he can. That kind of fearlessness is rare nowadays. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes weirdness, horror, and cannibals (not necessarily in that order).

Before ORFOB went FUBAR

Before the nightmare that was ORFOB began. Me and my brother, David. I am, of course, the one without the goatee.

The problem with GoodReads...

...is that I'm constantly forgetting to add the stuff I'm reading to it. Maybe it's a touch of ADD, but I'm usually reading at least two or three books at the same time. To look at my Kindle would be like looking at the horror section of Amazon. Seriously. Too many books and not enough time. And don't even ask about the books I lose interest in reading. If I'm not caught hook, line and sinker in the first chapter (or even first few pages), I'm out. I'm notoriously vicious in my reading habits. I don't tolerate boredom well...especially if it's in a mass-produced, major-publishing house novel. Again, I guess I'll chalk it up to writer's envy (it's like penis envy, only you envy someone for their publishing contract/connections instead).

I really need to do some work on GoodReads. Maybe even a competition or giveaway for my books. I can hear the multitudes reaching for their keyboards now.

A smallish rant

I'm not naming names, and this could come across as just a simple case of writer's envy, but when did it become okay for the EDITOR of an anthology to present himself or herself as the sole author of the work? I'm talking about anything from appearing alone at book signings to having it under his/her own name at Amazon. I'm not talking about anyone I've worked with (well...recently) but I'm noticing this and wondering if it's a new trend. I realize that the editor does a good bit of work in creating an anthology, but what would it be without the work of the writers (who are, in most cases, listed as "and others" in an anthology that has one or two brand name authors)?

Okay. End rant. For now.

Surviving ORFOB

It's taken me a while to recover from Friday night's book signing fiasco at the Ohio River Festival of Books. How bad was it? Oh, bad. Very bad. Bad enough that I'm not going to sign up to do it again. And there were a lot of other people there who aren't going back, either. But I'm skimping on the details. Do let's revisit the horror, shall we?

First of all...they only gave the signing authors a two and a half hour signing period. Seriously. From 6:30 to 9:00. On a Friday night. Because there's nothing people like better on a Friday night than to wander around a half-empty ballroom of a civic center. In 2008, the signing period lasted all day--and I did better business even with a blizzard. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Just keep in mind that we only had two and a half hours to try to sell books.

So I'm sitting there at my nicely decorated table--skulls on raised candleholders, a nice vinyl sign hanging on the front of the table (again, with skulls) with my name and my  books, a cute little monster holding my business cards, my books neatly stacked and ready for people to browse. A few people mosey past the table. I smile pleasantly and say hello, ready to launch into an explanation of why I have two horror books and a romance, or why I love zombies, or any number of things. But most of the people just kind of drift on by. Some of them look a little rattled by the skulls.

I should digress for a moment and explain that the majority of authors at this signing were hawking books of a more Appalachian flavor--histories of coal camps, railroads, etc and so on. I don't know if there were very many of us selling fiction, and I know for sure that there weren't any other people selling horror novels (or even romances). To say it wasn't quite my demographic would be a nice way of saying, "Nobody was interested in my books."

Anyway, after being condescended to by one publisher who was there (he said I had "pluck" for publishing my own stuff; I hate 'pluck') and ignored by one person after another, I had a sinking feeling that this wasn't going to be my night. An elderly woman walked past my table and said, "I don't do zombies." My brother, under his breath, said, "Give it some time."

That was probably the highlight of the evening.

Because this is when ORFOB turned to FUBAR. Apparently, someone scheduled a Pulitzer Prize winning writer to give a talk from 7 - 8 pm, with a reception afterward in the ballroom where all us nobody, non-Pulitzer winning slobs were selling books. That would have been fine--let the people who wanted to hear Ms. Pulitzer talk see her, and let the rest of us try to sell books. But no...no, that wasn't the way someone wanted it. Suddenly the building crowd was bumrushed into the other room to hear the Pulitzer Prize winner. Someone connected to the festival (I won't say who, but those who were there know what happened) was shanghaiing everyone and forcing them to go listen to the other writer.

And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE...even us authors who were there just trying to sell a book or two.

Yeah, that wasn't working for me. I didn't want to leave my table. I was told by that certain someone that everyone HAD to leave the ballroom, that we could leave our stuff because it was going to be locked up, that we just had to come listen to this prize-winning writer.

Okay, first off...how demeaning was that to all us 'nobody' writers? I've never won a Pulitzer, obviously, but how dare she take time away from us just to fill seats? People were wandering around with dazed looks on their faces, asking "Is this mandatory? Do we HAVE to do this?"

Within minutes, the momentum that was slowly building at the book signing screeched to a halt. And guess what...? The doors weren't even locked.

An hour passes. An hour out of that two and a half hour window we were given to sign and sell books. By eight o'clock, people come filtering in again...but now, we can't talk freely because there's a bluegrass band playing as loudly as they can, and people aren't interested in our books anyway because hey look! There's free food!

To make a pathetic story shorter, I didn't sell a single book Friday night. Not even a nibble. People took my card, or even picked up a book and said, "Hey, that looks like that might actually be good." But no sales. Meanwhile, I'm told that I look like an actress that I've never heard of (and when I looked her up...sigh...I'm not too happy about the comparison).

So no...never again. I'm going to try the WV Book Festival in October if I can get a table, but I'll never do ORFOB again. Certain egos ruined the entire experience.

So that's how I spent my Friday night.