Noir at the Bar, vol. 2, with my story “The Lipidopterist” (read at a Noir at the Bar event at Meshuggah Cafe in St. Louis MO on February 28, 2012)
Many thanks to Jedidiah Ayres and Scott Phillips for putting this together.
Featuring stories by (in alphabetical order): Jedidiah Ayres, Frank Bill, Jane Bradley, Sonia L. Coney, Hilary Davidson, Les Edgerton, Nate Flexer, Matthew C. Funk, Jesus Angel Garcia, Glenn Gray, Kevin Lynn Helmick, Gordon Highland, John Hornor Jacobs, David James Keaton, Tim Lane, Erik Lundy, Jason Makansi, Matthew McBride, Jon McGoran, Cortright McMeel, Aaron Michael Morales, Scott Phillips, Robert J. Randisi & Christine Matthews, John Rector, Caleb J. Ross, Duane Swierczynski, Mark W. Tiedemann, Fred Venturini, Benjamin Whitmer and Nic Young.
The stories of Fuckload of Shorts by Jedidiah Ayres, which includes the stories that inspired the short film Fuckload of Scotch Tape, are the best kind of short stories. Each one takes an idea that, realistically should make for a horrible, shock-driven story, and instead delivers amazing noir fiction with beautifully rendered characters. Ejaculating a dead man? Yep. Selling corpses to a dog foot plant? Yep. In the hands of a lesser writer, these ideas would amount to nothing more than throwaway snuff fiction. But in the hands of Jedidiah Ayres, these ideas are simply climaxes of and catalysts for truly compelling stories.
This video book review examines one of those scenarios in-depth: how exactly, logistically speaking, can one ejaculate a dead man? Yes, there is a whiteboard and drawings included.
100 subscribers! It’s a milestone, to be sure. The first milestone of what I hope to be many, many more. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed (and will subscribe, after getting a whiff of what’s being given away to celebrate this 100 subscriber achievement).
As a thank you to all subscribers of this book channel, I am giving away a one-of-a-kind, handmade, leather bound edition of Warmed and Bound, an anthology in which one of my stories appears. Warmed and Bound is a truly exceptional collection of dark, noir-inspired stories of sometimes dystopian, sometimes too-real-I-wish-it-were-dystopian fiction.
I warn you, I’m no professional book binder. In traditional homemade-Caleb fashion, this bound edition, though absolutely lovely, isn’t something you could sell on eBay for thousands of dollars, at least not until I’m dead…and not until shoddy craftsmanship goes for a premium on the black market for some reason.
You MUST leave at least one comment at YouTube on the video that announces this giveaway (linked via the image at the top of this post). Feel free to leave as many comments as you want—the more conversation the better—but know that you will only have one entry into the giveaway no matter how many comments you leave
If you win the giveaway, you must be willing to send me your mailing address. Otherwise, how would you receive the amazing prize?
More meta:
Giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. I understand shipping costs may be crazy to some places, but I don’t care; I’ll just skip lunch for a few days.
Must be at least 18 years old
Giveaway is open for comments/submissions through September 30th
Though Laila may be too young to have penned FCJR, I have a feeling she was involved with the brainstorming sessions. She pretty much describes me perfectly in terms of my hatred for many, many things. You’re on my radar, Laila.
JR Harlan, author and contributor to Warmed and Bound (and possibly FCJR?) takes some time out of his busy spider-holing schedule to alert the world to the “dangers” of Caleb J. Ross. Hey, if you consider physical shortness, slightly overweightness, and my thinning hair to be dangerous, then you probably deserve that spider hole.
(Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. No excuses. I just forgot)
Some of you may have caught wind of the I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin free Kindle giveaway that is currently going on now through August 28th. What you may not know is that I am also planning to post details about the giveaway—details such as the giveaway totals and the tactics I used to make people aware of the giveaway—every evening here on my blog as part of my Book Marketing Tests and Studies category. This post serves as the fourth and fifth in the 5(ish) part series.
Daily highest rank (that I happen to screen-capture) in the free Kindle store: #1,168
Daily highest rank (that I happen to screen-capture) in the book’s category/genre (which is Fiction > Literary Fiction): #25 (though I actually saw it at #18 at one point, but failed to get a screenshot)
How am I feeling after this fifth day?
Great! I passed the 1,000 downloads goal. However, I’m pretty far away from the other three goals I had for myself (outlined here). All in all, I’m quite happy. Now, I hope that those who downloaded the book actually read it.
