Big news!

 "Hello?  What?  Have heard the big news?"

 "They talked abut this blog...

 "...and Dr. Monkey's Tumblr blog on a podcast of Gweek."

"They get down to talking about both of them in earnest in the 26th minute of the podcast."

This is my third time being featured on Boing Boing.  And yes, it's very nice to be recognized for my work.  I always knew if I liked the stuff I scan and post, then others would like it as well.  Yes, I sent Mark from Boing Boing an email thanking him for spotlighting my blogs.

Top Ten Reasons Why You Need to Buy My Novel Via Download

10. Sick kids will get well if you do.
9. When your shady friends call and ask if you want to go rob a liquor store with them you can avoid a life of crime by saying, "I can't. I'm too busy reading a great book."
8. A novel with a gritty funny plot that has lots of twists and turns for only $11? What's not to love?
7. This guy will stop stalking you if you do:
6. An allegedly gay and lesbian friendly independent bookstore in Asheville refused to sell it because they deemed it "inappropriate." And of course they deemed it inappropriate without even reading it because if they had read it they would have seen it has positive portrayals of homosexual people in it.
5. One lucky reader will get a lifetime supply of gravy just for buying and reading my book via download.
4. Salma Hayek will look favorably upon you in the afterlife if you buy my book and read it via download.

3. You might like it so much that you want to buy the film rights to it.
2. Cute lil animals will befriend you more often after you finish my book.

1. I'll give you a bite of my banana if you buy my book.

Buy your copy of Trouble De Ville via download today by sending me an email with the words "I want Trouble!" in the subject line. Send those emails to monkeymuckATgmailDOTcom now and avoid the holiday rush.

And now a post in which I shamelessly promote my mad literary skillzzz

In late 2003 I decided to see if I could write a novel so I sat down at my computer and I wrote a really shitty experimental novel that I managed to get an agent in California to read. It was pretty bad and she declined to represent me, and rightfully so based on that effort. What I learned from all that was that if I wanted to I could sit down and write a novel.

So after I got rejected by the agent and I read my novel again I decided that it was pure shit but that I was not going to give up. Then in early 2004 I sat down and I wrote the kind of novel I most like to read, a gritty crime novel with lots of twists and turns. A few months later I finished the first draft.


The fates smiled upon me this time because after I finished it I met a guy who was auditioning for the improv comedy group I used to be in in Knoxville. He was, fortuitously enough, starting a small independent publishing company and he was actively seeking manuscripts. I gave him mine and he read it and he decided he wanted to publish it. So a few months later we got rolling and my novel was released to the masses:

We sold about a 125 copies and I was in a few locally owned independent bookstores here in the south. I was also on amazon.com for a time and all the copies they bought sold out. Then as I was in the process of trying to get my book more out there in the stores and on the web I had my heart attack and everything got put on the shelf for months.

A month or so after my subsequent bypass I fulfilled my promise to a local bookstore owner and I did a signing at his store. However it really could not be considered a signing because I signed no books due to no one buying any. It was quite the humbling experience to have been ignored by hundreds of people as I sat at a table with my unsold books.

Fast forward to a few months ago. When I got this blog up and running and I had some regular readers I decided to send out some of the copies of my book at no charge to some of my blog friends, don't feel like you were slighted if you did not get one, I only had about 5 to give away. I kept one copy to scan in some day and to sell on the blog and that some day has finally arrived. The publisher of my novel has since stopped publishing fiction and he refused to answer my many emails to him. I finally got him to admit to me that he gave up publishing fiction in favor of publishing industrial stuff for various companies. So I don't feel a bit bad about cutting him out of this deal here on my blog, I own the copyright after all, I did write the novel and it's up to me now to sell it on the web.

So to make a long story longer, you can soon buy my novel. I'm going to warn anyone who might be interested in buying it that it is a crime novel and there are evil people in my book who do bad stuff to others. If you are easily offended then I encourage you not to buy my book. However if you want a fast paced funny yet gritty crime novel that has gotten good reviews and positive feedback then by all means snap this bitch up.

Here's how you can buy my book:

1. Send me an email with the words "I want Trouble" in the subject line to monkeymuckATgmailDOTcom
2. I will then go to Pay Pal and request $11 from you. You will get an email from Pay Pal requesting you put the money in my account.
3. After you put the money in my Pay Pal account I will send you my novel via email. Well actually, via many emails. Approximately 10 or 11 emails because the size of the PDF file by itself is too big to send without zipping it and breaking it up into chunks of about 30 pages each.

It's just that simple. If you like you can pay more for my novel but I want a minimum of $11 for it. The cover price was $14, so you're getting a bargain and you're not paying any sales tax. If any of my readers outside of the USA want to buy it and you have any trouble with Pay Pal, let me know and we'll work something out.

I'm about half way done scanning in 30 page chunks of it now so it'll be ready to go by oh say 5PM eastern daylight time. So if you want to get a copy go ahead and send me that email and I'll get the ball rolling as soon as I get done scanning.

Go, read, come back when you're done

Read my review of this:

here. Westlake is one of the authors who inspired me as I wrote my crime novel Trouble De Ville, which by the way will be available here soon for purchase on a donation basis. In the mean time, go on, check out the Spring Reading Challenge and read all the keen reviews by all the best smarty pants bloggers on the web.