As I Embrace My Unwavering Pessimism

This week I read "We Run Races With Goblin Troopers," from As I Embrace My Jagged Edges (And Other Thorns) by Lee Thompson.

(Link)

Here's a description of the book, although it doesn't say much:

"A diverse collection of Dark Fantasy stories focused on the horror's of family, loss, tragedy and failed beauty.

Toc:
1. We Run Races with Goblin Troopers
2. Beneath the Weeping Willow (A Division Mythos Story)
3. Daddy Screamed with Us (A Division Mythos Story)
4. Crooked Stick Figures (A Division Mythos Story)
5. When Crows Sing Sweetly Bitter Music
6. Crawl
7. A Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky
8. Sorrow's Breast
9. The Weight of All These Years (A Division Mythos Story)
10. Boys without Faces
11. As I Embrace My Jagged Edges (A Division Mythos Story)"

Yeah that's right, I read the very first story and it wasn't even the title story. I will probably never know what the Division Mythos is. All I can say about it is it's probably really depressing. Actually I got this book not knowing if it would be a real indie author or not, and it turns out all of these short stories appear to be published, so for once we are venturing into the realm of the LITERATE! Except in the above description, horrors should not have an apostrophe. HA! BITCH!

Okay so I just started reading, wanting to know if it would be fun to review and I got a little hooked by the first story and decided, hey, why not review something worth the e-paper it's printed on? "Except maybe it's not," the voice in my head said, and oh how I hoped it was true.

The best summary of this crazy shit I can provide is that, well, A) It isn't meant to be taken literally, so B) I think it's a metaphor for how terrible the Iraq war has been on some families. But disclaimer: I might be giving this shit WAY too much credit. Other than that, C) Cannibal, soldier, guns, other cannibal, prostitute, crazy. That's basically like as clear as I can make it without just telling this story to you.

Fine, it makes no sense, does that mean it's bad? Well, according to my last post, yes. But this guy is all deep and war brings out the best in pessimistic, artful critiques of the futility of senseless killing, like Hemingway, right?

Well, two things: First, Hemingway didn't write Noir Fantasy (although this story is only "Fantasy" because of the word goblins). I'm sorry, I have no respect for angsty shit set in a spooky, overly violent, elven forest. PROVE ME WRONG. Second, Hemingway didn't just pile horrible shit on top of shocking shit to sound cool while he was drunk. He wrote honestly terrible shit that really happened and had a poignant message to it...while he was drunk.

What I mean is this guy tried to walk the line of writing a dark world to (I hope) make you think but then crossed that line and then took off all his clothes and started running away from the line wildly screaming. I just imagine this guy's brainstorming sessions consisting of making a list of the most shocking shit he can think of like, "People eating the intestines of other people, hacksawed limbs...hmm... taking out womens' eyes, oh, prostitution, that's a good one. Um, keeping a head in the fridge always works. And insanely shooting at hallucinations, yeah. Putting a bomb up someone's ass, no, no, wait a big spike. Using a dead mom's blood to paint unicorns on a little boy's chest." Too far? Well guess what, all of that was actually in the story except the bomb/spike up someone's ass (I added it for the lols). Yes, you read right, the end of the story is his memory of the guy painting unicorns in blood on his son's chest.

Now, this is arguably still not the recipe for my eyes rolling all the way back into my head and down my throat until you add the ingredient of just listing this shit off pointlessly, almost like I did above. There are no visceral descriptions of this stuff to make it horrifying like Saw, and I think that's actually the very reason why he does it. He doesn't know how to use just a splash of horrifying things in chilling detail, and the things he does use don't have much of a point so he just stacks them on like the fucked up limbs of hookers which his characters lobbed off until his shockers reach their word limit. Not quite Hemingway.

Ratings.

Fluency: 5 out of 5. This is a very well-written story in terms of me being able to read all of the sentences and not wonder what the hell he's talking about. This is more a criticism of virtually every other story I've read than anything else.

Using the Tired Example of Sex Work to Show How Grim the World Is: 5 out of 5. He had the most unnecessary and pitiful hooker ever. I wouldn't be surprised if this shows up in his other stories; I'm pretty sure this is his idea of Noir. He probably thinks he's edgy and deep when his co-workers say, "I got a great parking spot today!" and he responds, "Some women don't even have cars. They have to suck a dick just to get a ride to the ABORTION CLINIC."

Making me Think About the Irony of it All: 0 out of 5. For all his dark brutality, it seemed tactless and fake. I did think about the Iraq War, but that's mostly likely just me giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I immediately thought about how I wish someone would do a better job of it.

Overall: 2 out of 5. It didn't make sense, but it sounded professional not making sense rather than completely incoherent. For that, I have to give it something.


If you think coherency is overrated, read my stories at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Story Precautions

I read a story by an English teacher, Erin Ritch, called Snow Precautions for Your Safety.

(Link)

I know, you're like, "An English teacher? Must be an all right read." Well, you are right that the spelling and punctuation is better than most of the crap I read, but just because you have subject-verb agreement doesn't mean you know what the fuck a plot is, apparently. Here's a description:

"To any passerby, this sleepy town is one of many. Nestled in a quiet place with a quiet name, it's a flash in a huge forest of flickering light. When a young girl moves there amidst a circumstance of ghosts and curses, she attempts to find normalcy in a very obscure world. Instead, she will discover that maybe she fits in after all."

I'll let you guess. Just take a minute and try to figure out what that means. Try it out, predict what you think the ending might be and write it down. I'll wait.

If you're like me you wrote something like, "It turns out SHE'S the dead one," or some other cliche bullshit. Well, let me tell you, that shitty and overdone ending would have been WAY better than the actual story. "Is it a horror story?" you ask. No. It isn't. "Then why does the description make it sound like it's spooky?" Because you are trying to make sense out of nonsense. You are seeing shapes in the clouds. You are on acid and all of your synapses are firing at once and your brain is telling you there are faces in the wood grain. Because this story makes NO_FUCKING_SENSE.

Sorry to spoil it, but oh wait, you can't spoil NOTHING. You think I'm exaggerating. You think I'm going to tell you the plot now and it will be at least half a story. IT ISN'T. There is no reason to read this. You might as well look at a random collection of letters for TEN GODDAMN PAGEAAAGHWKJhekwhekw!

Sorry. Alright, I'll summarize it as best I can. From what I glean from the description the narrator moves to a new town (yeah, it's not so apparent just reading it). She moves into her grandparents house (that part I read all by myself!) because they died of a double heart attack while reading (seriously this is in here for some reason, and P.S. it never comes up again and has absolutely no significance to the story) Irish Faerie Almanac and it's suspected some Irish faerie took them to the afterlife or something. Okay, I know, you're like, "I follow," but seriously I am helping you a lot right now. After that a year passes. It rains a lot. Summer comes and they miss the rain a little. The end. Really. No, no, I'm not fucking with you, that's it.

I'm not kidding. No conflict, just a weird like personal essay that had every indication of going paranormal and it just ends. It's like a month-by-month account of random pictures—seriously, like if I just showed you my year in images and it was like a mailbox, then some trees, then a cat, and a tire swing. No, actually, that probably makes more sense than this story.

My theory is that this is some sort of free-form poem that just got out of hand so she labelled it as a short story. Fuck, I can't even explain how insane this shit is, just look for yourself:

"Halloween was the first time I ever stopped to look around. All the moments before that were filled with unpacked moving boxes, thoughts of thoughts of what to wear to school and the obsession with the avoidance of an ever-present drizzle of rain. So I got on with life once the moving boxes had been buried at the dump and I realized the rain was just a few hydrogen atoms and some oxygen mixed together. I can remember that one shining moment that we all look back on for inspiration while we sit on our toilets and feel depressed. I had eaten breakfast on a regular Saturday and went to get the mail from our tin box on the other side of the road. As I stepped across the gravel street, I heard a rooster crowing." Paragraph complete!

The first time I read that I was like, "Huh!?" Now that I've written it down here I get it, and despite every indication, it is actually one continuous thread. She is simply trying to jam some artsy shit into each and every sentence. To the point where it comes out like, "Halloween boxes on the toilet. Then there was a rooster!" Yeeeees. I like roosters too. Tell me more. (By the way, if you did follow, this huge moment she is talking about is just like looking at a house she never noticed before. WTF!?)

Ratings:

Hipster Use of Feminist-Inspired "Shocking" Language: 5 out of 5. Well, it wasn't all feminist-inspired, but at one point she was like, "At the time when I was just barely learning to spell 'uterus...'" I get what you're saying, but only because I am also a hipster, and that just makes me understand you are trying too hard to sound cool. Instead of thinking some "Are You There God?" reference shit, I'm like, "You specifically remember when you were learning to spell uterus?" Que comments about how I'm an insensitive prick.

Choice of Title: 1 out of 5. When I saw this story I got stuck on trying to figure out the title for much longer than I'm proud of. Finally it's revealed that every winter they put up that sign, even though it never really snows, it just rains some more... Heh.

Knowing What a Story Is: 0 out of 5. No conflict? No characters? No dialogue? Nothing happens... at all? Time passes, in chronological order. That is the only connection the end has to the beginning. Fail.

Overall: 0 out of 5. That's right. I hope your students at least learn from you by realizing what not to do, because this is it. I almost put "N/A" because I can't give a rating to something that just isn't even a story. And this "story" is the promotion for her book. I just imagine 50,000 words of shitty, hipster, too much pot, fucking coffeehouse beatnik-would-spit-on-you-for-it "poetry".

If you want to read something before anyone else even heard of it, check out amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Hunting the Verb

Oh yeah, I have been working on a blog post. I know it didn't seem like it. This time it's Hunting the Vampire by Tim Morrell. Check out that COVER:

(Link)

I think you know why I chose this. It kinda kills it that it was probably his kid that made the cover art, not him. I'm not about to make fun of a kid. I wouldn't actually put it past him to have put this together though, having read the story. I just say the kid thing because it's dedicated to his wife and kids. Oh, and then he says, "AND MY WONDERFUL GIRLS FROM DELTA GAMMA Sorority at KU who are my biggest fans (Yes, this includes you, Kandy)" The bolded part is in like 50 font size.

An open letter to Tim Morrell's wife:

Dear Tim Morrell's wife,
Your husband is cheating on you. Actually he probably isn't, but he's trying his damndest and freaking the shit out of a bunch of sorority girls (especially Kandy). At the very least you should be offended he "dedicated" his story to you, not just because it was super shitty, but also because he then had a giant "AND TO THE PEOPLE I'M ACTUALLY ATTRACTED TO" after the dedication.

Sincerely,
A.C. Blackhall

Seriously though I imagine this guy trying to hit on sorority girls and them just sort of politely entertaining his fancy and later talking about how creepy he is--you know the type--and he's all like, "I'm an author," and they're stupid enough to believe him and they're like, "Really!?" "Yeah. I'll write a story for you. But you gotta tell me what to write it about." "Oh, I don't know." "Heh heh, come on, Kandy, what do you like?" "Hehe. Umm...I like Twilight... and Dexter."

You get the idea. And then we get this story. Here's the description:

"Zaden is not your typical vampire hunter. Where others may find and kill the demons, Zaden captures them to torture them for information. It all comes to a head in this story where Zaden catches up with his ultimate prize, a vampire with a soul."

But there's not really a reason to give you that description because it doesn't describe the story at all. He literally doesn't torture the vampire he finds, nor does he somehow determine it has a soul. He does explain a bunch of facts about vampires to himself in a long and confused mess of words for pages and fucking PAGES in order to set up the two lines of dialogue, which go something like,

"I'm gonna kill you and take your powers."
"Nooooooooo-" *Dead*

But it's more complicated than that. According to him, (actual quote>)"There seems to be only two surefire ways to kill a vampire: burning them completely in a fire or by exposing them to the sun, or by taking the head." Or a stake through the heart or a bullet or garlic or a cross or running water or allergies or pushing them off a cliff or presenting them with an unsolvable paradox or breaking their heart or making them fight a werewolf or AIDS, but those are the only TWO ways.

That's pretty much it. Vampire dies, guy takes his powers, finds a random prostitute and asks her something like "Wanna be the general of my undead minions?" to which she says, "I'll do whatever you want, as long as it's on the clock, honey." The end. Not much else to say.




Oh yeah, and WHAT THE FUCK WAS WITH THE VERB AGREEMENT!? He used tenses I didn't even know existed. Some of his sentences had so much past/present/future changeup that I think spacetime fucking tore a little. I hope this story got you fucking laid man, because it did almost as much damage to my mental health with its total disregard for grammar as Twilight (Zing).

Ratings:

Sexy Vampires: 0 out of 5. You missed the mark, bro. The vampires didn't do anything broody or artistic. You just don't understand the type of vamps Kandy digs, man. Try again. Don't try again. Please.

3rd Grade English: 0 out of 5. Holy shit this was seriously one of the least literate things I have ever read. And if you know me, you know I have read some fucking illiterate shit. Hell, I teach English as a second language and that shit is more legible than this.

Plot: 1 out of 5. I can't give it zero. Something did happen. But I literally had to go back to see if I missed something only to find out that I didn't. Mindblowing.

Overall: 1 out of 5. This is one of those stories that has it together so little that it isn't even that entertaining to make fun of it. It's like being proud of reading faster than a dyslexic kid. Oh well, at least it's over (although it did take a long time because I only just barely beat that kid).


If you are dyslexic, you might enjoy the simple tales of a very simple author at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.