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.

Zombie Christmas

You'd be surprised at how many Christmas horror stories I had to wade through before I settled on this. It's The Dead of Winter by William T. Tripp.

(Link)

Description:

"It's winter in the zombie apocalypse, and three men see a light in the east. What could it mean?"

Eh? Get it? Three wise men? Jesus? Dead of Winter? Get it? No? Then I'll tell you. This is a story about Melcher, Jaspar, and Ballard, three dudes that see a search light in the zombie apocalypse. Just in case you didn't know, the three Magis' names were Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. There's no freaking way you would notice that, though, unless you read the description and the title and then the story and then made a blog post about Zombie Christmas and read the title and description again and said to yourself, "Oh. Huh."

Well the three wise men go toward the light, encountering no zombies on the way. Once there, Melcher runs ahead when he hears an infant crying and startles a man, who they promptly kill. Turns out the dude's name was Joey. Eh? Get it? Joseph? Baby Jesus? Get it?

So the kid's cries attract Herod, or the zombies or whatever, and the light stays on just long enough for a man named Red to come with his helicopter, piloted by a man named Donnor, and shoot all the zombies. Get it? Like when Santa Claus came and visited the manger?

The End.

Other than the weird Christmas Easter egg thing, this story was spectacularly uneventful. It is a really good example of zombie fiction that fails at even using the zombie gimmick to prop itself up. Let's analyze for a sec.

First, Melcher is a former "squad leader" for the National Guard. This means that the author probably hasn't been anywhere near the military, but that's not a huge issue. It is incredibly cliche to have a former military guy leading a small band in zombie fiction, and it also ruins the Magi metaphor. What, now he's like the equivalent of a Roman soldier? I know you looked up the three magis' names, you could have just read the rest of the page. I don't think it's too highbrowed of me to expect that. Although the names are pretty damned half-assed.

And the zombies are named Zed. Man, that seems clever, almost like you ripped it off, dude. Maybe you can give me some advice, I am writing a story about really short people that don't wear shoes and have curly hair and hang out with wizards. I'm thinking of calling them fucking Hobbits, what do you think?

The names I can overlook, but there was absolutely nothing original about this story. He described the zombies in their cars, unable to get out as if it hadn't been in every zombie fiction ever, and went on for like half his story about how they still performed useless, muscle-memory tasks. What next, will you describe that they smell like rotting flesh and amble slowly? Or that they eat human flesh? Good thing there is something else to this story.

Oh wait, there fucking isn't. It wasn't even original in its shittiness, like the other stories I review; it was an utter waste of time. I would have learned more if I had used that time to find out how many times I can blink in a minute--over and OVER.

Ratings:

Christmas Allusions: Fail out of 5. What the hell, dude? I hope you really think Santa Claus saved Jesus from the Romans and that the three wise men fucking brutally murdered Joseph. The only creative part was the last paragraph being a parody of The Night Before Christmas, and I'm pretty sure the author copied that down from his sixth grade science notebook from the time he showed it to all his friends and they laughed sooo hard!

Emotion: 0 out of 5. You can have an unoriginal story and it's fine as long as you have emotions, but the most we got out of this guy was Mary being teary-eyed. And even at that, these dudes stormed in and killed her husband and she was just like, "What did you do that for? Now he won't be alive anymore." Then the wise men got on the chopper with Santa and everything was right...

Zombies: The point of them is to be scary. They are literally like the worst thing we can think of. But no, let's just write a story where the only danger is Melchior being too jumpy and slaughtering Jesus's dad. Sorry if that seems sacrilegious, don't blame me, blame the guy that wrote it. 0 out of 5.

Overall: 2 out of 5. I'm not worse off having read this. Still, it was pointless. But don't take my word for it!


Just take a look, it's in a book, at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Frustration Event

This week it's Extinction Event... err, sorry, EXTINCTION EVENT by Wil Adams. But first, Wil, you have to add another "l" to your name. Only Wil Wheaton gets away with that, and just barely.

(Link)

Now, Will, let me tell you when I read your description, I knew this was a fit:

"One of the hottest e-short stories of the year is Extinction Event. A first person account of the end of life on Earth as we know it."

Yes, even the author agrees it is great. No, no, I get it, it's 2012, very clever. I'm not so sure what the picture is supposed to be there... the main character has nothing to do with the military, even defies governmental authority in the story, but there are no military men. Anyway...

I actually liked some of this guy's descriptions; it seems like he's a student of art or something. But just when he's about to do something great he does something haphazard that makes me feel like I'm reading unedited drunken rantings. For example: "I paused for a moment to ponder: what happened to all the existentialists, the religious, the nihilists? They had all disappeared once it was clear the world was endiwlefj FUCK YOIU I"M NNOT DRUNK" Okay, that's not really in there. Here's an actual example:

"The yard in front of the duplex is surreal--like a work by Dali or someone. A Buick--front end crumpled around the trunk of a palm tree--near the verge of my yard. Two SUVs lay like beaten dogs at the junction between the street and the sidewalk. The body of a young Oriental woman has rolled from one of them and lies like exotic flotsam in the green grass of my lawn. If I look closely perhaps I will see the gray color of her brain through the jagged fracture that mars her otherwise flawless face. I do not look."

At first glance this paragraph seems kinda artful, other than the weird emdashes. But then you're like "the verge of my yard?" That's odd. "I sat on the precipice of my chair reading this." And who makes a simile of beaten dogs like that... does this guy beat dogs enough for them to be a clearer image in his head than a car on its side (which we've all seen)? And do people still use the word Oriental? Isn't that supposed to be offensive? And mars is just a strange word altogether. Isn't grass almost always green? And this is only magnified by a bitchload of typos sprayed throughout so I have to wonder what's really going on here. This was my example of a good paragraph of his. The bad ones go something more like, "In she rushes, and without a 'hello' a 'bye your leave' or anything more than..." The fuck? And I promise you I gave you more context and preparation for that sentence than the story did.

So when I get to the part where culturally his Latino woman literally leaves him a note like, "It is your responsibility as a man to figure out how to save my life so you have to do it," and you're like "Is this unreliable narration using absurdity to-?" No. Because he does save the entire world, single-handedly, because of his Latin machismo, by getting on the internet and telling NASA all they need to do is launch every nuclear warhead on earth at the moon to knock it out of the sky (no, don't even go google that, it's NOT fucking possible). If you think I'm joking you clearly haven't read any of the stories I've reviewed so far.

Ratings:

Drunk: "On a scale of one to ten, I'm soooooo wasted." Or watching TV or trying to escape a burning building or something. I'm not going to be a grammar nazi, because I'm convinced anyone with eyes could fix these grammar mistakes.

Badassitude: 10 out of 5. Yeah it was really edgy when you used all those ellipses, and mentioned the cat eating a child's eye and a woman clawing her face open and a crushed stroller and took the extra letter off your name and, shit, man, I don't know where the hell you get all these badass ideas.

Conflict Resolution: 0 out of 5. Come on, man, anything would have done better than "but I have to prove I'm a man...fuck it, MAGIC, the end."

Overall: Uh...2.5 out of 5. It wasn't so bad until the second half. But the second half was complete shit. Wish I had something more entertaining to say to that. Uh.... uh.... poop! HA!

Haha seriously poop. Get it? amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Shit Sense

Let me explain. Today I read two short stories. The first was a gay romance about angels and demons and it was just too boring to review. It turned out to be just like a pretty crappy story surrounding a gay sex scene, and I didn't have it in me to make a bunch of gay jokes and call it good or whatever so I decided I needed to find something truly shitty to read. I mean, I pride myself on being able to spot good material just by the cover and title on the first try, so I was disappointed. But then I saw this one and my shit senses tingled. It's called Fear Sense by Ron Schrader. Heh, no offense if your name is Ron, but it just seems like you're already at a disadvantage with that name because your parents have got to be weird.

 

(Link)

Check out the cover! That font just says Ron all over it. And the shitty ominous wolf behind the cloud of MSPaint spray-paint mist? This looks enthralling. Here's the description:

"After a vicious attack on their village, Aiden and Cade escape to the mountain with only their rifles and wits, hoping to find safety from the beast and it's killing spree. They soon learn that they are not alone and in fact are being hunted. 'Fear Sense' is an easy read that both teens and adults will enjoy

Note: This short story is 4,126 words in length.

About the Author: Ron Schrader has been writing since as early as grade school, focusing primarily on short stories. In November 2012 he finally made the decision to begin publishing his work. Ron's stories are written for adults, but kept clean enough that his own young children can enjoy them as well."

Aiden and Cade? Who names someone Aiden? Hey, by the way, by young children how young do you mean? 'Cause like I'm pretty sure you graphically described a lot of violence in here including a guy with a severed leg bleeding to death in front of the main character. I'm glad I didn't read this to my five-year-old daughter before bed, because she would be terrified of your shallow descriptions of manikin-like emotions, Ronald!

This story is best reviewed by plot synopsis. So Aiden and Cade, a pair of boys that are more bi-curious than the duo in the gay erotica I read earlier, are trying to get to the mountain peak. Almost immediately Cade is half eaten in the most confusing scene ever written. They see the beast's eyes and then: "I pulled my rifle out, aimed and fired. The canyon echoed into dead silence once again. I rushed to the two black lumps that lie on the cold canyon floor, lifeless in the pale light of the rising moon." I can only assume this means he killed the black lumps dead. Since they are lifeless.

Well the lumps turn out to be living things, neither of which are lifeless, and one of which is a mauled Cade. Cade sa...ys...some...th...i...n...gs....dramatically in annoying ellipses, but then suddenly Ron realizes he has only written like a thousand words and has to drag this story on a little longer. Aiden decides to carry Cade, they find a cave where a villager dies in front of him, Cade can then walk again because it's more convenient for him to be standing away from Aiden for the part where Cade gets attacked again, and he dies after all. Piss luck.

Aiden realizes that the cave from before was the beast's den and he is pissed off and gonna kill it even though the two times he has shot it before did basically nothing. Don't worry, Ron has this covered. Aiden goes into the den and is promptly and casually killed.

Then he wakes up. Fuck you, Ron.

Well, at least the story doesn't end there. Cade comes and helps calm a freaked-out Aiden. "It's just a dream bro... No, I didn't mean you should stop holding me..." Then Aiden explains that there was a strange mist right before sunset and a stranger came to the village with insane eyes like he'd seen some crazy shit then the village was attacked. That jolts Ron, who, like a teenage girl that bumped into her friend at the store and wanted to tell everyone how "ironic" it was, literally says "with a sudden fear in his countenance, 'It's really foggy out right now, and the sun is about to set.'" Get OUT.

They go outside, and sure enough there's a crazy dude with wild eyes, and they shoot that bastard dead! Teach you for seeing beasts.

Well the beast doesn't come after that and Ron ends his tale with a "maybe there was no beast after all, maybe they were just imagining things, or maybe..." Yeah. Maybe they committed murder for no reason. You think about that, Ron? I'm gonna give this story to my children now.

Ratingsss:

Grammar: 0 out of 5. One minute they we're just walking then, I couldnt follow the story becau'se the phrasing got all not normal and misnaturalized with apostrophe's added in random places.

Plot: 1 out of 5. He had conflict. Oh wait, then it was all just a dream. But it was psychological. But not in the way that he investigated any feelings at all, especially not ones concerned with shooting a complete stranger dead in the middle of the street.

Beginner's Luck: Nah, now I'm just being mean. Don't stop writing, Ron. Do go back and edit your stuff. But then again, he did say he had been writing since elementary school. It all makes sense now! This is the story from elementary school, right? I should publish my stuff from school. I wrote a series about a kid that saved a family of tigers, and one about getting sucked into a game of Risk. But then Jumanji came out. Fuck you, Robin Williams!

Overall: 2 out of 5, I guess. This story was not tense or scary like it was meant to be, but it seems like he knows that and aimed it at teens, or preteens or something. You remember Goosebumps? That shit is not at all scary if you read it as an adult. But, it also didn't have people bleeding to death pleading for their children and shit. I guess the point is: find your audience and stick to it, Ron.

If you want to read my story about the board game coming to life, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Boob Sucker

So this week I read something really original. It was called Fat Sucker, by Lotus Rose (definitely a pen name).

(Link)

Here's a description:
"Poor pudgy Tina...she's tried all kinds of diets that didn't work. But then one day she sees an infomercial about pills that absorb fat! She tries them and they prove to be remarkably effective...

Includes the bonus story, Noah's Ark Between 2 Buns, a story explaining the truth about hopping smiling chicken nuggets!"

Nah, I didn't read the bonus story, which I think is actually longer than the title story. I did, however, read up more on this Lotus character, because the story was... strange.

I thought it was a woman at first, but you have to check this guy out. Here's his picture:

Haha, okay it makes sense now. We have gone full nerd. That is seriously the picture he chose to represent himself. And I just can't let you miss out on his bio. I will bold the particularly hilarious part for you:

"Lotus Rose writes delightfully weird tales about young characters in strange situations. At times dark, silly, or bawdy, his writing owes much to such influences as Alice in Wonderland and Roald Dahl, Piers Anthony and Douglas Adams, and explores themes like disillusionment, and the corruption of innocence. If his books were movies, they'd likely be directed by Tim Burton. He often writes in a style that is a more edgy, "grown-up" version of children's literature interspersed with his poetry and songs.

Here's a short poem he wrote:"

I'll spare you the poem. I like that his list of favorite authors reveals he has read like two books ever. And yeah, if by children's literature you mean literature written by children. BOOM! ZING, KAPOW! The list of his other works includes "5 Tales of Erotic Horror" and "Malice in Wonderland."

At least he's not boring. That brings me to the story. It was interesting. I'm not saying it wasn't horribly written, because it was, but it was definitely unique, and had some funny moments.

My first impression was "This shit is hilarious." Not really because he meant it to be, but because of his descriptions. He can't think of other words to use so he just repeats his adjectives to hammer the point in. They read something like, "The pudgy girl was really pudgy. Her pudginess was at levels of pudgy." Dude, there's another word for pudgy in your title!

Well fine, it was still entertaining, her being stupid ('cause fat=stupid, DUH) and eating a whole thing of Slim Jim's after taking a diet pill then wondering why she gained weight and then going on a pill-eating rampage. I thought it was social commentary, but after reading a bit about this Lotus character I think it's just autobiographical.

Anyway, after that I got a little bored until I read this description and laughed out loud (brackets are my words): "The pain was the worst pain she had ever felt, [This description is genius! I can't wait to read more of your poetry.] times two. [My god, upping the ante from the worst to double the worst!?] She trembled, then she trembled more violently. [Fuck thesauruses!] Then she fell over into a floppy thud. Then she rolled up into a pudgy ball. [Hahaha!]" So you see, I can't tell if this guy is intentionally doing this or not, but it's funny.

Things get absurd when she actually loses a ton of weight and all the pills she took start literally attracting fat to her like a magnet and absorbing it. The story comes to an abrupt and hilarious end when (Spoiler) she confesses her love to her crush and in the following embrace he is sucked into her boobs. That's it.

Ratings:

Huh!?: 5 out of 5. What can I say, I have no idea what the hell is going on anymore. This story could probably make the Pope into a nihilist...

Lol.: 5 out of 5. This was really funny. I think it was supposed to be funny, but I think most of the parts that were supposed to be funny I didn't laugh at and most of the serious stuff I did laugh at. Including the dude's picture.

Pilled Out of His Mind Levels of English: 5 out of 5. This dude is on drugs. Five seconds around his writing and you feel it.

Overall: 2 out of 5. I thought that a teenage girl had written it, and I was gonna give her props for being so creative. But a grown man wearing a pink feather boa wrote this. Probably the same one he wears while DMing D&D games and his friends all hate it. No thank you sir!

Read what I wrote wearing nothing but a pink feather boa at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.

The Story That Ate My Week

This week (and last week) I read an English author, Thomas Murphy, writing about the American Civil War. What? Yeah. The story was called "The Vine That Ate The South" (Yeah, fine, let's just capitalize everything).

(Link)

You got rights for that picture, bro? Well you might think from the cover, the fact that it's about the Civil War, and the title being a reference to Kudzu (the vine that actually ate the South) that this is a non-fiction, historical account. You thought wrong. Did you really expect a British author to write a factual account of the Civil War? Here is the description:

"A story told from multiple perspectives of a fateful decision taken during the darkest days of the American Civil War. Including a cast of characters including President Abraham Lincoln, a mysterious war photographer and an ardent genius biologist; this alternate history sci-fi tale tackles the lengths good men will go to to prevent evil happening in the world."

Well my first impression of this story has to do exactly with that description. "Cast of characters" in a short story isn't a good thing. He had like a paragraph from one person's POV then went on to the next like some sort of fiction version of Debbie Does Dallas. I mean that his fiction whores around, not that Debbie Does Dallas was a true story, although it might have been, you never know. This schizophrenic switching of inner dialogue serves the much  needed purpose of letting us feel every step the painful experience of this guy trying to drag a story out of his ass after getting high and watching the History Channel and hearing them dramatically say, "the vine that ate the South" and thinking how like totally badass would it be if he wrote a story about a vine that literally was like scary as shit. It's pretty apparent that he got a couple words in and had no idea where to go next, so he decided to just throw in another character.

I think he kept watching the History Channel too, because this story reads like an equally uninspired special of theirs. He lists off things regularly that make it pretty apparent he looked at that Wikipedia page, which is actually probably the same method History Channel uses. On the upside he could probably submit this story to them and they'd pick it up immediately. This post seems to be veering in a certain direction, so let's just bring it back to how the story feels like a fucking awful, half-assed, fictional, shitty network tells history. It's just pretty dry and flavorless overall; it's like the scones of stories (take that British! HA! Your cooking is bad too and I forced a joke about it!) I mean, there's a war going on, but all the action is just referenced coldly like a bunch of old East India Company generals playing snooker and chatting about how to put down those Indian dogs. Alright, again there seems to be an agenda happening, let's get back to the story. Sorry.

This guy did a pretty good job at writing in American English, but the first time he said "realise" or "theatre" or whatever, I definitely noticed. And yeah, if you're British and writing a story set in America it definitely needs to be combed and put in American English. The same goes for knowing the history of the Civil War in order to write an alternate history. YES, it's tedious, especially if you're British, that's why I have no clue why this guy tried it. What's the point, man? But if you're gonna half-ass it also, that's like telling me you will tell me how many jelly beans are in that jar then counting like half of them and doubling your number for a stupidly educated guess. Now I'm pissed at you for making me wait while you counted all those damn beans.

That brings me to the actual story. It's an alternate history about a technology that killed civilians as well as armies. First, dude, that's not very original, you just got the time wrong, it's called World War II and the atom bomb. Second, you put all this effort in trying to make Lincoln look like he was noble and shit not knowing that civilians would die. But in the real history if you would have looked shit up beyond "union losses civil war" there was a guy called Sherman, and he like fucking invented killing civilians as a means to winning.

Rateses:

Badassery: 1.5 out of 5. Throbbing red vines didn't do it for me, but I'm not gonna judge. The part where people clawed at their throats until they bled was cool. Everything else was boring.

Points of View: 1 out of 5. So many POV changes. Damn, dude. And this will inevitably lead to slip-ups. Like when he thought of a cool description of a fat man walking in a funny way and put it in during the same man's point of view. What, is he having an out of body experience or something?

Ending: 5 out of 5. I knew he was gonna pull the "I'm going to Ford's Theater!" mindfuck or whatever you want to call it, but it was hilarious that his dramatic ending somehow made it though with Lincoln's wife calling him a woman. Literally: 'Mary, where can we be reached?' 'Fords' Theatre, Miss.' Oh yeah, and dude, quotation marks look like THIS: ""

Overall: 2 out of 5. I didn't hate reading actually, it was just almost completely a waste of time. I do appreciate him trying to put in the effort to not misrepresent my country though.

Submit your complaints to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.

Apology Post

I just want to tell all my super loyal followers that I'm sorry for not posting last week. It's Nanowrimo and that apparently means replace blogging with procrastination over writing a novel. But, I am going to post this week. Does that make up for it?

This week I read "A Good Clean, A Harsh Clean" by Brian Martinez.

(Link)

Here's a descripty:

"A man walks into a bar, his hands smelling of bleach. All he wants is a drink and an alibi, but what he gets is an encounter with a loud, old man. As they talk he realizes they share a very personal and very dangerous link.

A short story for fans of Dark, edgy and Noir fiction."

I don't know why he capitalized Dark but other than that it sounds like an okay hook. I have to admit though, I have read like zero Noir fiction. That's why I liked this story. You read right: I liked this story.

The Noir thing might be too cliche for fans of the genre, but then again if you're a fan of the genre you are into that sort of thing. For me it read exactly like Noir sounds like it would. Everything is grungy, the dude has drinking and women problems, and everything is in black and white (except the blood).

This dude used a lot of stuff that sounds like it might be overused (again, if I read any Noir) but that I have personally never seen before. For example: "I grabbed a swig, phrased it like a question." That sounds so utterly Noir that it has to be stolen, right? Or how 'bout this: "I nodded to him because it was all I could think to say." Yeah, he's definitely walking the line between clever and forcing it, but I don't think he crosses that line too much.

Except with this line: "...putting blood in his spittle, which, by the way, is a word I hate. Probably why I use it so much." No, now you have broken the fourth wall, sir. That isn't Noir, that is just something you don't do unless it's that kind of story.

The ending of this thing wasn't great, but that's not really the point of reading something like this. It's more the ride along the way. The guy pretty much tells you what is going to happen in the description, it's how he gets there that's interesting.

And thus without a single joke in this post so far, let's go to ratings.

Noir: 5 out of 5. If I can know this story hits the Noir mark without any reference to the genre other than Prairie Home Companion, it's good enough for me. (That isn't to say PHC isn't a genius work of satire for our times. And that man's voice is SO smooth!)

Plot: 2 out of 5. "What!? But I thought you said you liked it." Shut up! I already told you the plot doesn't really matter since the voice was so good.

Depressing Events Having an Ironically Sort of Not Depressing Outcome: 3 out of 5. Of course it still had to be depressing and grungy and all Sin City and shit, but I can appreciate when there is a sort of blessing in disguise message or end result. But he did come close to breaking the fourth wall again pointing out that's what he had just done, so minus points there. See what I did though? Now you have to read it to find out what I'm talking about.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Yeah, like I said, I liked it. Sorry, I'll try to read something shittier next time so my post will be more entertaining.

Read something shitty right now at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.