Friday, August 8, 2014

TALKATIVE CORPSE: REVIEW in HEATHEN HARVEST

The Talkative Corpse, HOPELESS BOOKS' 2013 historical horror novel (to use these terms as loosely as humanly possible) gets some love from Heathen Harvest! :

http://heathenharvest.org/2014/08/03/the-talkative-corpse-a-love-letter-by-ann-sterzinger/

The hideous demonic manifestation calls itself Bertram, and informs him that he will destroy Kat, but only after Jaggo falls in love again. Additionally, killing off Kat comes with a price; Bertram must also kill someone Jaggo loves.

From here until the thrilling fireball-filled conclusion of the novel, Bertram follows Jaggo around, observing his movements, drinking all his beer and liquor, and making irreverent commentary. Inevitably, Jaggo meets a woman who is perfect for him, but he is afraid to fall in love with her for fear that she will be the one the animani takes as a price for Jaggo’s ill-advised incantation.

Much obliged, Heathens; much obliged. My occasional penchant for modern metal has not gone unrewarded by whatever Teutonic deity is in charge of karma (hey, I said it was occasional).

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Just recorded an interview with Doctor and the Heretic author Andy Nowicki...

... will post soon. Also, the Kindle version is now available!

Brand new paperback edition, with attractive matte finish cover and devilish cover art by Mike Browarski, available within 24 hours (or whenever the Amazon censor gnomes finish making sure my trim size isn't stupid)!

Friday, July 4, 2014

DOCTOR AND THE HERETIC: Reprint coming in mere days!

I hope you listened and did not pay the used book sharks, because the Mike Browarski cover for the second edition of Andy Nowicki's THE DOCTOR AND THE HERETIC AND OTHER STORIES is ready. A. It looks FANTASTIC, and B. The stuff inside is fantastic as well, as many reviewers and happy readers of the first edition could tell you more objectively than I could:

http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/08/the-doctor-and-the-heretic-and-other-stories/

So get ready. Andy and I will be interviewing each other about the release and our other new projects in the next couple of days to celebrate, so if you can't get enough of book nerds talking shop then you've got that to look forward to as well!


Friday, May 23, 2014

UPCOMING: Andy Nowicki's THE DOCTOR AND THE HERETIC (reprint)

If you aren't thrilled with the idea of paying eighty bucks for a gently used copy of THE DOCTOR AND THE HERETIC (AND OTHER STORIES) on Amazon, despair not (well, at least don't despair about that): Hopeless Books is going to reprint that sucker as soon as we can get a new cover for it.

Here's a teaser (one of my favorite bits):

Fenton always understood perfectly, in fact, that human suffering took many forms, and that its root reached down much deeper where its bitter fruit met the eye in its most spectacularly awful manifestations in the world. Genocide was bad, of course; hunger and poverty were intolerable; racial discrimination a disgrace, but even if it were possible to remedy these evils, you still wouldn’t have the thing out at its foul and festering origin, for the source of suffering lies in the very fact of life itself. ...


Yes, the Church had stepped to a certain point, to the very edge of the cliff in fact, but had refused to go farther. Fenton the newly-minted heretic now realized that he alone must go farther. His fated trajectory would lead him to a far distant destination.

Friday, April 11, 2014

O'Meara on Sterzinger

Does it seem like the same reviewers review all of our books? That's because once you taste one, you need to cram the whole thing in your head. Like a gigantic bag of salted snack chips, except we ain't selling ya artificial flavorings.

Review of GIRL DETECTIVES on Counter Currents

Friday, March 7, 2014

Oh yeah, Girl Detectives reviewed as well...

I was so busy coding goddamn 50-cent-off coupons for ten hours a day when this came out that I didn't even post it... Matt Forney is the first person to even bother to review this book since it was written in god knows when, I think I'm going prematurely senile. Thanks a lot, day job! You're always such a boon to my "career."

http://mattforney.com/?s=Girl+Detectives

REVIEW: BEYOND THE BUSH

It's a new kind of book... catch the train now or forever mud on your face, trendbitches. http://mattforney.com/2014/03/05/beyond-the-bush-by-robert-ignatius-dillon/

(Did I mention the review itself is entertaining? That's the way you do a review, FYI.)

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

INTERVIEW: Beauty and the Least

Andy Nowicki is making the poor man's talk show rounds once again... buy his books, people, get the man off this treadmill!

...although he kinda sounds like he's having fun talking to Matt Forney on his Podcast Extravaganza about the sinister side of beauty, among other interesting things... this is one of those interviews where you're going to need a pen to take down the reading suggestions. Not that you shouldn't buy BEAUTY AND THE LEAST first, of course...


HEAR IT HERE!

Friday, February 21, 2014

BEAUTY AND THE LEAST: Now out on Kindle!


 Cheap and lovely, just click here!



In other news, I've been so busy this week I didn't notice that Matt Forney reviewed Girl Detectives two days ago... http://mattforney.com/2014/02/19/girl-detectives-by-ann-sterzinger/


I need me one of them cushy-type jobs.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

OUT THIS THURSDAY! BEAUTY AND THE LEAST

Andy Nowicki's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST goes live this Thursday... in paperback and on Kindle!

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Interviews and release!

Matt Forney's Podcast Extravaganza features TWO Hopeless interviews this month:

1. Released this Tuesday, STINKING DEATH, ECSTATICAL LIFE was Forney's conversation with Ann Sterzinger (NVSQVAM, The Talkative Corpse) about why Lena Dunham and Dave Eggers should be thrown into the Tiber in a bagful of rats.

The podcast also covers Hopeless Books' upcoming release of Andy Nowicki's BEAUTY AND THE LEAST, Kingsley Amis's writing tips for his shitty son, how Celine got funnier as he kept getting blacker, the dedication to craft of today's aspiring journalists (hint: there was plagiarism—OF WIKIPEDIA!), and Generation X's official decision to adopt Forney so he doesn't wind up legally required to spend 20 hours a day writing essays about GIRLS and/or complaining about his latte: 


matt-forneys-podcast-extravaganza-episode-23-stinking-death-ecstatical-life/

2. Slated to come out Tuesday after next—AND ALSO SLATED TO COINCIDE WITH THE HOPELESS BOOKS RELEASE OF BEAUTY AND THE LEAST, hooray!—Forney will interview BEAUTY's author, Andy Nowicki (THE COLUMBINE PILGRIM, CONSIDERING SUICIDE). The duo's previous interview is archived here: 

 http://richard-spencer-xna0.squarespace.com/blog/category/generations

...and on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014, if all goes well, we will celebrate the simultaneous podcast (mattforney.com) and book release (right here, chum). Cheers!

Thursday, January 30, 2014

AT LAST! A teaser excerpt from Andy Nowicki's upcoming BEAUTY AND THE LEAST.


           
            Yes, that which is beautiful allures, entices, draws one to itself, invites one to partake in a seemingly heavenly embrace… yet one must understand the bitter riddle it represents. We need beauty, because beauty escorts us through our ordeals, infusing them with meaning; beauty, in short, helps us to feel less alone. But perhaps on this point I should “speak for myself,” as they say, rather than generalizing for all humanity, a group for which I am particularly loath to advocate, hearty misanthrope that I am.
             
             Yes! I will speak for myself, dropping all pretense of humanist piety. Yes, yes. It is best to approach things in such a manner, particularly since no one who reads these words will appreciate my insistence on putting themselves in my place, as I am a terrible man, indeed. No! Perhaps not a terrible man, but—all the worse!—simply a pitiful man, the sort you deride and laugh at, the sort whose behavior makes you cringe, and mutter to yourself, “There but for the grace of God…” But there is more to the story, and that “more” is what renders me terrible; yet even in my terribleness, I still remain essentially pitiful. Thus I am robbed even of the dignity that accompanies being a straightforward, thoroughgoing villain.


Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Defecating in your punkspit

And while we wait for BEAUTY AND THE LEAST to release, here's a hilarious review of Nowicki's past effort, the neo-Orwellian fable UNDER THE NIHIL...

at Jameslafond.com

"If you are a conservative man, even reading the first 12 pages would be like medieval dentistry, or more like having some punk spit in your face while you tried to brush your teeth.

If you are a woman, reading Under the Nihil would amount to reading the journal of the creep who fantasizes about raping and murdering you.

If you are a liberal person, reading this book would very likely leave you with the sensation that someone defecated in your brain, with the tragedy compounded by the fact that they did so with your consent."

In a similar vein, here's an old Replacements song! Enjoy.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Preface to “Beauty and the Least”

While we await the finishing details of the cover design for Andy Nowicki's BEAUTY AND THE LEAST with bated breath, I'll go ahead and tease you with a cut from my publisher's preface to the work. Don't worry, teasing swipes from the text itself will appear here on Thursday; it'll take me a bit longer to pick the most likely bit from that.


The intention of the nous, the question of whether God, or the Mind of the Universe, or however you imagine the face of your tormentor, has a plan for you—or whether he has it in for you— is off the table in our animated-graphics-packed world of public debate. 
 
The question of whether God is real or not makes far better video: Of course He’s good if He’s real, and there’s a Paradise you’ll be missing, you filthy and hideous sinner!—and if he isn’t, then of course you’re an ass for believing in him, and of course I’m right, you unwashed bumpkin! And of course the equally important question of who He, in His infinite love and wisdom, loves the best, is even more cinematic: Sometimes people throw punches! (Or airplanes.) 


For the time, it seems, the actual nature of the soul of the universe has been taken for granted, at least in the blessed realm of the televised and viral. Its inky black holes and meaningless waste spaces, literal and metaphorical, have been relegated to the less glamorous realm of science and the even less glamorous, more obscure, and tattered hovel of the written word. Fiction in particular.

Enter some losers.



OK, that's enough for now. Wait a few days and get ready to throw the author a few denarii for his labors, he's got a family to feed. And all profits that don't go to Amazon go directly to the authors. Go ahead, call me a hippie, I can take it.




Monday, January 27, 2014

TALKATIVE CORPSE reviewed...

...by one of the most hated life forms on the intertubes (so said a couple of bloggers, anyway), noted Celine fancier Matt Forney. Hooray for hate!


"And the ending… I won’t spoil it, but it had my jaw hanging, mainly because it’s a happy ending (by Sterzinger’s standards anyway).

The Talkative Corpse succeeds because it’s honest, brutally honest...

True loserdom isn’t your rich daddy sending you to rehab after one too many speedballs. It’s living paycheck to paycheck due to a rigged, failed economy. It’s being ritualistically humiliated day after day by your boss, who does it for no other reason than because she can. It’s being emasculated and dumped by your girlfriend of six years, then spending the next half-decade without so much as a kiss from another girl.

And true loserdom sure isn’t celebrated by the fucking mainstream media."

Review here:

http://mattforney.com/2014/01/22/the-talkative-corpse-a-love-letter-by-ann-sterzinger/

Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Talkative-Corpse-Love-Letter-ebook/dp/B00CAFUOG8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1390854612&sr=1-1

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Absolutely marvelous news... Andy Nowicki coming soon to Hopeless Books!

Yes, that's right...

...Due out at the end of this month, Hopeless Books will be publishing the latest tale of hell and hatred from my favorite brilliant and prolific gothic-Catholic-horror sickie, Andy Nowicki!

Oh, yes, that was a mouthful. And Nowicki's HOPELESS effort, BEAUTY AND THE LEAST, will be an eyeful, I guarantee it.


For now, here's a review of Nowicki's most recently published work, a collection of gemlike cris de coeur called LOST VIOLENT SOULS... enjoy!


"Stories full of warped goodness, wavering hope, slim desperation, torn belief, self-hate, outraged violence, death, life, agony, lust, youth, joy, and a black holy wonder about having to be alive, having to experience the here and now. Life for the characters — and by extension for all of us — is not a clean cut easy affair, but with a masters’ deft touch, Andy Nowicki manages to make it all end at just the right note, with just the right words."

Thursday, January 2, 2014

I didn't know there were best of the year lists for nihilist fiction...

But THE TALKATIVE CORPSE (now out as ebook and paperback as well on Amazon) is on Ben Arzate's!

In the not at all unpleasant (they aren't unpleasant, damn you, sunshine!) company of Celine, Florence King, Irvine Welsh, Ligotti, and Georges Bataille...

http://dripdropdripdropdripdrop.blogspot.com/2014/01/top-ten-favorite-reads-of-2013.html