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