what rhymes with chaos?

Zeb and the Great Ruckus: coming at you like a rampaging bewilderbeast in 2012

You might recall a little over a year ago I posted that I had finished my children’s fantasy novel Zeb and the Great Ruckus, and went on to describe how it would transform your child into a ninja-scientist-guitar-soloing human rights champion. Well, it’s taken a while, but I have finally inked a publishing deal in order to bring this little beast out into the light. When I returned from an eight day trek across the Ladakhi range of the Himalayas a few months ago I found an email in my inbox informing me that I had been offered a deal with Odyssey Books (who also published Foley Russel and That Poor Girl by my friend Rebecca Bloomer).  

 



The email that informed me of the offer was sent via satellite to Leh, the prayer flag drenched capital of Ladakh, India, located 3500m above sea level. I received it whilst typing away drowned in the delightfully rousing aroma of yak-scented mountain gear. It was five years ago in that  same city, whilst sitting on the rooftop of a ramshackle hotel  and staring out at the Himalayas, that I began writing my first novel A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India. Receiving this offer for my new book in that same city was a beautifully cyclical moment.

Here’s a brief synopsis: 

Zeb lives in the land of Bravura , where the oppressive Czar and his legion of Admonishers have outlawed art and music. The mystical Alephs, magical mouthless creatures that eat music with their ears, have long since disappeared into hiding.  When a letter from Zeb’s departed father urges him to seek out a legendary musician rumoured to be living somewhere deep in the forest, Zeb must set out with his best friend Flip to seek him out. Armed only with a ball of magic clay and a harmonica, Zeb and Flip face wolves, clockwork birds, an army of Admonishers and the bewilderbeast in their quest to find the lost musician and the Alephs and bring music back to Bravura.

As a teacher I got sick of reading stories to my students that were populated with saccharine characters, cheap wish fulfilment and 1950s values. 

I wanted to write the kind of book that makes kids shake their heads and articulately explain why they disagree instead of just nodding their heads when told to do so. 

I wanted to write a book that makes children appreciate the fact that art is not just a sprawling mass of pretty pictures and three-minute pop songs, but the most powerful communication tool in existence. 

I wanted to write a book that kids would read in their youth and return to in adulthood.

I wanted to write a book filled with explosions, clockwork birds, steel guitars and vats of weaponised toffee.

 

        +           +       =  ZEB

 

Zeb and the Great Ruckus is that book. It’ll be in stores sometime in 2012, which, according to various sources, may well be the end of the world. So at least you’ll have something fun to read during the Apocalypse.

 

Eighty Nine now available everywhere and everywhen

 



My contribution (as well as the other stories) from the Eighty Nine literary mixtapes anthology are now online. You can read them for free here, (you cheapskates), and then purchase a copy from the site or amazon if you want to hold it in your hot little hands. 

The writers participating in this anthology were each given a song from 1989 and instructed to link it to a historical event from that year and write a speculative fiction story. I'm not kidding, this was the best prompt I have ever been given. You can read reviews and such on goodreads here if you like to have other people form your opinions for you. Personally I just use an Indian outsourcing service. 

"Hey Krishna, what did I think of the new Ian McEwan book? Overly verbose huh? Self-indulgent pompous tripe? Well, sounds a bit harsh, but okay, if you say so..."

Eighty Nine now available for pre-order

The Eighty Nine anthology is now available for pre-order within Australia. This compilation features my contribution The Story Bridge, guaranteed to be the most hilarious sci fi story you'll read about attempted suicide all year. It is highly recommended that you purchase between 5 and 500 copies at your earliest convenience.

 

 

1989: a cusp between decades.

The year the Berlin Wall came down and Voyager went up. Ted Bundy and Emperor Hirohito died. The birth of the first Bush administration and computer virus.

In San Francisco and Newcastle the ground shook, in Chernobyl it melted. Tiananmen Square rocked the world and Tank Man imprinted on the international consciousness. Communism and Thatcherism began their decline, Islamic fundamentalism its rise.

It was the year Batman burst onto the big screen, we went back to the future (again) Indiana Jones made it a trifecta at the box office and Michael Damian told us to rock on.

Based on a play list of 26 songs released in 1989, Eighty Nine re-imagines the social, political, cultural and personal experiences at the end of the decade which gave the world mullets, crimped hair, neon-coloured clothing, acid-wash denim, keytars, the walkman, Live Aid, the first compact disc and MTV.

 

Eighty-Nine teaser trailer

 

Did you know books have trailers now? Yep, it's the 21st century. Although...um...this one is all about 1989. But set in the future, if that makes sense. Hey it's speculative fiction, we can do whatever the hell we want! This is a teaser trailer, full one coming soon.

 Eighty-nine features my contribution The Story Bridge guaranteed to be the most hilarious story you'll read about attempted suicide all year.

 

Review of Machiavelli's the (Artist Formerly Known as) Prince

Penguin books are currently running a competition inviting readers to write a review of their favourite Popular Penguin book. I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring. Here's my entry:

Niccolo Machiavelli's 'The Prince' is, without question, the single worst biography of the Artist Once Again Known As Prince that I have ever read.

Not only does it completely omit any information about Prince at all, it actually spends the entirety of its 110 pages seeking to offer the Artist counsel on how to most efficiently oppress his legions of fans through various political mechanisms and philosophies.

 "Aw HELL NO! You did NOT just tell me how to be the aggressively tryannical monarch of this imperial principality!"

I mean, don't get me wrong, I would vote for Prince whether he wanted to be the President of the USA or the president of my auntie Jill's Tuesday book club (and come to think of it they need a new president seeing as Mavis recently died in an unfortunate highland dancing related incident). However, to presume to give Prince advice on ANYTHING is insufferably presumptuous. Seriously Niccolo, this is the man who wrote PURPLE RAIN. Purple freaking rain! When you’ve sold 80 million albums, had your songs covered by everyone from Chaka Khan to Sinead O’Connor and directed/starred in three feature films then maybe you can start dispensing advice.

"Before all else, be armed (with a purple love symbol shaped guitar)."

Until then I suggest you just kick back, throw a copy of ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ on the stereo and party like it’s 1499.

 

 

 

 

Alliance of Best Smelling Authors

 

 

Due to mildly popular demand, I have now formed the official Alliance of Best Smelling Authors.

You can visit our facebook page HERE.

If you wish to be certified as a Best Smelling Author please post on the page with a description of why using words, interpretative dance, a 23 minute guitar solo or some sort of cake.

Swarm Regards,

JM Donellan

New York Limes best smelling author

Dearest Interwebs,

as you are probably aware, I am an author. An author is a bit like a politician in that we are paid money to make up lies, but an author does this extremely well for almost no money whereas a politician does this very badly for lots of money and sometimes a moat.

Like most authors, I have lofty dreams and ambitions, for the past five years these have included:

 

1 win literary awards 2 have a fan send me sexy photos 3 eat a whole pizza in one go. 4 get a job as a voice actor 5 BECOME A NEW YORK LIMES BEST SMELLING AUTHOR.

Having proudly accomplished the first four goals, I am now ready tackle the fifth.  I have just sent the following email to numerous supermakets in NYC:

Dearest Sir/Madam/Automatic response bot,

My name is JM Donellan, and I am an author from the faraway land of Australia where no actually we do not ride kangaroos to work and don't look much like Crocodile Dundee at all but thanks for asking.

"Mate, if you tried to ride me I'd kick yer fucken face off."

Like many authors, I have long dreamed of being awarded the prestigious title of 'New York Limes Best Smelling Author.' I would like to invite YOU!!!! to become part of an exciting opportunity to help me get that thing that I want.  My plan, at present, is to purchase some of your limes (perhaps a baker's dozen) and use them to create some kind of cologne which I will then douse myself in, allowing me to achieve my dreams
just like Oprah and whoever wrote 'the Secret' keep telling me I should do.

I would prefer if you would send me limes actually grown in New York, but if this is not possible then I would prefer that they have at least been in New York for a little while and have had a chance to visit its major tourist attractions like the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty, Mos Def's house and, of course, Limes Square.

Here's an example I prepared earlier.

Probably postage will be quite expensive because Australia is very far away, but I'll be visiting New York in December and I promise I'll pay you back then. Also in Australia we don't usually like food coming in from other countries because of our fragile
ecosystem with lots of weird animals that want to kill you, so could you please write THIS BOX DEFINITELY DOES NOT CONTAIN LIMES SO DON'T OPEN IT JUST DELIVER IT TO JM DONELLAN (PLEASE) in big letters on the box?

Thank you for your time.

Swarm Regards,

JM Donellan

100 stories release & Electric Youth

The paperback of 100 stories for Queensland will be finally released on May 17. eMergent publishing is hosting a 'chart rush' in order to push to get the book as high on the amazon sales chart as possible. Here's a link to the facebook event, make sure you get amongst it and show the world that people read books that don't have titles like 'You Deserve Everything Right Now! How to get all the things you ever wanted for no reason without working for them.' or 'The Omega Conspiracy Complex Agenda: A Jack Spyhero novel.'

You can order the book from amazon HERE.

100% of the proceeds of this anthology will be donated to the The Queensland Premier's Flood Appeal. You can hear an interview of me talking about the book and other things on the 4zzz book show here (thanks Fraser Wright for the recording):

interview with 4zzz book show

My next project will be writing for the Literary Mixtapes project, I've been asked to write a story based on Debbie Gibson's 'Electric Youth.' FUCK. YES.

 

 In next week's adventures: Why I Hate Pandas & Other Tales.

 

 

Dearest spawn: words of wisdom for the future

Recently I was requested to write some words of wisdom for the as yet unborn child of two of my very dear friends. Having a great deal of words but a rather appalling dearth of wisdom, I soon found myself overwhelmed by the grandiose responsibility of providing the literary form of a guiding light in the darkness to a not yet fully downloaded human child foetus. I ended up crying in the corner in much the same manner of a new born babe for several hours before consoling myself by thinking about breasts (again, much like in the manner of an infant).

My life is so freakin sweet! People lavish attention

on me constantly and everyone thinks it's adorable when I burp or

defecate! I hope the rest of my life is exactly like this!

This whole ordeal got me thinking; if I were to one day be so cruel as to decide to subject the world to the burden of my offspring, what words would I give the little bastard to send them on their way before I suffer an untimely death by turtle mauling or fireworks and pogo stick incident?

Here's what I came up with. Feel free to cut and paste this for your own use.

Dearest spawn,

Congratulations on being selected from millions of potential sperm candidates to become my progeny!

I have decided to bequeath unto you some words of wisdom for the future. However, the future which you will inhabit will doubtlessly differ greatly from the present. Hence the best advice I am able to give you has been obtained primarily from science fiction novels.

This is what people in the past thought time machines

would look like. What a bunch of morons.

It doesn't even have an ipod dock!

1 If you ever get sent back into the past DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING. Not even breasts. (Sidenote: Infancy is the only time in your life when you will be able to gain access to breasts by merely screaming and crying. ENJOY IT.)

2 If you ever get sent to a gorgeous utopian future TOUCH EVERYTHING because you are obviously dreaming. The future is going to be a horrible, horrible place. Really, it will be just awful.

3 Just because everyone else in the world is wearing tight fitting silver suits doesn't mean that you have to. In fact, by wearing a variant outfit you substantially increase the likelihood of being the star of the piece.

4 Big Brother is watching. And he is fucking bored.

5 Soylent Green, while delicious, is no substitute for a healthy balanced diet.

6 Soma, while delicious, is no substitute for a healthy balanced diet.

 

7 Don't do it, she's a robot!

8 Don't do it, she's a clone!

9 Don't do it, she's you from a parallel universe where you've had an extremely convincing sex change operation!

10 When all your human parts are eventually replaced by cybernetic enhancements, make sure you shell out the extra bucks for the extended warranty. No one wants a future where you have to buy a replacement prostate every three months.

11 Floss

 

Letter to the Editors (the UK band)

 

Dear the Editors,

 

How are you? I am very well, thanks for asking and for also realising I was not just a spambot. Sometimes people think that and it's quite awkward, especially when it's at a cocktail party rather than an internet forum.

Anyway, let's cut straight to the not boring bit shall we? I recently completed the draft of my new novel Adonis Comma Coma. Yes, I know it is a weird title. I have a thing for weird titles okay? And no it's not going to feature the words 'a novel' written in slightly smaller print underneath the actual title. Why do novels always do that these days? If you've picked up a book in the fiction section of the bookshop entitled 'the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' and you think it's some kind of factual guide to thermonuclear dynamics then you really obviously aren't smart enough to read a book in any case. Some day I'm going to write my life story and call it: 'A Novel' with the words (an autobiography) written in smaller letters underneath. Take THAT society!

 

The point is that now the draft is completed I need someone to edit it for me, so I punched 'editors' into google and your website was the first that came up, which I assume means that you are the best Editors on the internet.

 

 
This is a picture to prove I am not lying. I don't often use these, because I am usually lying.

So what's the book about you ask? It's about 100 000 words. Some of these words include: 'and', 'of', 'Marilyn Monroe, 'synesthesia' 'the' 'murder' 'kandinsky' 'kaleidoscopic', 'grandiloquent' and 'cheese'. I'm not sure what your fee structure is but my present budget allows for either $15.79 in cash OR three hundred and eighty six pairs of size 9 converse all star plaid coloured shoes that I definitely did NOT obtain illegally. Alternatively you can invoice me.

This is where I file my invoices. (And bad story ideas).

Now I understand that editing a book takes quite some time, and you probably have touring and recording and being photographed in black and white looking dour duties to attend to. So just to make the process a little smoother, I'm willing to fill in for whichever one of you decides to take on the task of editing this book. Just for the record, I can play bass very well, guitar oh well, drums well, well, well... and sing Timmy fell down the well.

 

Thanks, I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours Since Clearly,

JM Donellan