what rhymes with chaos?

"Look ma, I got a book deal!"

 

Why hello there!

I have an announcement to make. A big one. As in, the size of an obese elephant with elephantiasis that has had an enlarging rhinoplasty procedure recently undertaken. No, I'm not getting married and I'm not pregnant (after all, any IDIOT can get married or have kids!)

I've found a new publisher and I've entered into a long-term arrangement to give them first rights to all my future books. Which, I suppose, is sort of like a business marriage come to think of it. So if you'd like to provide me with large quantities of expensive silverware and white goods please go right ahead! I chose to sign with Pantera Press for a number of reasons.

1) They asked me. Yes, I know, very droll, but I'm serious. Even after having a moderately successful first book that had rave reviews in a number of magazines and decent sales for a first time author with almost no marketing, as well as getting my second book picked up by another publisher, it was still ridiculously hard to find publishers willing to take a chance on an author who refuses to write crime fiction, erotica, vampire romance or diet tips. 

2) Pantera's motto is 'good books doing good things.' They have a strong philanthropic ethos and they support causes such as the Smith Family's Let's Read program and the Walkley awards for excellence in journalism, because reading is fucking important and some people seem to forget that (I'm looking at you Campbell Newman). They also publish the Why vs. Why series, which promotes public debate on issues like gay marriage and nuclear power. I'm not shy about my political views, but I think whatever side of the fence you stand on it's important to be educated and informed about issues and not just shove your uninformed vitriolic diatribe down other people's throats (I'm STILL looking at you Newman!)

3) Pantera are a family run independant business, distributed through Simon & Schuster, one of the largest publishers in the world. This means that they have the innovative, adventurous and ambitious approach of a great indie publisher partnered with the distribution and marketing reach of a large publisher. Also, their royalty rates are insanely generous. I know art isn't supposed to be about the money, but it is hard to keep that in mind when you've just had to sell a kidney so that you can pay for your phone bill. (I've only done this once. It should be fine. Humans have like, six kidneys, right?) 

The first book I've given them, which will be out next year, is Adonis Comma Coma. It's a twisted dark comedy that I'm going to describe as being a bit like Arrested Development, only more psychotic and supernatural. 

 

I've just about drunk my own weight in champagne during the last week celebrating, and will now need to drink my own weight in berocca to recover. I want to say a really big thank you to everyone that's supported me so far, whether it's been just reading this blog or my first book or writing reviews on amazon or goodreads or proofing drafts or buying me beers or collaborating on anthologies or whatever. It really does mean the world to me. I promise when you bring out your first book I'll do the same for you! Or you know, your restaurant or particle accelerator or skin moisturiser enhanced with jojoba extract and DNA altering exfoliants or radical quantum theory or whatever the hell else you want reviewed and promoted. 

 

 

Inaugural Premier's Obituary Award

My Dearest Queensland, I have just returned from a weekend swimming in your resplendant blue waters at Stradbroke island, followed by two nights in the majestic sunshine coast hinterland, only to return to Brisbane and discover that Campbell 'I hate the arts so much you'd think they strangled my puppy' Newman has scrapped the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Bewilderingly, he has deigned to do this during The OFFICIAL YEAR OF READING. Did no one send him a memo? Perhaps they did, and he didn't read it. After all, he has publicly stated that he's 'not into studies and plans.' Not sure how he managed to get an engineering degree, if that's the case...

The money he's 'saving' is a paltry $224 000, an amount that is miniscule in terms of a state budget, but means a great deal to the arts. We are talking about BOOKS here! In the words of George R. R. Martin (via Tyrion Lannister): "The mind need books like a sword needs a whetstone." Newman, it would appear, is all too happy to have some very blunt swords at play.

"If I had to choose between Joffrey and Newman... Hrm. Is there a third option? Stabbing my eyes out with a fork perhaps?"

The loss of the Premier's Literary Award is a devastating blow to the QLD literary community, and if there's one thing I've learnt from a misspent youth reading too many fantasy novels, revenge is a cycle which always ends in joyous victory of good over evil with no sideline ramifications whatsoever. That's why I am, today, right now, announcing the Inaugural Premier's Obituary Award. Whoever can create the most amusing protest (of any kind) against this atrocity, or Mr. Newman in general, will receive:

  +   + 

+ ZEB AND THE GREAT RUCKUS (Um...it doesn't have a cover design yet...)

1 x copy of Reading Madame Bovary The last (ever!?) book to win the Premier's Fiction award

1 x signed copy of my first novel A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India

1 x signed copy of my forthcoming novel Zeb and The Great Ruckus (Due for release later this year).

20 x new release CDs from both major and indie labels. (From my other job as a music reviewer. Selection will depend on what the hell they give me).

All of this will be hand delivered by me. I'll even make you dinner if you like. (Although I am a terrible cook.)

Email your entries (photos/word docs/media files/whatever you’ve got) to jmdonellan(AT)gmail(DOT)com by June 30th. The winner will be decided on August 30th.

You should also sign this petition to have the award reinstated and check out the Queensland Literary awards, recently established by Krissy Keen and Matthew Condon.

 

Eighty Nine book trailer

Hey look! My first ever book trailer! For a compilation I was part of recently, featuring my piece 'The Story Bridge' set here in Brisbane in the nearish future.

More info here:

http://literarymixtapes.com/our-anthologies/eighty-nine/

 

 

Paper girl festival video interview

 

 

Writers aren't used to having our faces (or any other parts) on camera. Despite spending most of our lives desperately trying to communicate through the use of various combinations of 26 letters and a small selection of punctuation marks that the modern world is increasingly less interested in correctly utilising, we are a species that is frequently heard but never seen. 

Unless you're J.K. Rowling or Tara Moss, no one knows what the hell you look like. I've read maybe a half a dozen of Irvine Welsh's books and I couldn't even begin to guess at his physical appearance. For all I know he's a morbidly obese man with a prolific beard, terrible body odour, a nipple piercing and a unicorn tattoo prominently displayed on his right forearm.

For this reason it was something of a novelty for me to do this interview with the organisers of the Papergirl festival. It's a really great opportunity for artists and writers to literally shove their work in people's faces. I've submitted a few of my short stories, so if you see someone approach you on a bicycle holding out a rolled up bundle of papers on the 4th of February, take a peek inside...

You can see interviews with other artists participating below. There are still a few days left to submit work! Artists and writers: get amongst it. 

 

 

Diet Tips from the Vampire Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Who Played a Game of Thrones With Fire

Good Morrow to you, Sirs and Madams of the Big Six consortium of publishers! I trust you are well. Before I tell you about the EXCITING!!!! opportunity I am offering you today, I have to ask, are you ever concerned by the fact that your informal collective moniker sounds like some kind of crime syndicate? On the other hand, it is also reminiscent of the Bionic Six, which was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid. Do any of you have superpowers, (besides an almost impregnable stranglehold on the publishing industry that is)? 

 

I know that Oprah's retirement last year must have been a sad day for you, seeing as she directly influenced so many people to consume your books in drool inducing quantities. So I'm here with some news to cheer you up! I am offering YOU the EXCITING opportunity to publish my third novel. That's right! This is not a dream, so quit stabbing that fork into your leg! I, J.M. Donellan, renowned New York Limes Best Smelling author, am currently accepting proposals for contracts to publish the bizarrely titled Adonis Comma Coma.

Now, granted, this novel does not feature diet tips, games involving thrones, vampires, or girls with dragon tattoos who play with fire. I'm saving all of these for my forthcoming novel Diet Tips from the Vampire Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Who Played a Game of Thrones With Fire. That'll sell a billion and ten copies, no question, but in the meantime I offer you the opportunity to place Adonis Comma Coma under your metaphorical wings. Or literal wings if you have them, maybe that's one of your superpowers.

Adonis Comma Coma is a dark comedy about a synaesthetic nurse named Freya who is hired to look after the comatose Elijah, the golden child of the wealthy and eccentric Vincetti family. However, it soon becomes clear that Elijah may not have been the prodigious saint that everyone made him out to be. Meanwhile, someone is disposing of the Vincetti's corporate rivals in a series of imaginatively violent executions. Strange events are transpiring in the curiously over fortified room of the Vincetti mansion, and it may or not have something to do with a woman who claims to be Marilyn Monroe...

Applications should be made in the form of interpretative dance, magical cake, fireworks display or self-indulgent guitar solo. Winners will be chosen based on talent, enthusiasm and endurance. 

If you are interested in this EXCITING, LIFE CHANGING opportunity, then don't think JUST ACT NOW!III  I'm looking for someone to offer me a contract with 80-90% royalties, a jetpack, the complete set of Garbage Pail Kids cards, a performing monkey and a limo with accompanying driver named something like Ahmir or Vikram with whom I can share heartwarming exchanges about the differences between our cultures that can later be presented in a delightful montage set to this song:

 

I look forward to receiving your dance performance, fireworks display, magic cake or guitar solo.

Swarm Regards

J.M. Donellan

 

 

 

 

 

My Dearest Target

My Dearest Target,

How are you? I trust you are enjoying the start of the Christmas period, which I imagine major retailers look forward to with all the anticipation of a sex addict awaiting a holiday in Ibiza.

Yesterday I was perusing your shelves in search of a toiletries bag that I had believed I would require for my planned trip to New York. As it turns out neither the toiletries bag nor the trip to New York will now be necessary as my girlfriend decided to break up with me a few days before our one year anniversary and thus reduce me to an irrational, quivering wreck engaged in peculiar behavior such as writing elaborate complaint letters to department stores, but that’s neither here nor the other place.

Whilst waiting in line to make my purchase I was subjected to your holiday promo clip. Now, aside from the fact that this insufferably saccharine commercial featured lots of sickeningly elated blonde white people and storks carrying babies (when was this thing written, the 1950s?) the ad and its ridiculously loud music were repeated and repeated over and over again and again and again. It was interrupted by only the intermittent PROCEED TO CHECKOUT FIVE announcements, making me feel as though I was alternating my time between some Kafkaesque consumer hell and some Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare (Kafka really was the king of literary misery wasn’t he?)

If I had to listen to a Target ad on infinite loop my writing would have been even MORE despressing!

I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but incessantly repeated music is actually one of the most popular modern forms of psychological torture. During the Bush era two of the favourite bands used at Guantanamo bay were Nine Inch Nails and Massive Attack. Quite ironic given the fact that both of those bands despised the Bush administration. Do you think they got paid royalties for public broadcast each time their song got repeated? 

Once in India I took a 20 hour jeep ride from Srinagar to Leh, and the MP3 player kept skipping back to the start of whatever song it was playing. We asked the driver to just turn it off but he told us that without music he would fall asleep and at this point we were on a tiny Himalayan mountain road with a steep ravine right reaching ominously out beneath us so we let him have his way. Just before we finally reached Leh, we heard the first ten seconds of the song Gimmie More featuring the delightful opening line “It’s Britney bitch!” over and over and over (and over). By the time we reached Leh we had been reduced to giggling, hysterical lunatics.

 

Try listening to THIS 500 times in a row...

So as I’m listening to this syrupy commercial on infinite repeatrepeatrepeat, I’m thinking, what effect is this having on the staff here? Surely this can’t be psychologically healthy? Finally the all-commanding screen interrupts the commercial and instructs me to move to the checkout. I always do what television tells me, so I dutifully obeyed and handed my soon to be redundant travel toiletries bag to the young man behind the counter.

“That’s a total of five cents.” Says he. I looked at price tag, which quite definitely stated $9.05, and I thought to myself, surely I must have misheard him? It can’t possibly be some sort of 99.45% Christmas discount? I passed him $20, and he handed me back $19.95. I took the money in my hand and was open to say something along the lines of “Whaaaaaaaaat?” when the all-seeing monitor demanded that I vacate the checkout so that it might be utilised by another obedient consumer.

In conclusion: perhaps you should reconsider the all-seeing monitor playing your advertisements on infinite loop, not only for the effect it has on your staff, but the effect it has on your profit margin.

AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS OR WHATEVER THE HELL ELSE YOU BELIEVE IN TO ALL!

Swarm regards

J.M. Donellan

 

Illustrator acquired!

 

Ladies and Gentlememes,

I am so excited about this announcement THAT I AM GOING TO USE CAPS UNTIL THE END OF THIS SENTENCE! My publisher, Odyssey Books, and I have found an illustrator/cover artist for Zeb and The Great Ruckus (the novel that will inspire a generation of children to pick up guitars and quills and paintbrushes and initiate an artistic insurrection.) Kathleen Jennings is a brilliant illustrator, writer, lawyer and translator (I can only assume she possesses some kind of superpowers, time machine, or small clone army), and was recommended to me by my friend and contract advisor Alex Adsett. Both Kathleen and Alex are fellow Brisbanianitesistsians. 

As soon as I opened up the link to Kathleen’s page and saw a sketch of a Dalek holding a parasol, I knew she’d be perfect for this project. The work of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake heavily influenced this book and I wanted to have someone who, like Blake did for Dahl, would do both the cover and the internal line sketches. I’m really excited to see what Kathleen comes up with, you can and should check out her work HERE or follow her on twitter here. Alternatively, you could follow her in real life wearing a trench coat and dark sunglasses but I think the police frown upon that kind of thing and anyway you don't even know what she looks like.

I hope something fabulous has happened to you today as well, and if it hasn't I hope it does soon. FIREWORKS AND GUITAR SOLOS FOR EVERYBODY!

 

  

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..."

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