To all aspiring writers looking to get published by sending unsolicited emails to publishers...DON'T

I got this in my inbox yesterday:

Hello, I'm not asking you to publish my books, only to review on Amazon if you wish. You seek innovative work, I think you'll find it in The Four Kings, which is quite unique.

Thanks!

New Book: The Four Kings
508 pages, 100,000 words

Today's world - skyscrapers, Internet cafes, and all - is in great turmoil. Economic doldrums have seized the entire world in the last several years, and powerful nations such as Pakistan and India are just about to unleash nuclear might upon each other. These troubled times have been labeled The Great Blight.

In response to the perceived failure of humanity to get its act together, powerful wizards have taken over the planet. In North America, four arrogant young wizards have set up a zone of governance for that continent. They unleash a harsh regime of "bread and circuses," vowing to drag Earth forward "kicking and screaming" in order to advance progress by "a hundred years," while at the same time thrilling the populace with their wizard games - the ultimate reality TV. Their appointed liaison to the humans, Amanda Fullerton, must soon decide which side of history she must support - or suffer the consequences. In addition, her predicament is compounded when she falls in love with one of the governing wizards.
Urban Fantasy
Self-published October 22, 2013

I responded but I got a Mail Daemon telling me that I couldn't reach that email, so I respond here.

NO! Holy fuck! No. Do you really think that you can stick every buzz word together in one damn novel and it will not be fucking terrible. In this pitch alone we get -
1. Economic collapse!
2. Scratch that, economic DOLDRUMS!
3. Internet Cafes (how 90s!)
4. Indian and Pakistan nuking each other!
5. WIZARDS!!!!!!!!!
6. Bread & Circuses (which by the way is NOT a harsh regime - unless of course you don't know shit about Roman history)
7. Forced Progress!
8. Reality Shows!
9. A Bullshit Love Story

Sure, any one of those elements might make a passable book. Hell, you can even stick two of them in the same book (Nukes and Wizards!) but all of them together in one book is like that porno I saw with a Russian orgy where they were playing Eminem's "I'm Sorry Mama" in the background. Seriously, I like that song. I like porn. I don't want them together in one clip!

But actually I'm kidding, I really fucking hate almost every trope in this thing.

So if you are thinking of pushing your novel at publishers who aren't even asking for submissions, please knock it off. Also, stop writing. Just stop right now. It's not happening. A small press asshole mocking the shit out of your lame book on his blog that's read by maybe a dozen people is about as famous as you're going to get.

Books Read in 2013 # 120-121 - Old Favorites

120. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - I honestly don't know why I love this book. I find parts of it inane and the protagonist infuriating. I see that many critics and fans love it because it truly captures New Orleans dialect and speaking styles, but I have never even visited New Orleans. I think I like the way that the plot ambles along and gives everyone what they want and Myrna Minkoff used to remind me of old girlfriends, but let's be honest, she reminds me of me more than anything - and she is the mirror image of Ignatius, only her pomposity and pretensions are in tune with the modern day while Ignatius is attempting to recapture a romanticized middle ages. And I don't know why I don't really draw a parallel between Ignatius and the dozens (hundreds) of fantasy novels that have flooded the market since Lord of the Rings went from a cult hit to a modern classic, but if I'm not mistaken I think that the dates are different and Toole may not have been aware of the Tolkien juggernaut. (sadly I did not finish reading Evangeline Walton's The Mabinogion which has a lot of very pointed feminist discussions about how the New Tribes don't respect women and are getting ideas from the East that treat women like property - would have fit in with my current obsession of medieval romanticism running through many fantasy books and how Walton constitutes a deconstruction of such easy tropes). So I don't know why I like it, but I like it. And it makes me hungry.

121. Black Spring by Alison Croggon - This is a YA fantasy book that is a take-off on Wuthering Heights and as such I am happy to see that it makes the Catherine character just as vicious and angry as she is in the original. Too often, people who adapt Wuthering Heights miss the way that Catherine and Heathcliff are alike and tend to make the thing into a tortured love story. There is certainly a love story element in this one but it also has the idiot narrator and the story told mostly by the servant. This doesn't have the power of Wuthering Heights, but as a fan letter to Bronte, it definitely is welcome. It adds wizards and institutional misogyny tropes (the Catherine character is a witch who spends most of her life denying it because even though wizards are respected, witches get killed) and there are some bits about inheritance. Croggon cuts out the bits of Wuthering Heights that most people cut out - usually because in other writers' hands they can be boring - namely, Heathcliff destroying everyone's lives in the last half of the book. That works for this one. One of these days, there will be a good evil scary version of Wuthering Heights in the movie theaters. But this is a slight balm to the disappointment that comes with every viewing.

Books Read in 2013 # 122 - Call me Leatherface

122. Chain Saw Confidential by Gunnar Hansen - I wanted this to be the last book that I finished read in 2013 since the first book that I started reading in 2013 was Moby Dick and why not end the year with a book that directly references that one? However, now that I write that, it just doesn't seem that cool. Also, I'm not going to do this again for another year because I love doing it, but by December it feels like a chore instead of a hobby. I suppose I could draw more comparisons between this book and Moby Dick particularly since both books get a little tedious towards the end, but at least with Moby Dick everyone claims that it's boring so you're prepared.

Unfortunately, this book gets very boring and you aren't prepared for it, but you probably should be. By virtue of the fact that Gunnar Hansen has told most of these stories before, it's more like an exercise in "oh yeah, I remember that." Obviously, there are people who haven't watched the movie, listened to the commentary track, read books about horror movies or know that much about anything in regards to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Of course, why would they be reading this book? I mean, sure, aspiring filmmakers might want to read about what it's like to do an amateur production but most of the stories are illustrations of what you don't want to do on the film shoot - including the torture of the actors through constant reshoots in order to make things more "realistic" and having a live chainsaw going very close to peoples' heads.

About halfway through the book, it's hard not to be pissed on behalf of the actors. Not only did they get stuck on a film shoot that disregarded safety regulations and tried to make everything method acting. There are only so many times you can read "I had no visibility and they wanted me to run around with a live chainsaw" before Tobe Hooper's non-career becomes a good thing.

Not only do they torture the actors but they also screw them out of their royalties. Gunnar gives a pretty good rundown of the way that rights got sold and repackaged to the point that no one knew who owed anyone anything but eventually, he should have gotten a pretty good payday out of it. He didn't.

The rest of the book tries to say something profound about horror and how it's great and good for society. Dr. Frederic Wertham gets a much deserved fuckyou. Gunnar tells the same story about going on a date with a woman to the movie and not realizing that even if he's the star and even if she seems excited, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so NOT a date movie.