Well, I keep dissing the work of people who don't deign to respond and thereby give me the free publicity I so crave. Where are the thin-skinned writers who feel the need to trash me in their very highly trafficked blogs? I am but a gnat to Cory Doctorow. But his book still sucks.
So, failing to start a literary throwdown with my well-crafted scorn yet again, I've decided to dish out some praise instead.
My old friend Seamus Cooper sent me a copy of his debut novel, The Mall of Cthulhu, and I totally loved it. (It's coming next month from Nightshade Books. They do get books into the chains, so you can look for it in the fantasy/science fiction/horror section of your favorite chain bookstore, or at better independents, or, of course, online.)
It's a tongue-in-cheek horror novel--or maybe it's a comic adventure novel with a horror backdrop--I suppose the work of Christopher Moore is the closest reference point. What I loved about this book is that along with the (frequent) humor and (occasional) horror, it's got a really sweet, really genuine-feeling friendship at its core. So yeah, it's a novel about Cthulhu cultists and malls with a cameo by vampire sorority girls, but I think it's really a book about friendship and about how people recover from tragedy.
Also, it seriously has the most kickass cover of any book ever
(by Scott Altmann.) I told Seamus I am totally jealous-- I wish I'd written a book that could have that kind of cover. Who knows? Maybe someday I will.
